Chain-of-Discussion: A Multi-Model Framework for Complex Evidence-Based Question Answering

Mingxu Tao, Dongyan Zhao, Yansong Feng


Abstract
Open-ended question answering requires mod- els to find appropriate evidence to form well-reasoned, comprehensive and helpful answers. In practical applications, models also need to engage in extended discussions on potential scenarios closely relevant to the question. With augmentation of retrieval module, open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce coherent answers often with different focuses, but are still sub-optimal in terms of reliable ev- idence selection and in-depth question analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel Chain-of- Discussion framework to leverage the synergy among multiple open-source LLMs aiming to provide more correct and more comprehensive answers for open-ended QA, although they are not strong enough individually. Our exper- iments show that discussions among multiple LLMs play a vital role in enhancing the quality of answers.
Anthology ID:
2025.coling-main.734
Volume:
Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Month:
January
Year:
2025
Address:
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Editors:
Owen Rambow, Leo Wanner, Marianna Apidianaki, Hend Al-Khalifa, Barbara Di Eugenio, Steven Schockaert
Venue:
COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
11070–11085
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.734/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Mingxu Tao, Dongyan Zhao, and Yansong Feng. 2025. Chain-of-Discussion: A Multi-Model Framework for Complex Evidence-Based Question Answering. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pages 11070–11085, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Chain-of-Discussion: A Multi-Model Framework for Complex Evidence-Based Question Answering (Tao et al., COLING 2025)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.734.pdf