发现大模型在连续问答中答案会持续不稳定,提出用马尔可夫链预测其长期准确率。
Modeling and Predicting Multi-Turn Answer Instability in Large Language Models
- 通过多轮追问和马尔可夫链建模,分析模型回答的动态变化规律。
- Gemini 1.5 Flash九轮后准确率下降约10%,长期稳定准确率比首轮低8%。
- 隐藏层线性探针可预测答案变化,为评估交互鲁棒性提供新方法。
随着大语言模型(LLMs)在各类应用中广泛使用,用户与模型的互动频率和规模持续上升。本文通过简单的多轮追问提示,评估模型回答的不稳定性,利用马尔可夫链建模模型准确率随轮次的变化,并检验线性探针是否能预测这些变化。结果表明,模型存在显著脆弱性:一个简单的“再思考”提示使Gemini 1.5 Flash在九轮内准确率下降约10%;将该提示与语义等价的重述问题结合,导致Claude 3.5 Haiku准确率下降7.5%。此外,模型准确率可通过马尔可夫链有效建模,从而预测其长期运行下的准确率概率。我们发现,对于Gemini 1.5 Flash,其平稳(长期)准确率平均比首轮低约8%。从模型隐藏状态分析也显示,线性探针能帮助预测未来答案变化。上述结果确立了平稳准确率作为交互场景下鲁棒性的合理度量指标,揭示了模型在重复提问下的脆弱性。在高风险、交互密集的场景中,解决这一不稳定性至关重要。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
As large language models (LLMs) are adopted in an increasingly wide range of applications, user-model interactions have grown in both frequency and scale. Consequently, research has focused on evaluating the robustness of LLMs, an essential quality for real-world tasks. In this paper, we employ simple multi-turn follow-up prompts to evaluate models' answer changes, model accuracy dynamics across turns with Markov chains, and examine whether linear probes can predict these changes. Our results show significant vulnerabilities in LLM robustness: a simple "Think again" prompt led to an approximate 10% accuracy drop for Gemini 1.5 Flash over nine turns, while combining this prompt with a semantically equivalent reworded question caused a 7.5% drop for Claude 3.5 Haiku. Additionally, we find that model accuracy across turns can be effectively modeled using Markov chains, enabling the prediction of accuracy probabilities over time. This allows for estimation of the model's stationary (long-run) accuracy, which we find to be on average approximately 8% lower than its first-turn accuracy for Gemini 1.5 Flash. Our results from a model's hidden states also reveal evidence that linear probes can help predict future answer changes. Together, these results establish stationary accuracy as a principled robustness metric for interactive settings and expose the fragility of models under repeated questioning. Addressing this instability will be essential for deploying LLMs in high-stakes and interactive settings where consistent reasoning is as important as initial accuracy.
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