Can LLMs assist with Ambiguity? A Quantitative Evaluation of various Large Language Models on Word Sense Disambiguation

Deshan Koshala Sumanathilaka, Nicholas Micallef, Julian Hough


Abstract
Ambiguous words are often found within modern digital communications. Lexical ambiguity challenges traditional Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) methods, due to limited data. Consequently, the efficiency of translation, information retrieval, and question-answering systems is hindered by these limitations. This study investigates the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to improve WSD using a novel approach combining a systematic prompt augmentation mechanism with a knowledge base (KB) consisting of different sense interpretations. The proposed method incorporates a human-in-loop approach for prompt augmentation where prompt is supported by Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging, synonyms of ambiguous words, aspect-based sense filtering and few-shot prompting to guide the LLM. By utilizing a few-shot Chain of Thought (COT) prompting-based approach, this work demonstrates a substantial improvement in performance. The evaluation was conducted using FEWS test data and sense tags. This research advances accurate word interpretation in social media and digital communication.
Anthology ID:
2024.nlpaics-1.12
Volume:
Proceedings of the First International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security
Month:
July
Year:
2024
Address:
Lancaster, UK
Editors:
Ruslan Mitkov, Saad Ezzini, Tharindu Ranasinghe, Ignatius Ezeani, Nouran Khallaf, Cengiz Acarturk, Matthew Bradbury, Mo El-Haj, Paul Rayson
Venue:
NLPAICS
SIG:
Publisher:
International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security
Note:
Pages:
97–108
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2024.nlpaics-1.12/
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Cite (ACL):
Deshan Koshala Sumanathilaka, Nicholas Micallef, and Julian Hough. 2024. Can LLMs assist with Ambiguity? A Quantitative Evaluation of various Large Language Models on Word Sense Disambiguation. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security, pages 97–108, Lancaster, UK. International Conference on Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security.
Cite (Informal):
Can LLMs assist with Ambiguity? A Quantitative Evaluation of various Large Language Models on Word Sense Disambiguation (Sumanathilaka et al., NLPAICS 2024)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2024.nlpaics-1.12.pdf