Retrieving Diverse Perspectives on Complex and Contentious Questions

Основные понятия

Existing information retrieval systems mostly optimize for relevance to the question, ignoring diversity. This work proposes a benchmark and task to evaluate the ability of retrieval systems to surface diverse perspectives on complex and contentious questions.

Аннотация

The authors study the task of retrieving a set of documents that covers various perspectives on a complex and contentious question (e.g., "Will ChatGPT do more harm than good?"). They curate a Benchmark for Retrieval Diversity for Subjective questions (BERDS), where each example consists of a question and diverse perspectives associated with the question, sourced from survey questions and debate websites.

The authors evaluate the performance of different retrievers (BM25, DPR, CONTRIEVER) paired with various corpora (Wikipedia, web snapshot, and corpus constructed on the fly with retrieved pages from the search engine) on the BERDS dataset. They find that existing retrievers struggle to surface documents covering all perspectives, even when retrieving from the web.

To enhance the diversity of the retrieval results, the authors implement simple re-ranking and query expansion approaches. The query expansion approach, which first generates multiple perspectives using a large language model and then uses them to guide the retrieval, shows strong gains on the dense base retriever (CONTRIEVER).

The authors further provide rich analysis, studying the coverage of each corpus, retriever sycophancy, and whether retrievers prefer supporting or opposing perspectives to the input query.

Статистика

"Given a complex and contentious question (Xu et al., 2024), such as "Will ChatGPT do more harm than good?", a retrieval system should be able to surface diverse opinions in their top retrieval outputs."
"Surfacing diverse documents can be useful to the users directly, but also can be improve retrieval-augmented language models (RALMs)."
"Prompting large language models (LLMs) to generate an answer that encompasses diverse perspectives on its own is challenging (Sorensen et al., 2024; Hayati et al., 2023a), and retrieval-augmentation (Divekar and Durrett, 2024) can facilitate LLMs to generate more comprehensive answers that represent diverse perspectives."

Цитаты

"Existing information retrieval (IR) tasks and systems mostly optimize for relevance to the question, ignoring diversity."
"Surfacing diverse documents can be useful to the users directly, but also can be improve retrieval-augmented language models (RALMs)."
"Prompting large language models (LLMs) to generate an answer that encompasses diverse perspectives on its own is challenging (Sorensen et al., 2024; Hayati et al., 2023a), and retrieval-augmentation (Divekar and Durrett, 2024) can facilitate LLMs to generate more comprehensive answers that represent diverse perspectives."

Ключевые выводы из

Open-World Evaluation for Retrieving Diverse Perspectives

by Hung-Ting Ch... в arxiv.org 09-27-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.18110.pdf

Дополнительные вопросы

How can the proposed benchmark and task be extended to handle more fine-grained perspectives beyond the binary setting?

To extend the proposed benchmark and task for retrieving diverse perspectives beyond the binary setting, several strategies can be implemented. First, the dataset can be enriched by incorporating questions that naturally elicit multiple viewpoints, rather than just two opposing perspectives. This could involve collecting data from a wider range of sources, such as social media discussions, academic articles, and expert opinions, which often present nuanced views on complex issues.
Second, the perspective generation process can be enhanced by utilizing advanced language models capable of producing multi-faceted viewpoints. Instead of generating just one supporting and one opposing perspective, models like GPT-4 can be prompted to generate a spectrum of perspectives that reflect varying degrees of agreement or disagreement with the question. This would allow for a richer set of perspectives, capturing subtleties in opinion that are often present in real-world discussions.
Additionally, the evaluation metrics can be adapted to account for the diversity of perspectives. Instead of simply measuring whether all perspectives are covered, metrics could be developed to assess the richness and variety of viewpoints represented in the retrieved documents. For instance, metrics could evaluate the thematic diversity of perspectives or the degree of overlap between them, providing a more comprehensive assessment of retrieval effectiveness.
Finally, incorporating user feedback mechanisms could help refine the perspectives over time, allowing the benchmark to evolve and adapt to emerging topics and societal changes, thus ensuring its relevance and applicability across various domains.

What are the potential biases and limitations of the language model used as the automatic evaluator for perspective detection, and how can they be mitigated?

The use of a language model as an automatic evaluator for perspective detection introduces several potential biases and limitations. One significant concern is the inherent bias present in the training data of the language model. If the model has been trained on data that predominantly reflects certain viewpoints or cultural perspectives, it may favor those perspectives in its evaluations, leading to skewed results. This could result in underrepresentation of minority viewpoints or perspectives that are less commonly discussed.
Another limitation is the model's inability to fully understand the context or nuances of certain perspectives. Language models may struggle with detecting sarcasm, irony, or complex emotional tones, which can lead to misclassification of documents as containing or not containing a perspective.
To mitigate these biases and limitations, several approaches can be employed. First, it is crucial to diversify the training data used for the language model, ensuring it includes a wide range of perspectives from various cultural, social, and political backgrounds. This can help reduce bias and improve the model's ability to recognize diverse viewpoints.
Second, implementing a multi-stage evaluation process that combines the language model's assessments with human evaluations can enhance accuracy. By incorporating human judgment, particularly from individuals with expertise in the subject matter, the evaluation process can be refined to better capture the complexity of perspectives.
Lastly, continuous monitoring and updating of the language model can help address biases over time. Regularly retraining the model with new data and incorporating feedback from users can ensure that it remains relevant and capable of accurately detecting a broad spectrum of perspectives.

How can the insights from this work on diverse perspective retrieval be applied to other domains beyond debate and opinion survey questions, such as healthcare or scientific literature?

The insights gained from the study of diverse perspective retrieval can be effectively applied to various domains, including healthcare and scientific literature. In healthcare, for instance, the retrieval of diverse perspectives can facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of patient experiences, treatment options, and public health issues. By retrieving documents that present a range of viewpoints on topics such as vaccination, mental health treatment, or chronic illness management, healthcare professionals can better understand the complexities of patient opinions and the factors influencing their decisions.
In scientific literature, the ability to retrieve diverse perspectives can enhance the evaluation of research findings and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. For example, when addressing contentious issues like climate change or genetic engineering, retrieving documents that represent differing scientific opinions can provide a more balanced view of the evidence and encourage critical discussions among researchers. This can lead to more robust conclusions and innovative solutions to complex problems.
Moreover, the methodologies developed for evaluating retrieval diversity can be adapted to assess the quality and comprehensiveness of information in these domains. By applying metrics that measure the coverage of diverse perspectives, stakeholders can ensure that they are considering a wide range of evidence and viewpoints, ultimately leading to more informed decision-making.
Additionally, the framework for perspective detection can be utilized in educational settings, where students can be encouraged to explore multiple viewpoints on controversial topics, fostering critical thinking and open-mindedness. By integrating diverse perspective retrieval into curricula, educators can prepare students to engage thoughtfully with complex issues in their future careers.