Always Tell Me The Odds: Fine-grained Conditional Probability Estimation

Liaoyaqi Wang, Zhengping Jiang, Anqi Liu, Benjamin Van Durme

Keywords: Large Language Model, Probabilistic Reasoning, Semantics, Calibration

TL;DR: We present a state-of-the-art model for fine-grained probability estimation of textual outcomes conditioned on context.

Abstract: We present a state-of-the-art model for fine-grained probability estimation of propositions conditioned on context. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have significantly enhanced their reasoning capabilities, particularly on well-defined tasks with complete information. However, LLMs continue to struggle with making accurate and well-calibrated \emph{probabilistic} predictions under uncertainty or partial information. While incorporating uncertainty into model predictions often boosts performance, obtaining reliable estimates of that uncertainty remains understudied. In particular, LLM probability estimates tend to be coarse and biased towards more frequent numbers. Through a combination of human and synthetic data creation and assessment, scaling to larger models, and better supervision, we propose a set of strong and precise probability estimation models. We conduct systematic evaluations across tasks that rely on conditional probability estimation and show that our approach consistently outperforms existing fine-tuned and prompting-based methods by a large margin.

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Submission Number: 1269