Transforming unstructured text into structured and meaningful forms, organized by useful category labels, is a fundamental step in text mining for downstream analysis and application. However, most existing methods for producing label taxonomies and building text-based label classifiers still rely heavily on domain expertise and manual curation, making the process expensive and time-consuming. This is particularly challenging when the label space is under-specified and large-scale data annotations are unavailable. In this paper, we address these challenges with Large Language Models (LLMs), whose prompt-based interface facilitates the induction and use of large-scale pseudo labels. We propose TnT-LLM, a two-phase framework that employs LLMs to automate the process of end-to-end label generation and assignment with minimal human effort for any given use-case. In the first phase, we introduce a zero-shot, multi-stage reasoning approach which enables LLMs to produce and refine a label taxonomy iteratively. In the second phase, LLMs are used as data labelers that yield training samples so that lightweight supervised classifiers can be reliably built, deployed, and served at scale. We apply TnT-LLM to the analysis of user intent and conversational domain for Bing Copilot (formerly Bing Chat), an open-domain chat-based search engine. Extensive experiments using both human and automatic evaluation metrics demonstrate that TnT-LLM generates more accurate and relevant label taxonomies when compared against state-of-the-art baselines, and achieves a favorable balance between accuracy and efficiency for classification at scale. We also share our practical experiences and insights on the challenges and opportunities of using LLMs for large-scale text mining in real-world applications.

In recent studies, the extensive utilization of large language models has underscored the importance of robust evaluation methodologies for assessing text generation quality and relevance to specific tasks. This has revealed a prevalent issue known as hallucination, an emergent condition in the model where generated text lacks faithfulness to the source and deviates from the evaluation criteria. In this study, we formally define hallucination and propose a framework for its quantitative detection in a zero-shot setting, leveraging our definition and the assumption that model outputs entail task and sample specific inputs. In detecting hallucinations, our solution achieves an accuracy of 0.78 in a model-aware setting and 0.61 in a model-agnostic setting. Notably, our solution maintains computational efficiency, requiring far less computational resources than other SOTA approaches, aligning with the trend towards lightweight and compressed models.

Feedback is a critical aspect of improvement. Unfortunately, when there is a lot of feedback from multiple sources, it can be difficult to distill the information into actionable insights. Consider student evaluations of teaching (SETs), which are important sources of feedback for educators. They can give instructors insights into what worked during a semester. A collection of SETs can also be useful to administrators as signals for courses or entire programs. However, on a large scale as in high-enrollment courses or administrative records over several years, the volume of SETs can render them difficult to analyze. In this paper, we discuss a novel method for analyzing SETs using natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs). We demonstrate the method by applying it to a corpus of 5,000 SETs from a large public university. We show that the method can be used to extract, embed, cluster, and summarize the SETs to identify the themes they express. More generally, this work illustrates how to use the combination of NLP techniques and LLMs to generate a codebook for SETs. We conclude by discussing the implications of this method for analyzing SETs and other types of student writing in teaching and research settings.

The existing methods for evaluating the inference abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) have been results-centric, making it difficult to assess the inference process. We introduce a new approach using the Abstract and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) dataset to evaluate the inference and contextual understanding abilities of large language models in a process-centric manner. ARC demands rigorous logical structures for problem-solving, making it a benchmark that facilitates the comparison of model inference abilities with humans. Experimental results confirm that while large language models possess weak inference abilities, they still lag in terms of logical coherence, compositionality, and productivity. Our experiments highlight the reasoning capabilities of LLMs, proposing development paths for achieving human-level reasoning.

The advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) has led to significant enhancements in the performance of chatbot systems. Many researchers have dedicated their efforts to the development of bringing characteristics to chatbots. While there have been commercial products for developing role-driven chatbots using LLMs, it is worth noting that academic research in this area remains relatively scarce. Our research focuses on investigating the performance of LLMs in constructing Characteristic AI Agents by simulating real-life individuals across different settings. Current investigations have primarily focused on act on roles with simple profiles. In response to this research gap, we create a benchmark for the characteristic AI agents task, including dataset, techniques, and evaluation metrics. A dataset called ``Character100'' is built for this benchmark, comprising the most-visited people on Wikipedia for language models to role-play. With the constructed dataset, we conduct comprehensive assessment of LLMs across various settings. In addition, we devise a set of automatic metrics for quantitative performance evaluation. The experimental results underscore the potential directions for further improvement in the capabilities of LLMs in constructing characteristic AI agents. The benchmark is available at https://github.com/nuaa-nlp/Character100.

In the domain of chip design, Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) play a pivotal role. However, due to the complex syntax of HDLs and the limited availability of online resources, debugging HDL codes remains a difficult and time-intensive task, even for seasoned engineers. Consequently, there is a pressing need to develop automated HDL code debugging models, which can alleviate the burden on hardware engineers. Despite the strong capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in generating, completing, and debugging software code, their utilization in the specialized field of HDL debugging has been limited and, to date, has not yielded satisfactory results. In this paper, we propose an LLM-assisted HDL debugging framework, namely HDLdebugger, which consists of HDL debugging data generation via a reverse engineering approach, a search engine for retrieval-augmented generation, and a retrieval-augmented LLM fine-tuning approach. Through the integration of these components, HDLdebugger can automate and streamline HDL debugging for chip design. Our comprehensive experiments, conducted on an HDL code dataset sourced from Huawei, reveal that HDLdebugger outperforms 13 cutting-edge LLM baselines, displaying exceptional effectiveness in HDL code debugging.

The progress in natural language processing (NLP) using large language models (LLMs) has greatly improved patient information extraction from clinical narratives. However, most methods based on the fine-tuning strategy have limited transfer learning ability for cross-domain applications. This study proposed a novel approach that employs a soft prompt-based learning architecture, which introduces trainable prompts to guide LLMs toward desired outputs. We examined two types of LLM architectures, including encoder-only GatorTron and decoder-only GatorTronGPT, and evaluated their performance for the extraction of social determinants of health (SDoH) using a cross-institution dataset from the 2022 n2c2 challenge and a cross-disease dataset from the University of Florida (UF) Health. The results show that decoder-only LLMs with prompt tuning achieved better performance in cross-domain applications. GatorTronGPT achieved the best F1 scores for both datasets, outperforming traditional fine-tuned GatorTron by 8.9% and 21.8% in a cross-institution setting, and 5.5% and 14.5% in a cross-disease setting.

In the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence (AI), the application of large language models (LLMs) in agriculture, particularly in pest management, remains nascent. We aimed to prove the feasibility by evaluating the content of the pest management advice generated by LLMs, including the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) series from OpenAI and the FLAN series from Google. Considering the context-specific properties of agricultural advice, automatically measuring or quantifying the quality of text generated by LLMs becomes a significant challenge. We proposed an innovative approach, using GPT-4 as an evaluator, to score the generated content on Coherence, Logical Consistency, Fluency, Relevance, Comprehensibility, and Exhaustiveness. Additionally, we integrated an expert system based on crop threshold data as a baseline to obtain scores for Factual Accuracy on whether pests found in crop fields should take management action. Each model's score was weighted by percentage to obtain a final score. The results showed that GPT-3.4 and GPT-4 outperform the FLAN models in most evaluation categories. Furthermore, the use of instruction-based prompting containing domain-specific knowledge proved the feasibility of LLMs as an effective tool in agriculture, with an accuracy rate of 72%, demonstrating LLMs' effectiveness in providing pest management suggestions.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have garnered significant attention for their ability to understand text and images, generate human-like text, and perform complex reasoning tasks. However, their ability to generalize this advanced reasoning with a combination of natural language text for decision-making in dynamic situations requires further exploration. In this study, we investigate how well LLMs can adapt and apply a combination of arithmetic and common-sense reasoning, particularly in autonomous driving scenarios. We hypothesize that LLMs hybrid reasoning abilities can improve autonomous driving by enabling them to analyze detected object and sensor data, understand driving regulations and physical laws, and offer additional context. This addresses complex scenarios, like decisions in low visibility (due to weather conditions), where traditional methods might fall short. We evaluated Large Language Models (LLMs) based on accuracy by comparing their answers with human-generated ground truth inside CARLA. The results showed that when a combination of images (detected objects) and sensor data is fed into the LLM, it can offer precise information for brake and throttle control in autonomous vehicles across various weather conditions. This formulation and answers can assist in decision-making for auto-pilot systems.

When writing and talking, people sometimes pause to think. Although reasoning-focused works have often framed reasoning as a method of answering questions or completing agentic tasks, reasoning is implicit in almost all written text. For example, this applies to the steps not stated between the lines of a proof or to the theory of mind underlying a conversation. In the Self-Taught Reasoner (STaR, Zelikman et al. 2022), useful thinking is learned by inferring rationales from few-shot examples in question-answering and learning from those that lead to a correct answer. This is a highly constrained setting -- ideally, a language model could instead learn to infer unstated rationales in arbitrary text. We present Quiet-STaR, a generalization of STaR in which LMs learn to generate rationales at each token to explain future text, improving their predictions. We address key challenges, including 1) the computational cost of generating continuations, 2) the fact that the LM does not initially know how to generate or use internal thoughts, and 3) the need to predict beyond individual next tokens. To resolve these, we propose a tokenwise parallel sampling algorithm, using learnable tokens indicating a thought's start and end, and an extended teacher-forcing technique. Encouragingly, generated rationales disproportionately help model difficult-to-predict tokens and improve the LM's ability to directly answer difficult questions. In particular, after continued pretraining of an LM on a corpus of internet text with Quiet-STaR, we find zero-shot improvements on GSM8K (5.9%$\rightarrow$10.9%) and CommonsenseQA (36.3%$\rightarrow$47.2%) and observe a perplexity improvement of difficult tokens in natural text. Crucially, these improvements require no fine-tuning on these tasks. Quiet-STaR marks a step towards LMs that can learn to reason in a more general and scalable way.