Can LLMs Assist Expert Elicitation for Probabilistic Causal Modeling?

Abstract

Objective: This study investigates the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) as an alternative to human expert elicitation for extracting structured causal knowledge and facilitating causal modeling in biometric and healthcare applications. Material and Methods: LLM-generated causal structures, specifically Bayesian networks (BNs), were benchmarked against traditional statistical methods (e.g., Bayesian Information Criterion) using healthcare datasets. Validation techniques included structural equation modeling (SEM) to verifying relationships, and measures such as entropy, predictive accuracy, and robustness to compare network structures. Results and Discussion: LLM-generated BNs demonstrated lower entropy than expert-elicited and statistically generated BNs, suggesting higher confidence and precision in predictions. However, limitations such as contextual constraints, hallucinated dependencies, and potential biases inherited from training data require further investigation. Conclusion: LLMs represent a novel frontier in expert elicitation for probabilistic causal modeling, promising to improve transparency and reduce uncertainty in the decision-making using such models.