arXiv:2412.02081cs.CL2024-12被引 5

用大模型生成随机变量和约束,自动构建可推理的概率模型。

Let's Think Var-by-Var: Large Language Models Enable Ad Hoc Probabilistic Reasoning

  • 通过提示大模型提取与问题相关的随机变量及约束条件
  • 联合优化使噪声约束达成一致,生成合理概率分布
  • 适合需要快速建模但无数据支持的场景

智能的一个标志是能够利用“常识”填补信息不足的情境。我们提出从大语言模型中提取这种常识,以支持概率推理。聚焦于如“新泽西州纽瓦克市爱彼迎房源价格是多少?”这类估算问题。回答此类问题需结合关于价格、位置与房屋类型等变量间关系的常识知识。我们的框架通过合成一个临时的概率模型来作答:首先提示大模型提出相关随机变量及其联合分布的矩约束;然后在对数线性族中优化联合分布 $p$,以最大化约束满足度。实验表明,大模型能有效提出合理变量,尽管数值约束存在噪声,但联合优化可使其协调一致。在三个真实表格数据集衍生的概率问题上,该方法在总变差距离上与直接提示基线相当,并对噪声具有相似鲁棒性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

A hallmark of intelligence is the ability to flesh out underspecified situations using "common sense." We propose to extract that common sense from large language models (LLMs), in a form that can feed into probabilistic inference. We focus our investigation on $\textit{guesstimation}$ questions such as "How much are Airbnb listings in Newark, NJ?" Formulating a sensible answer without access to data requires drawing on, and integrating, bits of common knowledge about how $\texttt{Price}$ and $\texttt{Location}$ may relate to other variables, such as $\texttt{Property Type}$. Our framework answers such a question by synthesizing an $\textit{ad hoc}$ probabilistic model. First we prompt an LLM to propose a set of random variables relevant to the question, followed by moment constraints on their joint distribution. We then optimize the joint distribution $p$ within a log-linear family to maximize the overall constraint satisfaction. Our experiments show that LLMs can successfully be prompted to propose reasonable variables, and while the proposed numerical constraints can be noisy, jointly optimizing for their satisfaction reconciles them. When evaluated on probabilistic questions derived from three real-world tabular datasets, we find that our framework performs comparably to a direct prompting baseline in terms of total variation distance from the dataset distribution, and is similarly robust to noise.

概率推理大模型应用常识建模

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