Definitions Matter: Guiding GPT for Multi-label Classification

Youri Peskine, Damir Korenčić, Ivan Grubisic, Paolo Papotti, Raphael Troncy, Paolo Rosso


Abstract
Large language models have recently risen in popularity due to their ability to perform many natural language tasks without requiring any fine-tuning. In this work, we focus on two novel ideas: (1) generating definitions from examples and using them for zero-shot classification, and (2) investigating how an LLM makes use of the definitions. We thoroughly analyze the performance of GPT-3 model for fine-grained multi-label conspiracy theory classification of tweets using zero-shot labeling. In doing so, we asses how to improve the labeling by providing minimal but meaningful context in the form of the definitions of the labels. We compare descriptive noun phrases, human-crafted definitions, introduce a new method to help the model generate definitions from examples, and propose a method to evaluate GPT-3’s understanding of the definitions. We demonstrate that improving definitions of class labels has a direct consequence on the downstream classification results.
Anthology ID:
2023.findings-emnlp.267
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023
Month:
December
Year:
2023
Address:
Singapore
Editors:
Houda Bouamor, Juan Pino, Kalika Bali
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
4054–4063
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.267
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2023.findings-emnlp.267
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Youri Peskine, Damir Korenčić, Ivan Grubisic, Paolo Papotti, Raphael Troncy, and Paolo Rosso. 2023. Definitions Matter: Guiding GPT for Multi-label Classification. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023, pages 4054–4063, Singapore. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Definitions Matter: Guiding GPT for Multi-label Classification (Peskine et al., Findings 2023)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.267.pdf