arXiv:2505.13770cs.AIcs.CL2025-05被引 4

测试大模型在因果推断中的统计陷阱应对能力,发现其表现仍有明显短板。

Ice Cream Doesn't Cause Drowning: Benchmarking LLMs Against Statistical Pitfalls in Causal Inference

  • 构建多难度层级的因果陷阱评测集,涵盖悖论与偏差问题。
  • 直接提示下模型正确率不足40%,代码辅助后提升至60%以上。
  • 适合关注可信因果推理的AI研发者与评估人员使用。

可靠的因果推断对医疗、经济和公共政策等高风险领域至关重要。然而,当前大型语言模型(LLMs)是否具备严谨可信的统计因果推断能力仍不明确。现有基准多为简化任务,如仅识别语义因果关系或从原始数据直接得出结论,导致模型容易忽视如辛普森悖论、选择性偏差等关键统计陷阱,限制了其实际应用。为此,我们提出CausalPitfalls,一个全面的基准评测体系,用于严格评估LLMs克服常见因果推断陷阱的能力。该基准包含多个难度等级的结构化挑战,并配套评分标准,支持量化评估模型的因果推理能力与回答可靠性。我们采用两种评估协议:(1) 直接提示,评估内在因果推理能力;(2) 代码辅助提示,要求模型生成可执行代码进行显式统计分析。此外,通过与人类专家评估对比验证了评分器的有效性。结果显示,当前LLMs在统计因果推断中存在显著局限,而本基准为构建可信因果推理系统提供了重要指导与量化指标。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reliable causal inference is essential for making decisions in high-stakes areas like medicine, economics, and public policy. However, it remains unclear whether large language models (LLMs) can handle rigorous and trustworthy statistical causal inference. Current benchmarks usually involve simplified tasks. For example, these tasks might only ask LLMs to identify semantic causal relationships or draw conclusions directly from raw data. As a result, models may overlook important statistical pitfalls, such as Simpson's paradox or selection bias. This oversight limits the applicability of LLMs in the real world. To address these limitations, we propose CausalPitfalls, a comprehensive benchmark designed to rigorously evaluate the capability of LLMs in overcoming common causal inference pitfalls. Our benchmark features structured challenges across multiple difficulty levels, each paired with grading rubrics. This approach allows us to quantitatively measure both causal reasoning capabilities and the reliability of LLMs' responses. We evaluate models using two protocols: (1) direct prompting, which assesses intrinsic causal reasoning, and (2) code-assisted prompting, where models generate executable code for explicit statistical analysis. Additionally, we validate the effectiveness of this judge by comparing its scoring with assessments from human experts. Our results reveal significant limitations in current LLMs when performing statistical causal inference. The CausalPitfalls benchmark provides essential guidance and quantitative metrics to advance the development of trustworthy causal reasoning systems.

因果推理大模型评测统计陷阱

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