Pia Sommerauer

Richard Brath, Daniel Keim, Johannes Knittel et al.

With a constant increase of learned parameters, modern neural language models become increasingly more powerful. Yet, explaining these complex model's behavior remains a widely unsolved problem. In this paper, we discuss the role interactive visualization can play in explaining NLP models (XNLP). We motivate the use of visualization in relation to target users and common NLP pipelines. We also present several use cases to provide concrete examples on XNLP with visualization. Finally, we point out an extensive list of research opportunities in this field.

Pantea Haghighatkhah, Antske Fokkens, Pia Sommerauer et al.

Bias elimination and recent probing studies attempt to remove specific information from embedding spaces. Here it is important to remove as much of the target information as possible, while preserving any other information present. INLP is a popular recent method which removes specific information through iterative nullspace projections. Multiple iterations, however, increase the risk that information other than the target is negatively affected. We introduce two methods that find a single targeted projection: Mean Projection (MP, more efficient) and Tukey Median Projection (TMP, with theoretical guarantees). Our comparison between MP and INLP shows that (1) one MP projection removes linear separability based on the target and (2) MP has less impact on the overall space. Further analysis shows that applying random projections after MP leads to the same overall effects on the embedding space as the multiple projections of INLP. Applying one targeted (MP) projection hence is methodologically cleaner than applying multiple (INLP) projections that introduce random effects.

Zhivar Sourati, Filip Ilievski, Pia Sommerauer et al.

As a core cognitive skill that enables the transferability of information across domains, analogical reasoning has been extensively studied for both humans and computational models. However, while cognitive theories of analogy often focus on narratives and study the distinction between surface, relational, and system similarities, existing work in natural language processing has a narrower focus as far as relational analogies between word pairs. This gap brings a natural question: can state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) detect system analogies between narratives? To gain insight into this question and extend word-based relational analogies to relational system analogies, we devise a comprehensive computational framework that operationalizes dominant theories of analogy, using narrative elements to create surface and system mappings. Leveraging the interplay between these mappings, we create a binary task and benchmark for Analogical Reasoning on Narratives (ARN), covering four categories of far (cross-domain)/near (within-domain) analogies and disanalogies. We show that while all LLMs can largely recognize near analogies, even the largest ones struggle with far analogies in a zero-shot setting, with GPT4.0 scoring below random. Guiding the models through solved examples and chain-of-thought reasoning enhances their analogical reasoning ability. Yet, since even in the few-shot setting, the best model only performs halfway between random and humans, ARN opens exciting directions for computational analogical reasoners.

Pia Sommerauer, Giulia Rambelli, Tommaso Caselli

Persona-prompting is a growing strategy to steer LLMs toward simulating particular perspectives or linguistic styles through the lens of a specified identity. While this method is often used to personalize outputs, its impact on how LLMs represent social groups remains underexplored. In this paper, we investigate whether persona-prompting leads to different levels of linguistic abstraction - an established marker of stereotyping - when generating short texts linking socio-demographic categories with stereotypical or non-stereotypical attributes. Drawing on the Linguistic Expectancy Bias framework, we analyze outputs from six open-weight LLMs under three prompting conditions, comparing 11 persona-driven responses to those of a generic AI assistant. To support this analysis, we introduce Self-Stereo, a new dataset of self-reported stereotypes from Reddit. We measure abstraction through three metrics: concreteness, specificity, and negation. Our results highlight the limits of persona-prompting in modulating abstraction in language, confirming criticisms about the ecology of personas as representative of socio-demographic groups and raising concerns about the risk of propagating stereotypes even when seemingly evoking the voice of a marginalized group.

Alicja Dobrzeniecka, Antske Fokkens, Pia Sommerauer

Amnesic probing is a technique used to examine the influence of specific linguistic information on the behaviour of a model. This involves identifying and removing the relevant information and then assessing whether the model's performance on the main task changes. If the removed information is relevant, the model's performance should decline. The difficulty with this approach lies in removing only the target information while leaving other information unchanged. It has been shown that Iterative Nullspace Projection (INLP), a widely used removal technique, introduces random modifications to representations when eliminating target information. We demonstrate that Mean Projection (MP) and LEACE, two proposed alternatives, remove information in a more targeted manner, thereby enhancing the potential for obtaining behavioural explanations through Amnesic Probing.

Pia Sommerauer, Antske Fokkens

This paper presents an approach for investigating the nature of semantic information captured by word embeddings. We propose a method that extends an existing human-elicited semantic property dataset with gold negative examples using crowd judgments. Our experimental approach tests the ability of supervised classifiers to identify semantic features in word embedding vectors and com- pares this to a feature-identification method based on full vector cosine similarity. The idea behind this method is that properties identified by classifiers, but not through full vector comparison are captured by embeddings. Properties that cannot be identified by either method are not. Our results provide an initial indication that semantic properties relevant for the way entities interact (e.g. dangerous) are captured, while perceptual information (e.g. colors) is not represented. We conclude that, though preliminary, these results show that our method is suitable for identifying which properties are captured by embeddings.