Performance and Reproducibility of Large Language Models in Named Entity Recognition: Considerations for the Use in Controlled Environments

We demonstrated that zero-shot GPT 4 performance is comparable with a fine-tuned T5, and Zephyr performed better than zero-shot GPT 3.5, but the recognition of product combinations such as product event combination was significantly better by using a fine-tuned T5. Although Open AI launched recently GPT versions to improve the generation of consistent output, both GPT variants failed to demonstrate reproducible results. The lack of reproducibility together with limitations of external hosted systems to keep validated systems in a state of control may affect the use of closed and proprietary models in regulated environments. However, due to the good NER performance, we recommend using GPT for creating annotation proposals for training data as a basis for fine-tuning.