Revisiting the Self-Consistency Challenges in Multi-Choice Question Formats for Large Language Model Evaluation
Wenjie Zhou, Qiang Wang, Mingzhou Xu, Ming Chen, Xiangyu Duan
Abstract
Multi-choice questions (MCQ) are a common method for assessing the world knowledge of large language models (LLMs), demonstrated by benchmarks such as MMLU and C-Eval. However, recent findings indicate that even top-tier LLMs, such as ChatGPT and GPT4, might display inconsistencies when faced with slightly varied inputs. This raises concerns about the credibility of MCQ-based evaluations. To address this issue, we introduced three knowledge-equivalent question variants: option position shuffle, option label replacement, and conversion to a True/False format. We rigorously tested a range of LLMs, varying in model size (from 6B to 70B) and types—pretrained language model (PLM), supervised fine-tuning (SFT), and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). Our findings from MMLU and C-Eval revealed that accuracy for individual questions lacks robustness, particularly in smaller models (<30B) and PLMs. Consequently, we advocate that consistent accuracy may serve as a more reliable metric for evaluating and ranking LLMs.- Anthology ID:
- 2024.lrec-main.1229
- Volume:
- Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)
- Month:
- May
- Year:
- 2024
- Address:
- Torino, Italia
- Editors:
- Nicoletta Calzolari, Min-Yen Kan, Veronique Hoste, Alessandro Lenci, Sakriani Sakti, Nianwen Xue
- Venues:
- LREC | COLING
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- ELRA and ICCL
- Note:
- Pages:
- 14103–14110
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1229
- DOI:
- Cite (ACL):
- Wenjie Zhou, Qiang Wang, Mingzhou Xu, Ming Chen, and Xiangyu Duan. 2024. Revisiting the Self-Consistency Challenges in Multi-Choice Question Formats for Large Language Model Evaluation. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 14103–14110, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
- Cite (Informal):
- Revisiting the Self-Consistency Challenges in Multi-Choice Question Formats for Large Language Model Evaluation (Zhou et al., LREC-COLING 2024)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/naacl24-info/2024.lrec-main.1229.pdf