Causal-LLM: A Unified One-Shot Framework for Prompt- and Data-Driven Causal Graph Discovery

Amartya Roy, N Devharish, Shreya Ganguly, Kripabandhu Ghosh


Abstract
Current causal discovery methods using Large Language Models (LLMs) often rely on pairwise or iterative strategies, which fail to capture global dependencies, amplify local biases, and reduce overall accuracy. This work introduces a unified framework for one-step full causal graph discovery through: (1) Prompt-based discovery with in-context learning when node metadata is available, and (2) Causal_llm, a data-driven method for settings without metadata. Empirical results demonstrate that the prompt-based approach outperforms state-of-the-art models (GranDAG, GES, ICA-LiNGAM) by approximately 40% in edge accuracy on datasets like Asia and Sachs, while maintaining strong performance on more complex graphs (ALARM, HEPAR2). Causal_llm consistently excels across all benchmarks, achieving 50% faster inference than reinforcement learning-based methods and improving precision by 25% in fairness-sensitive domains such as legal decision-making. We also introduce two domain-specific DAGs—one for bias propagation and another for legal reasoning under the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita—demonstrating LLMs’ capability for systemic, real-world causal discovery.
Anthology ID:
2025.findings-emnlp.439
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025
Month:
November
Year:
2025
Address:
Suzhou, China
Editors:
Christos Christodoulopoulos, Tanmoy Chakraborty, Carolyn Rose, Violet Peng
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
8259–8279
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/author-page-yu-wang-polytechnic/2025.findings-emnlp.439/
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2025.findings-emnlp.439
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Amartya Roy, N Devharish, Shreya Ganguly, and Kripabandhu Ghosh. 2025. Causal-LLM: A Unified One-Shot Framework for Prompt- and Data-Driven Causal Graph Discovery. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025, pages 8259–8279, Suzhou, China. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Causal-LLM: A Unified One-Shot Framework for Prompt- and Data-Driven Causal Graph Discovery (Roy et al., Findings 2025)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/author-page-yu-wang-polytechnic/2025.findings-emnlp.439.pdf
Checklist:
 2025.findings-emnlp.439.checklist.pdf