Knowledge of Knowledge: Exploring Known-Unknowns Uncertainty with Large Language Models

Alfonso Amayuelas, Kyle Wong, Liangming Pan, Wenhu Chen, William Yang Wang


Abstract
This paper investigates the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in understanding their knowledge and uncertainty over questions. Specifically, we focus on addressing known-unknown questions, characterized by high uncertainty due to the absence of definitive answers. To facilitate our study, we collect a new dataset with Known-Unknown Questions (KUQ) and establish a categorization framework to clarify the origins of uncertainty in such queries. Subsequently, we examine the performance of open-source LLMs, fine-tuned using this dataset, in distinguishing between known and unknown queries within open-ended question-answering scenarios. The fine-tuned models demonstrated a significant improvement, achieving a considerable increase in F1-score relative to their pre-fine-tuning state. Through a comprehensive analysis, we reveal insights into the models’ improved uncertainty articulation and their consequent efficacy in multi-agent debates. These findings help us understand how LLMs can be trained to identify and express uncertainty, improving our knowledge of how they understand and express complex or unclear information.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.383
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting
Editors:
Lun-Wei Ku, Andre Martins, Vivek Srikumar
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
6416–6432
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.383
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Alfonso Amayuelas, Kyle Wong, Liangming Pan, Wenhu Chen, and William Yang Wang. 2024. Knowledge of Knowledge: Exploring Known-Unknowns Uncertainty with Large Language Models. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024, pages 6416–6432, Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Knowledge of Knowledge: Exploring Known-Unknowns Uncertainty with Large Language Models (Amayuelas et al., Findings 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.383.pdf