大模型在因果推理上表现接近随机,根源是缺乏结构化因果表征。
Causal Understanding by LLMs: The Role of Uncertainty
- 通过不确定性评估,测试模型对因果关系的判断能力
- 模型在已见与未见句子上准确率相近,无记忆偏好,输出分布接近均匀
- 指令微调模型严重过自信,适合研究模型认知可信度
近期研究表明,大模型在因果关系分类中表现接近随机,引发对其失败原因的质疑:是预训练数据中因果例句不足,还是深层表征缺陷?本文在不确定性评估框架下,基于超过1.8万条来自PubMed的语料(一半来自The Pile,一半为2024年后数据),在七种模型(Pythia-1.4B/7B/12B、GPT-J-6B、Dolly-7B/12B、Qwen-7B)上进行测试。通过因果分类与原文记忆探测两种方式分析模型行为:前者要求模型识别文本中的直接/条件/相关/无关系四类因果关系;后者评估模型是否更倾向于选择先前见过的原句而非其改写版本。结果表明,模型在已见与未见句子上的准确率差异不显著(p > 0.05),无记忆偏好(原句选择率为24.8%),且输出分布几乎均匀,熵值接近最大(1.35/1.39),证实为随机猜测。指令微调模型存在严重校准偏差(Qwen:置信度>95%,准确率仅32.8%,ECE=0.49)。条件关系导致熵值最高(比直接关系高11%)。研究认为,大模型因果理解失败源于缺乏结构化因果表征,而非预训练数据中因果例句不足。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Recent papers show LLMs achieve near-random accuracy in causal relation classification, raising questions about whether such failures arise from limited pretraining exposure or deeper representational gaps. We investigate this under uncertainty-based evaluation, testing whether pretraining exposure to causal examples improves causal understanding >18K PubMed sentences -- half from The Pile corpus, half post-2024 -- across seven models (Pythia-1.4B/7B/12B, GPT-J-6B, Dolly-7B/12B, Qwen-7B). We analyze model behavior through: (i) causal classification, where the model identifies causal relationships in text, and (ii) verbatim memorization probing, where we assess whether the model prefers previously seen causal statements over their paraphrases. Models perform four-way classification (direct/conditional/correlational/no-relationship) and select between originals and their generated paraphrases. Results show almost identical accuracy on seen/unseen sentences (p > 0.05), no memorization bias (24.8% original selection), and output distribution over the possible options is almost flat, with entropic values near the maximum (1.35/1.39), confirming random guessing. Instruction-tuned models show severe miscalibration (Qwen: > 95% confidence, 32.8% accuracy, ECE=0.49). Conditional relations induce highest entropy (+11% vs. direct). These findings suggest that failures in causal understanding arise from the lack of structured causal representation, rather than insufficient exposure to causal examples during pretraining.
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