arXiv:2606.08831cs.AI2026-06中稿 · ICML

让大模型推理过程自带事实性控制,生成时就能判断是否可信。

Inference-Time Conformal Reasoning with Valid Factuality Control for Large Language Models

论文配图:Inference-Time Conformal Reasoning with Valid Factuality Control for Large Language Models
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 将置信度评估嵌入推理生成过程,动态控制事实正确性。
  • 实验验证在多个数据集上均实现有效事实覆盖率,优于事后修正方法。
  • 适合需要高可靠性推理的应用,如医疗、金融决策支持。

大语言模型在多步推理中形成隐式有向无环图,中间结论的正确性受其前序节点结构制约,使事实性不确定性具有结构性特征,而非简单累积误差。因此需在推理过程中进行不确定性量化。尽管置信区间预测(CP)可灵活设定事实性控制目标,但现有方法仅为事后处理,无法在生成中干预。为此,我们提出「推理时置信推理」(ITCR)框架,将CP直接融入推理图生成过程。ITCR学习一种结构级事实性不确定性函数,无需复杂假设即可聚合推理图中各结论的事实性信号。基于图级不确定性设计非符合度分数,并校准置信阈值以决定何时停止生成。理论证明该生成过程具有嵌套性,可保证事实性控制的有效覆盖。多数据集与覆盖目标下的实验证明了其有效性。下游任务中,推理时校准的推理图比事后修剪的图更准确。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Large language models (LLMs) increasingly perform multi-step reasoning, where intermediate claims form implicit directed acyclic graphs whose node correctness is structurally conditioned on their ancestors. This makes factuality uncertainty structural, rather than a trivial accumulation of node-wise errors, and necessitates inference-time uncertainty quantification over the reasoning structure. While conformal prediction (CP) offers flexible user-specified factuality control, existing work remains post-hoc and cannot intervene during generation. To fill the gap between CP's flexibility and its post-hoc limitation, we propose an \emph{Inference-Time Conformal Reasoning (ITCR)} framework that integrates CP directly into reasoning graph generation. ITCR learns a structure-level factuality uncertainty function that aggregates claim-level factuality signals over reasoning graphs without complex modeling assumptions. We then design the non-conformity score based on graph-level factuality uncertainty and calibrate the conformal threshold to decide when to stop generation. We theoretically show such generation is nested, yielding valid coverage guarantees for factuality control. Experiments over multiple datasets and coverage objectives demonstrate empirically valid coverage. In downstream reasoning tasks, inference-time calibrated graphs yield more accurate generation than post-hoc pruned graphs.

大模型推理置信度控制事实性保障

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