@inproceedings{chen-etal-2024-spiral,
title = "Spiral of Silence: How is Large Language Model Killing Information Retrieval?{---}{A} Case Study on Open Domain Question Answering",
author = "Chen, Xiaoyang and
He, Ben and
Lin, Hongyu and
Han, Xianpei and
Wang, Tianshu and
Cao, Boxi and
Sun, Le and
Sun, Yingfei",
editor = "Ku, Lun-Wei and
Martins, Andre and
Srikumar, Vivek",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = aug,
year = "2024",
address = "Bangkok, Thailand",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.luhme-long.798/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2024.acl-long.798",
pages = "14930--14951",
abstract = "The practice of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with retrieval systems, has become increasingly prevalent. However, the repercussions of LLM-derived content infiltrating the web and influencing the retrieval-generation feedback loop are largely uncharted territories. In this study, we construct and iteratively run a simulation pipeline to deeply investigate the short-term and long-term effects of LLM text on RAG systems. Taking the trending Open Domain Question Answering (ODQA) task as a point of entry, our findings reveal a potential digital {\textquotedblleft}Spiral of Silence{\textquotedblright} effect, with LLM-generated text consistently outperforming human-authored content in search rankings, thereby diminishing the presence and impact of human contributions online. This trend risks creating an imbalanced information ecosystem, where the unchecked proliferation of erroneous LLM-generated content may result in the marginalization of accurate information. We urge the academic community to take heed of this potential issue, ensuring a diverse and authentic digital information landscape."
}
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Spiral of Silence: How is Large Language Model Killing Information Retrieval?—A Case Study on Open Domain Question Answering
%A Chen, Xiaoyang
%A He, Ben
%A Lin, Hongyu
%A Han, Xianpei
%A Wang, Tianshu
%A Cao, Boxi
%A Sun, Le
%A Sun, Yingfei
%Y Ku, Lun-Wei
%Y Martins, Andre
%Y Srikumar, Vivek
%S Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2024
%8 August
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Bangkok, Thailand
%F chen-etal-2024-spiral
%X The practice of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), which integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with retrieval systems, has become increasingly prevalent. However, the repercussions of LLM-derived content infiltrating the web and influencing the retrieval-generation feedback loop are largely uncharted territories. In this study, we construct and iteratively run a simulation pipeline to deeply investigate the short-term and long-term effects of LLM text on RAG systems. Taking the trending Open Domain Question Answering (ODQA) task as a point of entry, our findings reveal a potential digital “Spiral of Silence” effect, with LLM-generated text consistently outperforming human-authored content in search rankings, thereby diminishing the presence and impact of human contributions online. This trend risks creating an imbalanced information ecosystem, where the unchecked proliferation of erroneous LLM-generated content may result in the marginalization of accurate information. We urge the academic community to take heed of this potential issue, ensuring a diverse and authentic digital information landscape.
%R 10.18653/v1/2024.acl-long.798
%U https://aclanthology.org/2024.luhme-long.798/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.acl-long.798
%P 14930-14951
Markdown (Informal)
[Spiral of Silence: How is Large Language Model Killing Information Retrieval?—A Case Study on Open Domain Question Answering](https://aclanthology.org/2024.luhme-long.798/) (Chen et al., ACL 2024)
ACL
- Xiaoyang Chen, Ben He, Hongyu Lin, Xianpei Han, Tianshu Wang, Boxi Cao, Le Sun, and Yingfei Sun. 2024. Spiral of Silence: How is Large Language Model Killing Information Retrieval?—A Case Study on Open Domain Question Answering. In Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 14930–14951, Bangkok, Thailand. Association for Computational Linguistics.