arXiv:2410.00903stat.APcs.CL2024-10被引 21

用大模型生成文本并提取内在表示,提升因果推断准确性。

Causal Inference with Generative Artificial Intelligence: Application to Texts as Treatments

  • 用大语言模型生成文本并利用其内部表征进行因果推断。
  • 在模拟和真实数据中,相比现有方法,估计误差降低23%以上。
  • 适合研究文本内容对结果影响的学者,如社会学、传播学领域。

本文展示如何借助生成式人工智能(GenAI)增强非结构化高维处理变量(如文本)的因果推断有效性。我们提出使用深度生成模型(如大语言模型,LLMs)高效生成处理变量,并利用其内部表示进行后续因果效应估计。该方法能有效分离出关注的特征(如特定情感、话题),避免未知混杂因素干扰。与现有方法不同,所提出的GenAI赋能因果推断(GPI)无需从数据中学习因果表示,从而实现更准确高效的估计。我们形式化建立了平均处理效应的非参数可识别条件,提出避免重叠假设违反的估计策略,并通过双重机器学习推导了估计器的渐近性质。此外,结合工具变量法,将方法扩展至基于人类感知的处理特征场景。GPI也适用于文本重用,即用LLM重新生成已有文本。我们使用开源LLM Llama 3生成的文本数据进行模拟与实证研究,结果表明,该方法在多种设置下均优于当前最优的因果表示学习算法。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

In this paper, we demonstrate how to enhance the validity of causal inference with unstructured high-dimensional treatments like texts, by leveraging the power of generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Specifically, we propose to use a deep generative model such as large language models (LLMs) to efficiently generate treatments and use their internal representation for subsequent causal effect estimation. We show that the knowledge of this true internal representation helps disentangle the treatment features of interest, such as specific sentiments and certain topics, from other possibly unknown confounding features. Unlike existing methods, the proposed GenAI-Powered Inference (GPI) methodology eliminates the need to learn causal representation from the data, and hence produces more accurate and efficient estimates. We formally establish the conditions required for the nonparametric identification of the average treatment effect, propose an estimation strategy that avoids the violation of the overlap assumption, and derive the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator through the application of double machine learning. Finally, using an instrumental variables approach, we extend the proposed GPI methodology to the settings in which the treatment feature is based on human perception. The GPI is also applicable to text reuse where an LLM is used to regenerate existing texts. We conduct simulation and empirical studies, using the generated text data from an open-source LLM, Llama 3, to illustrate the advantages of our estimator over state-of-the-art causal representation learning algorithms.

因果推断大模型文本分析

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