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4arXiv cs.CL (Computation and Language)·15d ago

FOXGLOVE dataset enables systematic comparison of LLM vs. expert writing feedback on argumentative essays

Researchers introduce FOXGLOVE, a dataset of 2,340 feedback comments on 69 twelfth-grade argumentative essays, comprising 696 comments from trained writing instructors and 1,644 from four frontier LLMs under a shared protocol. The study finds that while instructors and LLMs distribute feedback similarly across goals and essay positions, they diverge on which specific sentences to address. LLM feedback receives higher quality ratings from instructors on most dimensions, but the advantage appears largely attributable to comment length rather than substantive quality. The dataset enables systematic evaluation of human-LLM alignment in educational feedback generation.

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6arXiv · cs.AI·10d ago·source ↗

Paper challenges LLM expert-level claims by measuring variance and error magnitude in code-based data analysis tasks

A new arXiv paper argues that standard LLM benchmarks overstate model capabilities by focusing on average performance on training-data-adjacent tasks while ignoring response variance and error magnitude. The authors introduce a novel benchmark requiring frontier LLMs to write code for data analysis tasks, comparing results against human expert submissions. Human experts outperformed the frontier LLM on average across multiple metrics and showed lower performance variability. The findings challenge the prevailing narrative that LLMs perform at human-expert level on knowledge economy tasks.

5arXiv · cs.CL·22d ago·source ↗

LLUMI: Fine-Tuning Open-Source LLMs for Mental Health Writing Assistance Using Reddit Community Feedback

LLUMI is a two-component system (a generation model and an improvement model) designed to provide mental health writing assistance using smaller open-source LLMs hosted in privacy-preserving, on-premise environments. The system leverages Reddit community endorsement signals (upvotes/downvotes) to construct preference pairs for SFT and DPO training, then further aligns outputs via human evaluation across readability, empathy, connection, actionability, and safety dimensions. Results show LLUMI achieves performance comparable to proprietary GPT-based models on linguistic and human evaluations, suggesting community-derived preference signals can substitute for expensive expert labeling in sensitive domains.

5arXiv · cs.CL·47h ago·source ↗

IFLLM dataset uses mouse and eye-tracking signals to improve LLM alignment via implicit feedback

Researchers introduce IFLLM, a dataset of 1,336 multi-turn interactions from 59 Mechanical Turk workers capturing mouse trajectories and webcam-derived eye gaze to study implicit user feedback for LLM alignment. A reward model trained on this implicit feedback improves text-based reward model accuracy from 55% to 64% and nearly triples relative response quality improvements when combined with DPO across eight LLMs. The work addresses the scarcity and cost of explicit preference annotations by mining behavioral signals already present in user interactions.

4arXiv · cs.CL·12d ago·source ↗

DEFINED: Data-efficient framework for fine-grained creativity assessment in debate using LLMs

DEFINED is a computational framework for automated creativity assessment in debate scenarios, operationalizing creativity through an eight-dimensional hierarchical metric system implemented via a pretrained autoregressive language model with a hierarchical scoring head. The system addresses data scarcity through constrained data augmentation and mixed-granularity training from limited expert-annotated data. It outperforms prompt-based LLM evaluators and existing debate scoring methods on authentic competition data. The work is relevant to AI evaluation methodology and the broader question of whether LLMs can reliably assess complex human cognitive outputs.

5Hacker News·23d ago·source ↗

Disagreement among frontier LLMs on real-world fact-checks

A study examines how frontier large language models diverge in their responses to real-world fact-checking queries, surfacing systematic disagreements across models on factual claims. The work appears to benchmark multiple leading models against a set of verifiable facts, revealing inconsistencies that have implications for reliability and deployment. With 475 HN points and 333 comments, the piece has generated substantial community discussion. The findings are relevant to evaluation methodology, model calibration, and trust in AI-generated factual content.

5arXiv · cs.CL·47h ago·source ↗

Study finds no detectable self-preference bias when LLMs revise their own instruction-following drafts

A new arXiv preprint tests whether LLMs resist valid corrections to their own writing by using IFEval's deterministic verifier to establish ground-truth correctness, bypassing model-as-judge subjectivity. Across four mid-tier model families and 85 author-versus-fresh comparisons, no statistically significant self-preference bias was detected (gap -5.1 pp, 95% CI [-12.9, +2.7]). A qualitative finding shows that when authors do reject verified-good fixes, 97% of stated reasons are substantive flaw-catching rather than preference. The result challenges the assumption that documented self-preference in judging tasks extends to self-revision contexts.

4arXiv · cs.CL·47h ago·source ↗

Mechanistic analysis of how LLMs encode essay quality in internal representations

Researchers systematically probe the hidden representations of eight LLMs across three essay datasets (ASAP++, CSEE, ENEM) to understand how automated essay scoring (AES) works internally. Using linear probing, dimensionality reduction, and neuron-level analysis, they find essay quality is encoded in a linearly accessible form that emerges progressively across layers and partially transfers across prompts. Individual 'essay scoring neurons' are identified whose activations correlate with scores and respond to targeted interventions, with longer essays relying more on deeper layers. The work contributes to mechanistic interpretability of LLM-based scoring systems.

5arXiv · cs.CL·1mo ago·source ↗

Text Analytics Evaluation Framework: Benchmarking LLMs on Social Media NLP Tasks

Researchers introduce a 470-question evaluation framework to assess LLM performance on aggregated social media text, applied to Twitter datasets across sentiment analysis, hate speech detection, and emotion recognition. Results show performance degrades substantially as input scale exceeds 500 instances, particularly for open-weights models on numerical tasks. Multi-label and target-dependent scenarios also show notable performance drops, and task complexity progressively erodes accuracy from basic semantic identification to comparison and counting operations. The findings point to architectural bottlenecks in current LLMs for rigorous quantitative analysis over large text collections.