让大模型在不确定时主动放弃回答,确保答对率有数学保障。
Uncertainty-Aware Abstention in Large Language Models with Provable Alignment Guarantees

- 基于置信区间校准,将任意不确定度分数转为可控风险的答题规则。
- 在7个大模型上测试,既保证错误率低于设定阈值,又保持高答题率。
- 适合对可靠性要求高的问答系统,如医疗、金融等关键场景使用。
大型语言模型(LLMs)在问答(QA)系统中应用日益广泛,但可能生成幻觉或偏离事实的回答,且缺乏可靠的置信度估计。不确定性量化(UQ)为选择性回答提供了自然基础:仅在预测可信时作答,否则放弃。然而,现有LLM的不确定性评分多为启发式方法,仅凭阈值无法保证被接受答案的错误率具有统计保障。本文提出CIC,一种基于置信区间的校准框架,将任意不确定性评分转化为风险可控的选择性回答规则。给定一个独立校准集,CIC使用特定应用场景的对齐标准评估每个生成回答,并关联其不确定性得分与二元错误标签。对每个候选不确定性阈值,CIC估计接受条件下的错误率,并通过霍夫丁或克洛珀-皮尔森置信区间构造高概率上界。随后选择最大阈值,使得其上界低于用户指定的风险水平α,从而在有限样本下最大化答题率的同时满足可靠性约束。在交换性假设下,若所选阈值非空,则以至少1−δ的概率保证接受答案的错误率控制在α水平内。我们在七种大模型及多个不确定性估计器上,针对闭式和开式问答基准进行了评估。实验结果表明,CIC在保持强答题效率的同时,始终实现有效的风险控制,为可靠性敏感的问答工作流提供了实用且统计严谨的部署机制。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in question answering (QA) systems, yet they may generate hallucinated or misaligned responses without reliable confidence estimates. Uncertainty quantification (UQ) offers a natural basis for selective answering, where a system answers only when its prediction is deemed reliable and abstains otherwise. However, existing uncertainty scores for LLMs are often heuristic: a threshold chosen on such scores does not, by itself, provide statistical guarantees on the error rate among accepted answers. We propose CIC, a confidence-interval-based calibration framework that converts arbitrary uncertainty scores into risk-controlled selective answering rules. Given a held-out calibration set, CIC evaluates each generated response using an application-specific alignment criterion and associates it with an uncertainty score and a binary error label. For each candidate uncertainty threshold, CIC estimates the acceptance-conditioned error rate and constructs a high-probability upper confidence bound using either Hoeffding-style or Clopper-Pearson confidence intervals. It then selects the largest threshold whose upper bound is below a user-specified risk level $α$, thereby maximizing the answering rate subject to a finite-sample reliability constraint. Under exchangeability, CIC guarantees with probability at least $1-δ$ that the selected threshold, if non-null, controls the error rate among accepted answers at level $α$. We evaluate CIC on both closed-ended and open-ended QA benchmarks across seven LLMs and multiple uncertainty estimators. Experimental results show that CIC consistently achieves valid risk control while retaining strong answering efficiency, providing a practical and statistically grounded mechanism for deploying LLMs in reliability-sensitive QA workflows.
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