A Survey on Uncertainty Quantification of Large Language Models: Taxonomy, Open Research Challenges, and Future Directions

Abstract

The remarkable performance of large language models (LLMs) in content generation, coding, and common-sense reasoning has spurred widespread integration into many facets of society. However, integration of LLMs raises valid questions on their reliability and trustworthiness, given their propensity to generate hallucinations: plausible, factually-incorrect responses, which are expressed with striking confidence. Previous work has shown that hallucinations and other non-factual responses generated by LLMs can be detected by examining the uncertainty of the LLM in its response to the pertinent prompt, driving significant research efforts devoted to quantifying the uncertainty of LLMs. This survey seeks to provide an extensive review of existing uncertainty quantification methods for LLMs, identifying their salient features, along with their strengths and weaknesses. We present existing methods within a relevant taxonomy, unifying ostensibly disparate methods to aid understanding of the state-of-the-art. Furthermore, we highlight applications of uncertainty quantification methods for LLMs, spanning chatbot and textual applications to embodied artificial intelligence applications in robotics. We conclude with open research challenges in the uncertainty quantification of LLMs, seeking to motivate future research.