The paper proposes an empirical pipeline to estimate the preferences that a large language model (LLM) implicitly optimizes by combining the model’s probability distribution over unknowns with its chosen action, and fitting a discrete choice model to recover the underlying cost function. This revealed-preference framework enables rigorous assessment of whether LLMs act consistently toward a goal, can articulate objectives that align with their decision policy, and can be steered by prompting to follow a user-specified cost function. Experiments across four medical diagnosis domains and various frontier and open-source models show that while many LLMs exhibit internal coherence, they still struggle to accurately report or adopt preferences when guided by users.
By Khurram Yamin, Jingjing Tang, Eric Horvitz, Bryan Wilder
arXiv:2609.09855v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Although probabilistic statements are ubiquitous, foundational disagreements persist about their understanding, as exemplified by debates between Bayes...
By Benedikt H\"oltgen
The paper introduces a decision‑theoretic framework that splits a large language model’s decision loss into belief formation and action selection components. Using a synthetic benchmark, it evaluates how reinforcement‑learning interventions on beliefs, decisions, or both affect these components across three domains. The study finds that targeting a single component improves that part but may not transfer to others, while jointly targeting both improves both only when training and evaluation formats match.
By Huaman Sun, Dingcheng Wang, Jason Hartline, Jessica Hullman
arXiv:2609.07943v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: There is significant uncertainty about whether abstractions like beliefs or desires usefully describe the behavior of large language models (LLMs). In...
By Alex Smolin, Bryan Wilder
arXiv:2608.22483v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly support decision-making in high-stakes domains, but they often hallucinate and express confidence that is mis...
By Toghrul Abbasli, Kentaroh Toyoda, Yuan Wang, Li Chen
arXiv:2608. 09080v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved strong performance in medical question answering and clinical reasoning tasks.
By Maryam Tahermazandarani, Adnan Mahmood, Fahmida Islam, Quan Z. Sheng