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arXiv · 2404.04298

SELF-[IN]CORRECT: LLMs Struggle with Discriminating Self-Generated Responses

Dongwei Jiang·Jingyu Zhang·Orion Weller·Nathaniel Weir·Benjamin Van Durme·Daniel Khashabi
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Abstract

Can LLMs consistently improve their previous outputs for better results? For this to be true, LLMs would need to be better at discriminating among previously-generated alternatives, than generating initial responses. We explore the validity of this hypothesis in practice. We first formulate a unified framework that allows us to compare the generative and discriminative capability of any model on any task. In our resulting experimental analysis of several open-source and industrial LLMs, we observe that models are not reliably better at discriminating among previously-generated alternatives than generating initial responses. This finding challenges the notion that LLMs may be able to enhance their performance only through their own judgment.

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Dongwei Jiang, Jingyu Zhang, Orion Weller, Nathaniel Weir, Benjamin Van Durme, Daniel Khashabi. 2024-04-04. SELF-[IN]CORRECT: LLMs Struggle with Discriminating Self-Generated Responses. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04298

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