Can Large Language Models Express Uncertainty Like Human?

Linwei Tao, Yi-Fan Yeh, Bo Kai, Tom A. Lamb, Jialin Yu, Minjing Dong, Tao Huang, Philip Torr, Chang Xu

Keywords: linguistic confidence, uncertainty estimation, large language model

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in high-stakes settings, where overconfident responses can mislead users. Reliable confidence estimation has been shown to enhance trust and task accuracy. Yet existing methods face practical barriers: logits are often hidden, multi-sampling is computationally expensive, and verbalized numerical uncertainty (e.g., giving a 0–100 score) deviates from natural communication. We revisit linguistic confidence (LC), where models express uncertainty through hedging language (e.g., probably, might), offering a lightweight and human-centered alternative. To advance this direction, we 1) release the first diverse, large-scale dataset of hedging expressions with human-annotated confidence scores, and 2) propose a lightweight mapper that converts hedges into confidence scores at near-zero cost. Building on these resources, we 3) conduct the first systematic study of LC across modern LLMs and QA benchmarks, revealing that while most LLMs underperform in expressing reliable LC, carefully designed prompting achieves competitive calibration and discriminability. Finally, we 4) introduce a fine-tuning framework that further improves LC reliability. Taken together, our work positions linguistic confidence as a scalable, efficient, and human-aligned approach to LLM uncertainty estimation, and calls for deeper exploration of this promising yet underexplored direction. The code and dataset are anonymously available at \url{https://anonymous.4open.science/r/Linguistic-Uncertainty-Dataset-051E}

Primary Area: alignment, fairness, safety, privacy, and societal considerations

Submission Number: 7136