Arbiters of Ambivalence: Challenges of using LLMs in No-Consensus tasks

The increasing use of LLMs as substitutes for humans in "aligning" LLMs has raised questions about their ability to replicate human judgments and preferences, especially in ambivalent scenarios where humans disagree.This study examines the biases and limitations of LLMs in three roles: answer generator, judge, and debater.These roles loosely correspond to previously described alignment frameworks: preference alignment (judge) and scalable oversight (debater), with the answer generator reflecting the typical setting with user interactions.We develop a "no-consensus" benchmark by curating examples that encompass a variety of a priori ambivalent scenarios, each presenting two possible stances.Our results show that while LLMs can provide nuanced assessments when generating open-ended answers, they tend to take a stance on no-consensus topics when employed as judges or debaters.These findings underscore the necessity for more sophisticated methods for aligning LLMs without human oversight, highlighting that LLMs cannot fully capture human disagreement even on topics where humans themselves are divided.B Verdict: B Based on the evidence and arguments presented, Debater B's position is more compelling and well-supported.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-01-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.findings-acl.243
Primary Topic
Scientific Computing and Data Management
Type
article
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article

Arbiters of Ambivalence: Challenges of using LLMs in No-Consensus tasks

Sebastian Ruder, Megan Ung, Adina Williams, Bhaktipriya Radharapu et al.
Scientific Computing and Data Management
article

Arbiters of Ambivalence: Challenges of using LLMs in No-Consensus tasks

Sebastian Ruder, Megan Ung, Adina Williams, Bhaktipriya Radharapu, Manon Revel
article en

Abstract

The increasing use of LLMs as substitutes for humans in "aligning" LLMs has raised questions about their ability to replicate human judgments and preferences, especially in ambivalent scenarios where humans disagree.This study examines the biases and limitations of LLMs in three roles: answer generator, judge, and debater.These roles loosely correspond to previously described alignment frameworks: preference alignment (judge) and scalable oversight (debater), with the answer generator reflecting the typical setting with user interactions.We develop a "no-consensus" benchmark by curating examples that encompass a variety of a priori ambivalent scenarios, each presenting two possible stances.Our results show that while LLMs can provide nuanced assessments when generating open-ended answers, they tend to take a stance on no-consensus topics when employed as judges or debaters.These findings underscore the necessity for more sophisticated methods for aligning LLMs without human oversight, highlighting that LLMs cannot fully capture human disagreement even on topics where humans themselves are divided.B Verdict: B Based on the evidence and arguments presented, Debater B's position is more compelling and well-supported.

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Arbiters of Ambivalence: Challenges of using LLMs in No-Consensus tasks — Sebastian Ruder, Megan Ung, et al. · (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS