Anna Sokol

Anna Sokol, Elizabeth Daly, Michael Hind et al.

Large language models (LLMs) are powerful tools capable of handling diverse tasks. Comparing and selecting appropriate LLMs for specific tasks requires systematic evaluation methods, as models exhibit varying capabilities across different domains. However, finding suitable benchmarks is difficult given the many available options. This complexity not only increases the risk of benchmark misuse and misinterpretation but also demands substantial effort from LLM users, seeking the most suitable benchmarks for their specific needs. To address these issues, we introduce \texttt{BenchmarkCards}, an intuitive and validated documentation framework that standardizes critical benchmark attributes such as objectives, methodologies, data sources, and limitations. Through user studies involving benchmark creators and users, we show that \texttt{BenchmarkCards} can simplify benchmark selection and enhance transparency, facilitating informed decision-making in evaluating LLMs. Data & Code: https://github.com/SokolAnn/BenchmarkCards

Anna Sokol, Marianna B. Ganapini, Nitesh V. Chawla

The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked debate about whether these systems exhibit human-level cognition. In this debate, little attention has been paid to a structural component of human cognition: core beliefs, truths that provide a foundation around which we can build a worldview. These commitments usually resist debunking, as abandoning them would represent a fundamental shift in how we see reality. In this paper, we ask whether LLMs hold anything akin to core commitments. Using a probing framework we call Adversarial Dialogue Trees (ADTs) over five domains (science, history, geography, biology, and mathematics), we find that most LLMs fail to maintain a stable worldview. Though some recent models showed improved stability, they still eventually failed to maintain key commitments under conversational pressure. These results document an improvement in argumentative skills across model generations but indicate that all current models lack a key component of human-level cognition.

Tanay Nagar, Grigorii Khvatskii, Anna Sokol et al.

Cutting-edge LLMs have emerged as powerful tools for multilingual communication and understanding. However, LLMs perform worse in Common Sense Reasoning (CSR) tasks when prompted in low-resource languages (LRLs) like Hindi or Swahili compared to high-resource languages (HRLs) like English. Equalizing this inconsistent access to quality LLM outputs is crucial to ensure fairness for speakers of LRLs and across diverse linguistic communities. In this paper, we propose an approach to bridge this gap in LLM performance. Our approach involves fine-tuning an LLM on synthetic code-switched text generated using controlled language-mixing methods. We empirically demonstrate that fine-tuning LLMs on synthetic code-switched datasets leads to substantial improvements in LRL model performance while preserving or enhancing performance in HRLs. Additionally, we present a new dataset of synthetic code-switched text derived from the CommonSenseQA dataset, featuring three distinct language ratio configurations.

Anna Sokol, Nuno Moniz, Nitesh Chawla

Should prediction models always deliver a prediction? In the pursuit of maximum predictive performance, critical considerations of reliability and fairness are often overshadowed, particularly when it comes to the role of uncertainty. Selective regression, also known as the "reject option," allows models to abstain from predictions in cases of considerable uncertainty. Initially proposed seven decades ago, approaches to selective regression have mostly focused on distribution-based proxies for measuring uncertainty, particularly conditional variance. However, this focus neglects the significant influence of model-specific biases on a model's performance. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to selective regression by leveraging conformal prediction, which provides grounded confidence measures for individual predictions based on model-specific biases. In addition, we propose a standardized evaluation framework to allow proper comparison of selective regression approaches. Via an extensive experimental approach, we demonstrate how our proposed approach, conformalized selective regression, demonstrates an advantage over multiple state-of-the-art baselines.