通过等变性检测让大模型在证据不足时主动放弃回答,提升推理可靠性。
Twin Worlds: Equivariance-Based Abstention for Evidence-Grounded Reasoning

- 构建多个语义结构不变的替换世界,检验答案是否随实体变化而合理迁移。
- 在四个基准上均显著提升识别非可靠推理的能力,优于传统不确定性和充分性方法。
- 适合需要高可信度推理的应用,如医疗、法律问答等关键领域。
知识密集型推理要求大语言模型将答案基于提供的证据。当证据不足时,模型应主动放弃而非自信生成无依据的回答。现有方法依赖不确定性估计或证据充分性检查,但未能验证生成过程是否真正基于证据——上下文中的实体提及会激活模型内部记忆关联,导致生成看似合理但无证据支持的答案。为此,本文提出双世界(Twin Worlds, TW)框架:不同于保持输出不变的不变性,等变性要求在实体替换时输出相应变化。一个真正基于证据的模型,应在关系保持不变的情况下,使答案随实体变化而一致迁移。TW通过类型化替换原输入构造多个世界,保留关系结构但降低参数先验,并利用等变性违反作为放弃回答的信号。在四个基准和三种模型架构上,TW能有效识别非可靠接地的答案,性能超越基于不确定性和充分性的基线方法。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Knowledge-intensive reasoning requires Large Language Models (LLMs) to ground answers in provided evidence. When evidence is insufficient, it is desirable that models abstain rather than confidently generating unsupported answers. Existing abstention methods rely on uncertainty estimation or evidence sufficiency checks, but neither tests whether the reasoning process for generation, driven by the interaction of provided evidence and the model's internal memory parameters, is actually grounded in the evidence. A key contributing factor is that entity mentions in context activate memorised associations, causing models to generate plausible responses ungrounded in evidence. We propose Twin Worlds (TW), a framework for improving reliability in knowledge-intensive reasoning through equivariance-based abstention: unlike invariance, which requires outputs to remain unchanged, equivariance requires outputs to transform correspondingly under entity substitutions. A model grounded in the evidence should produce answers that shift consistently when entities are substituted while their relations are preserved. TW constructs multiple worlds via typed substitutions of the original input that preserve relational structure while reducing parametric priors, and uses equivariance violations as an abstention signal. Across four benchmarks and three model backbones, TW identifies when answers are not reliably grounded in the provided evidence and outperforms uncertainty- and sufficiency-based baselines.
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