Probabilistic medical predictions of large language models

IF 12.4 1区 医学 Q1 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES
Bowen Gu, Rishi J. Desai, Kueiyu Joshua Lin, Jie Yang
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Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in clinical applications through prompt engineering, allowing flexible clinical predictions. However, they struggle to produce reliable prediction probabilities, which are crucial for transparency and decision-making. While explicit prompts can lead LLMs to generate probability estimates, their numerical reasoning limitations raise concerns about reliability. We compared explicit probabilities from text generation to implicit probabilities derived from the likelihood of predicting the correct label token. Across six advanced open-source LLMs and five medical datasets, explicit probabilities consistently underperformed implicit probabilities in discrimination, precision, and recall. This discrepancy is more pronounced with smaller LLMs and imbalanced datasets, highlighting the need for cautious interpretation, improved probability estimation methods, and further research for clinical use of LLMs.

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来源期刊
CiteScore
25.10
自引率
3.30%
发文量
170
审稿时长
15 weeks
期刊介绍: npj Digital Medicine is an online open-access journal that focuses on publishing peer-reviewed research in the field of digital medicine. The journal covers various aspects of digital medicine, including the application and implementation of digital and mobile technologies in clinical settings, virtual healthcare, and the use of artificial intelligence and informatics. The primary goal of the journal is to support innovation and the advancement of healthcare through the integration of new digital and mobile technologies. When determining if a manuscript is suitable for publication, the journal considers four important criteria: novelty, clinical relevance, scientific rigor, and digital innovation.
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