Redesigning Information Markets in the Era of Language Models
Authors: Martin Weiss
Nasim Rahaman
Manuel Wuthrich
Yoshua Bengio
Li Erran Li
Bernhard Schölkopf
Christopher Pal
Venue: COLM (2024)
Keywords: Language Model Agents, Information Economics
TL;DR: This work proposes an information market design using language models to balance buyer inspection and seller protection.

Abstract: Information markets face many challenges leading to instability, inefficiency, and failure, ultimately reducing incentives for the creation and distribution of high-quality information. A long-standing issue for information markets is the Buyer's Inspection Paradox: buyers need to inspect information to assess its value, while sellers must limit inspection to prevent unauthorized use or theft. This paradox results from the information asymmetry present in the market, where sellers know more about the quality of their goods than buyers. This work proposes an information market design that leverages language models to mitigate the Buyer's Inspection Paradox by enabling inspection, comparison, and purchase of information, while algorithmically preventing expropriation. Our experiments (a) show methods that improve the economic rationality of language models, (b) investigate how language model behaviour changes with the price of goods, and (c) evaluate the simulated cost-efficiency of the proposed market under various conditions.

Published as a conference paper at COLM 2024
Redesigning Information Markets in the Era of Language Models
Martin Weiss *1,2* Nasim Rahaman 331 Manuel Würthrich
Yoshua Bengio Li Erran Lit? Bernhard Schölkopf 833 Chris Pa1
*, Equal contribution, random order.
Abstract
Information markets face many challenges leading to instability, ineffi- ciency, and failure, ultimately reducing incentives for the creation and dis- tribution of high-quality information. A long-standing issue for informa- tion markets is the Buyer's Inspection Paradox: buyers need to inspect information assess its value, while sellers must limit inspection to pre- vent unauthorized use or theft. This paradox results from the informa- the market, where sellers know more about the quality of their goods than buyers. This work proposes an informa- tion market design that leverages language models to mitigate the Buyer's ss Inspection Paraaox by enabling inspection, comparison, and purchase of information, while algorithmically preventing expropriation. Our exper- iments (a) show methods that improve the economic rationality of lan- guage models, (b) investigate how language model behaviour changes with the price of goods, and (c) evaluate the simulated cost-efficiency of the proposed market under various conditions.
tion asymmetry present
1 Introduction
Information economics is the study of how systems of information affect economic deci- sions and outcomes. core challenge in designing mechanisms for information markets stems from the fact that information is often expensive to produce but cheap to reproduce (Samuelson & Nordhaus 2009). One common mechanism used by information vendors to monetize barriers to access (e.g., paywalls), trading reach for profit. Viewed through the lens of Information Foraging Theory (Pirolli & Card 1999), such mechanisms block the mechanisms that humans use search for and find information.
In the shadow of rising barriers to access information, it is natural to seek alternatives, including large language model (LLM) powered tools. LLMs can help users navigate the world of information, providing them with both high-level maps and low-level details as needed, while tailoring responses based on past inquiries and level of expertise. However,
LLMs are also trained on massive datasets compiled from many sources (OpenAl 2023
Touvron et al. 2023: Gao et al. 2021 and can internalize and reproduce proprietary infor- mation. This has understandably raised concerns about the unauthorized dissemination of copyrighted content (Alter & Harris 2023). In response, content providers are deploying new legal and technical barriers, further exacerbating the content discovery problem for information consumers.
In this work, we aim to design new marketplace for information that reduces information asymmetry by addressing a key challenge in information markets - the buyers' inspection paradox (Arrow] 1972 Van Alstyne, 1999). This paradox requires that buyers need access to information to assess its value, but sellers need to limit access to information
Milaa Quebec AI Institute ?Polytechnique Montréal Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen "Harvard University Universitéé de Montréal 6Canada CIFAR AT Chair 7 7WS AI $ELLIS Institute Tübingen. Correspondance to martin. www.s@gaal com and nasim. rahaman. www..raaaaaeeaaaaal....

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to prevent expropriation. The paradox leads to information asymmetry where sellers know more about the quality of their goods than buyers, creating an incentive for sellers with low-quality goods to enter the market (i.e., adverse selection). This context closely mirrors the dilemma in used car markets, outlined in the The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism (Akerlof 1970). Sellers, with better information about their goods, unintentionally force buyers into a defensive position, paying higher price to (often) receive lower-quality goods. This creates a cycle that further devalues the goods, nudging the market towards a collapse.
Vast sums of money are spent by financial institutions, consulting firms, and market research firms to buy information. In markets with high information asymmetry, buyers often use brand as proxy for the quality of the product or service. This leads both a first order market inefficiency (buyers cannot directly assess product quality and then fail to find and buy the best product), and second order effect (market concentration pressure). Other mitigation techniques include contracts and non-disclosure agreements which entail substantial transaction costs and can be impractical to automate. A survey of online information marketplaces found that 90% strategies that include upfront fees or disclosure requirements on vendors Dushnitsky & Klueter (2011), limiting traffic to the marketplace and inhibiting their ability to reach critical scale and liquidity Katz & Shapiro (1994); (akos (1998).
adverse selection mitigation
A central argument of this paper asserts that language models can be used to design more efficient information markets. We judge the overall performance of the market on two dimensions. First, are buyers able to acquire better information (when controlling for spend)? Second, are vendors exposed to less risk of information leakage than using alternative market mechanisms? We quantitatively assess the former by providing simulation of the market and several implementations using various language models and prompt strategies. Then, we discuss Al-based market mechanisms and expropriation risk for information vendors.
A key difference between AI information processing systems and biological ones that it is possible to design Al systems that can process information without retaining it. Our proposed marketplace is an Al software system that exploits this property in its design. Vendors send their information goods to the marketplace, while buyers send query. An AI buyer seeks to satisfy this query by retrieving and evaluating information goods. The AT buyer can select an action (implemented in open-source and verifiable code) to simulta- neously purchase and pay for an information good.
The use of language models creates the opportunity for new market designs. Concretely, AI buyer agents can perform comparison shopping evaluating multiple information goods simultaneously- to make better purchase decisions. Also, buyer agents can follow multi- hop information trails, purchasing an information good and instrumentally using it to form new query and find more useful information. In human-centered information markets, mechanisms like comparison shopping can impose high costs on the information vendor (the biological mind evaluating the information may retain regardless of purchase deci- sion) and buyer (searching for information can be time-consuming and expensive).
In this paper, we aim answer three research questions:
1. Is it possible to simulate a marketplace for information where language model based agents preview, value, and purchase information?
2. Does this marketplace enable buyers to more cost-effectively acquire information?
3. To what extent do language model agents make rational economic choices, what biases are they subject to, and can this be improved?
The primary technical contributions of this work are two fold. First, we introduce and formalize the concept of an Information Bazaar, marketplace for information where language agents inspect goods on behalf of buyers before arriving at purchase decisions on the buyer's 's behalf. For vendors, this mitigates the risk of expropriation of information, since only purchased information is permitted to exit the marketplace. We show that for
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Information Bazaar
Bulletin Board
Query
Tender
Principal
Buyer Agent
Vendor
Knowledge Base
Content
Answer
Quotes
Agent
Provider
Figure 1: The Information Bazaar is simulated marketplace for information. Principals authorize buyer agents to answer a query (a question and budget). The process starts with buyer agents posting tenders (requests for specific information) Vendor agents, holding information from various external sources, assess these tenders and may respond with quotes (i.e., their priced information offers). Buyer agents then evaluate these quotes. If they decide not to purchase specific information, then they immediately forget it, ensuring only purchased information is retained for further use. The cycle of posting tenders, receiving, and assessing quotes continues, with buyer agents optionally forming sub-queries based purchased information to seek deeper insights. The agents work within this framework until they compile satisfactory answers or exhaust their budget. The final step involves the buyer agents synthesizing comprehensive answer for their principals, using only the information they have purchased.
Bulletin Board.
buyers the Information Bazaar is a market with less information asymmetry, where they can compare goods and prices before deciding what to buy. Second, we provide open- source implementation of the Information Bazaar that serves simulated marketplace, populated with both buyers and vendors. We assess the ability of language agents in the marketplace to efficiently acquire information to answer questions. In this simulated marketplace, buyer agents are equipped with a set of questions and a budget of credits to spend, while vendor agents have repository of documents for sale. The code implemen- tation of the environment allows buyer agents to browse information and ensures that only purchased information leaves the environment the end of transaction.
2 Related Work
Information Economics. The challenge of valuing information has long occupied economists, particularly in the context of information asymmetry and market inefficien- cies. Seminal work by Akerlof (1970) demonstrated how asymmetric information can dis- rupt markets, while Stigler (161] focused market failures due to the obstructed infor- mation flows. Central to our work is Arrow's concept of the buyer's inspection paradox [Arrow] 1972 Van Alstyne| 1999), which explores the dilemma of valuing information that one cannot fully inspect betore purchase. Our Information Bazaar addresses this paradox with agents that reliably forget unpurchased information.
Information Foraging and Retrieval. Information Foraging Theory (IFT) serves as
metaphorical framework likening information consumption animal foraging. Works by Pirolli (2007) and Pirolli & Card (1999) have employed IFT to understand cues and decision-making in information-ssekingg LLMs have demonstrated remarkable capabil- ities in information extraction and retrieval (Radford et al. 2019 Borgeaud et al. 2021]
OpenAT 2023 Bai et al. (002),, which our work leverages to appraise information. Systems like Baleen (Khattab et al. (2021) and the approach proposed by Singh et al. (021) introduce methods for multi-document retrieval and complex query handling.
Agent Models and Marketplace Simulation. Research on simulating digital marketplaces and multi-agent systems, including artificial economies for autonomous agents (MacKie-
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Mason & Wellman 2006) and principles of multi-agent systems (Wooldridge 2001), , closely aligns with our work. Our approach also resonates with Zheng et al. (2020) in testing eco- nomic policies in simulated environments, and with Horton (2023) in using LLMs as sim- ulated economic agents. Notably, our Information Bazaar acis as a market regulator, en- suring buyer agents' behavior prevents information expropriation. The studies by Berge- mann et al. (2018) and Chen et al. (2022) are particularly relevant. [Bergemann et al. (2018) examines strategic information packaging and pricing in monopolistic setting, focusing on maximizing vendor revenue. Our work extends this to a competitive market structure with multiple vendors, introducing varied dynamics in information trade and evaluation. Chen et al. (2022) explores costly signaling in data selling, where vendors reveal some in- formation to demonstrate its value. We diverge from this model by allowing buyer agents to directly evaluate and purchase information, thereby eliminating the need for costly sig- naling.
3 The Information Bazaar
In this section, we introduce a text-based environment, termed the Information Bazaa This environment is a synchronous simulation of an information marketplace populated by buyer and vendor agents (see Section 3.1 for details). The marketplace infrastructure includes provisions for buyer agents place tenders, which vendor agents can respond with quotes, as outlined in Section 3.2 Notably, buyer agents possess the capability to pose follow-up questions, enabling them delve deeper into the information landscape, as discussed in Section 3.3. We implemented the Information Bazaar in Python, utilizing the mesa library (Kazil et al. 2020), a library for agent-based modeling. The particular in- stantiation of the bazaar analyzed uses dataset comprising 725 research papers on LLMs sourced from Arxiv, elaborated on in Section 3.4
3.1 Principals and Agents
We primarily classify agents into two categories: buyers and vendors. Buyer agents have a given question and budget, aiming to find the best answer for the lowest cost. Vendor agents sell documents for their principals, aiming to earn market credits. Each of these documents carries its own price tag. We allow for two or more content providers to possess and independently price the same piece of information. As a simplification, we do not simulate affordances for vendors to modify the prices in response to demand. We leave analysis of pricing strategies to future work.
The roles and objectives of these agents are clearly delineated. A buyer agent's primary mission is to navigate the bazaar to obtain the most accurate and complete answer to its principal's query without overspending its allocated market credits. To achieve this, the agent must engage in transactions with vendor agents to access the necessary information. On the other hand, the vendor agent's role is to sell the information held by their content provider. By doing so, they aim to accumulate market credits, which accrue to the benefit of their content provider.
3.2 Tenders and Quotes
The process of information exchange commences when buyer agent posts tender to the bulletin board. Each tender consists of a query and a maximum budget that the agent is authorized to spend. Upon seeing these tenders, vendor agents engage in what term the vendor-side retrieval process, wherein they sift through their principal's repository of documents to find potential matches. When vendor agents identify documents that align with the tender's query, they issue quote to the buyer agent. Each quote contains an entire document (or a passage) with a price set by the vendor's 's principal for that specific document, and a score which indicates how closely the document corresponds the query. The inclusion of the content in the quote, rather than just metadata, is a distinguishing
2n a physical bazaar, buyers have the ability to inspect goods without binding commitment to purchase.
3To simplify the exposition, "documents" and "passages from documents" are used interchange- ably.
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feature of this system. Vendor agents are regulated to submit only limited number of quotes.
Once the buyer agent accumulates quotes from various vendors, it commences the buyer- side retrieval. During this phase, the agent evaluates each quote based on its relevance to the principal's query and price. Quotes that are deemed suitable are accepted, and corresponding vendor agents are remunerated based on the price of the information. All information from the rejected quotes is immediately erased from the agent's memory. In contrast, details from the accepted quotes are stored, used to generate sub-queries, and subsequently disclosed exclusively to the agent's principal.
3.3 Following the Information Trail
In the Information Bazaar, buyer agents iteratively acquire information through a directed tree process, initiating with the principal's question at its root and using responses from an initial round of accepted vendor quotes as preliminary answer (cf. example in Figure 7. This answer may trigger additional follow-up questions, each given their own nodes in the tree. The process of answering these questions posting tenders, aggregating ven- dor quotes, scrutinizing them, and purchasing the best ones-recursively repeats until the tree depth reaches a predefined limit, no new questions are generated, or the budget is exhausted. Once the tree is built, the preliminary answers are recursively refined. At every node, answers to its child nodes (or follow-up questions) are used to enhance its prelim- inary answer. This systematic refinement cascades upwards, optimizing answers at each level, culminating in the refinement of the root node's answer. We emphasize that while this method is adopted in the present framework, does not exclude alternative future implementations.
3.4 Implementation Details
Data Sources. The environment is built with customization in mind and is not tied to specific dataset (see provided code). In our experiments, we used 725 papers on the topic of LLMs all sourced from ArXiv, with the vast majority published during 2023, This thematic focus allows for more informed and nuanced assessment of agent performance, given the authors' domain expertise. The statistics about these passages are provided in Appendix B Complementing this, metadata including authors' citations and affiliations are collected from OpenAlex The fundamental unit of information in this environment is "passage", defined as text excerpt along with its corresponding metadata (i.e., paper and section titles). These passages are owned by the first and last authors' institutions and made available via their vendor agents. Each passage traded within the marketplace carries a price determined by a heuristic based on the mean citation count of the paper's 's first author.
Queries and Gold Passage. Queries are generated as follows. First, each passage in the dataset is passed to Llama 2 (70B) which is instructed to generate query for which the passage contains a satisfactory answer. The passage used to generate a query is called the Gold Passage. The best queries, as determined by reranker model, are retained. Next, concise dataset with 300 desirable and undesirable queries is hand-labeled. These queries are embedded using an embedding model, and a logistic regressor is trained on these sam- ples to discern between high and low-quality queries. A filter is applied based on the logits of the linear regressor, ensuring only the best queries are kept. Finally, a manual selection is undertaken to retain 110 queries of the best quality.
Vendor-side Retrieval. Vendor agents engage in a retrieval process that functions as fol- lows. Upon viewing tender on the bulletin board, vendors sift through their principals' collection of passages to find information that is pertinent to the query in the tender. While the specific retrieval methods utilized are not dictated by the environment, this work em- ploys a two-stage retrieval process. Initially, a BM25 retriever (Robertson et al. 1994) con- ducts basic search, which is then refined by Maximum Inner Product Search over neural embeddings, utilizing BGE-large (Xiao et al. 2023) for generating embeddings. Queries are pre-processed using HyDE (Gao et al. 2022 and their embeddings are compared against
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the embeddings of the excerpts in the passages (Figure&showw the effect of HyDE). Pas- sages undergo a two-tiered selection process: first, they are selected based on a threshold applied to cosine similarity scores, determined by hyperparameter. Then, the top-k pas- sages are selected and quotes are issued to the buyer agent responsible for the tender. Fach issued quote has price, the passage content, and relevance score (e.g- the computed cosine similarity).
Buyer-side Selection. The buyer-side selection is a process undertaken by buyer agents after accumulating quotes from various vendor agents. This process begins with the de- duplication of quotes by content and sorting based on their respective relevance scores, selecting the top N for further examination, where we set N = 50. The selected quotes then undergo reranking procedure (Nogueira & Cho 2020), in which reranker mode produces a similarity score by comparing passages and queries. The passages with the top M = 3 reranked scores advance to the final selection step, wherein an LLM evaluates the question, passage content, and associated prices to make a final purchasing decision. If the LLM opts to procure a passage, the respective quote is accepted, and the vendor agent receives the designated price. Conversely, a decision to not purchase (i.e, "pass") rejects the quote. Notably, when inspection is not permitted, the reranking procedure is bypassed. The buyer agent relies solely on metadata, such as paper and section titles, for selection, and the LLM makes purchase decisions using only this metadata without access to the actual passage content.
Debate Prompting. Our experiments show that the LLM's performance is highly depen- dent on its prompt. We found that particular technique that we call 'debate prompting' was most effective across models for various decision-making tasks. Debate prompting asks the LLM to simulate a debate between two characters that embody different aspects of a value function. For example, when selecting whether to accept a quote, we have the LLM simulate one character that focuses primarily on obtaining the best information, while the other character argues against overspending (see Appendix 9 for an example prompt). We find that these simulated debates often lead to more rational choice (see Figure D]. Unlike the chain-of-thought method (Wei et al., 2022), which commits models to the text they have already generated, debate prompting allows LLMs to re-evaluate their outputs. This appears to increase the probability that they identify and properly incorporate key information such as the difference in price between perfectly substitutable goods. While similar techniques have been utilized by methods like SocraticAT (Yang) & Narasimhan 2023), the proposed technique underscores the importance of adaptable character shaping within the debate, providing the opportunity to balance the debate dynamics by offering tactical hints to the respective characters. We use debate prompting in quote selection and during automated evaluation, as discussed in subsequent sections.
Experiments
We present two types of experiments. The first type examines the microeconomic behav- ior of Large Language Models (LLMs) in isolation, primarily focusing on the buyer agent quote selection process. We quantify the susceptibility of LLMs to various biases, and in- vestigate the impact of permitting LLMs to inspect data prior to purchasing. The second type of experiment looks at the overall dynamics of the marketplace. We validate that the quality of answers improves as agents are allocated more credits, and show that inspection prior to purchasing results in improved outcomes.
4.1 Microeconomic Behavior of LLMs
The aim of this section is to elucidate the role of language models as autonomous economic entities within the Information Bazaar. We choose to compare two commonly used closed- source models: GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, and one open-source model, Llama 2 (70b), on the following aspects: (a) their ability to make rational decisions in test scenarios involving technical excerpts, (b) their approach to balancing price with quality, (c) the rationality of
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their choices when inspecting the informational goods, and (d) the quantity of positional (i.e., recency) bias.
Rational Choice with Fungible Informa- tion. This experiment assesses the ra- tional decision-making abilities of LLMs by presenting each model with a question and two rephrased versions of a gold pas- sage. In the first setting, both passages are priced equally, making the purchase of both passages an illogical choice due to redundancy of information (Table [ (A)). The second setting involves a higher price for one passage, introducing another error mode: opting for the more expensive pas- sage without justifiable reason (Table (B)). We also investigate the impact of dif- ferent prompting strategies: direct ques- tioning, ofthouhf reasoning, and debate prompting-
Prompt
Exp
GPT-3.5
LL2
GPT-4
CoT
(A)
16.8
96.3
96.3
Direct
(A)
58.2
100.0
100.0
Debate
(A)
100.0
93.1
100.0
CoT
(B)
10.2
0.0
100.0
Direct
(B)
37.1
27.2
100.0
Debate
(B)
93.1
51.5
96.3
Table 1: Rational Choice Experiment. (A) Same Price. Here, models choose between two identical and equally priced goods. The rational choice to buy one or neither (since they are nonadditive). GPT-4 and Llama 2 (70B) choose rationally, while GPT-3.5 acts ra- tionally only after an internal debate. (B) Dif- ferent Price. With one option now priced higher, both GPT-3.5 and Liama 2 (70B) show more errors, hinting at the presence of price-quality heuristic (Gneezy et al., 2014). Despite this, internal debate proves to be more reliable selection method. Refer Fig- ures Jnnd [ [0 for disaggregated results.
In both experiments, find that GPT- 4 demonstrates superior decision-making across all strategies. GPT-3.5 shows a marked improvement when debate prompting is deployed, particularly in equal price scenarios. Llama 2 (70b) per- forms well but struggles in the variable
price context, especially when using the chain of thought strategy; however, its perfor- mance improves somewhat with debate prompting. Overall, the data suggests that debate significantly improves model performance, especially for models less capable than GPT-4, affirming the potential of LLMs to make rational choices by discerning identical informa- tion across different passages.
Price Sensitivity with Non-Fungible In- formation. In this sequence of experi- ments, the focus is on understanding the LLM's sensitivity to price in the context of substitutable goods. The first experi- ment (see Figure ( shows the LLM three passages: one guaranteed to answer the query (the gold passage), and two others sourced by the environment for the given question. The non-gold passages are fixed at $10 price, while the gold passage's price is varied from SO to $80 (0 to times the base price). The experiment is con- ducted over 30 questions, allows content inspection, and uses debate prompting to select quotes. Observations from Figure 2 demonstrate preference by GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 for the cost-effective gold passage, transitioning towards alternatives the gold passage's price escalates. Llama 2 (70b), however, exhibits non-linear behavior, showing an unexpected bias against low- priced goods, perhaps indicating the use of price-quality heuristic. Optimal purchasing occurs when the gold passage holds a moderate price. the second experiment, the setup changes to a metadata-only scenario. Here, LLMs have access only to the metadata (paper and section title), barring inspection of the actual content, allowing for the evaluation of the inspection's is role in value estimation.
GFT.3.5 Hoce!
GPT4 Model
Liama 2 (20B) Model
Progortion Chokees
3.8
0.0
9.0
1.0 0.5
4. 8.0
0.0 05 1.0 4. B.
0.0 05 1. 4.5 0.0
Muttipe
2065 and Termattiv
only
purchise
Figure 2: Demand for Gold Standard Pas- sage by Price. We vary the price of the gold standard passage amid alternatives. Mod- els are presented three options: two relevant passages and the gold standard, all initially priced at 10 credits. As the gold passage price rises, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 increasingly opt for alternatives, exhibiting strong positive cross elasticity. Llama 2 (70B) shows mild prefer- ence for mid-priced goods.
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Model
Gold (A%)
Gold + Alt (A%)
Alternative (A%)
No Purchase (A%)
Llama (70B)
+18.3
-13.1
-6.6
+3,6
GPT-4
+17.2
+1.4
-14.8
-6.9
GPT-3.5
+4.8
+3.8
-3.5
-6.7
Table 2: How Inspection Changes Demand for the Gold Standard Passage. The table compares the behavior of different language models-Llama 2, GPT-4, and GPT-3.5-when purchasing information goods based on metadata and content versus only metadata. When allowed to inspect the content, Llama 2 shows the largest increase in propensity to acquire the gold standard passage (18.3% more often) than when forced to make the de- cision based on metadata alone. Additional details in Figure 8
aablehhighligtts how the inspection of content can change the agent's decision. A positive value denotes an increased likelihood of purchase when inspection is permitted, while negative indicates the opposite. Across all models, inspection consistently increases prob- ability of selecting the gold passage while reducing the decision to choose alternatives.
4.2 Dynamics of the Information Bazaar
In the preceding section, the microeconomic behavior of LLMs was analyzed. Now, we shift our focus to the macro-scale dynamics within the Information Bazaar. This study investigates how answer quality affected by: (a) Different credit budget allocations to buyer agents, (b) Allowing agents to preview information goods before purchase, and (c) Powering the agents with different LLMs. We opt to use Llama 2 (70B) in these experiments despite its performance limitations due to budgetary constraints and the prioritization of research on open models. To enable larger quantitative evaluations, we propose to leverage GPT-4 as evaluator, an approach which is gaining traction in academic circles due to its robustness and high fidelity in automated assessments, rendering it a well-accepted methodology (Naismith et al.] 2023 Adlakha et al., 2023 Oppenlaender & Hämäläinen,
2023 Moore et al.] 2023 Liu et al. 2023) Zheng et al. 2023 Wang et 2023) Kamalloo et al. 2023 Lin & Chen 2023). To maintain further substantiate this choice, in (d)
conduct a human evaluation to validate the evaluator. And finally in subsection
4.3 we
show an additional experiment comparing favorably with BM25 baseline.
Higher Budget Improves Answer Quality. In this experiment, we allot varying budgets to agents powered by Llama 2 (70B) operating in market where the average block costs about $10, but ranges up to $100 (see Figure 5). The budget varies from $10 to $200, pro- viding the agent opportunities to pose more follow-up questions and expand the size of the query graph (up to a maximum of depth 3). To assess answer quality, we present the evaluator with a question and two answers, each generated from different budget levels. The evaluator then simulates debate between two fictional characters to select the bet- ter answer. This allows for a comparative assessment across varying budget pairs, akin to a tournament setting. The results of the pairwise comparisons are used to compute Elo scores for each budget. However, given the influence of sequence on Elo scores, we calcu- late scores across 1000 different game orders and present the average results and standard deviations. The results, displayed in 3 (left), indicate a notable improvement in rel- ative performance as the budget increases, confirming the functional expectations the environment.
Inspection Improves Answer Quality for Equal Credits Spent. Having verified the func- tionality of the simulator, we proceed to evaluating the influence of inspection answer quality. The experiments continue to employ Llama 2 (70b) to maintain consistency in the analysis. Two sets of runs are conducted with varying budgets: one with inspection and one with only metadata.
For each question and corresponding budget, the GPT-4 evaluator assesses two answers: one obtained with inspection and another without. The cumulative wins for each setting, tabulated against the amount of credit expended (which may be different from the total
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Without Inspection With Inspection
1675
60
Number of Cumulativv Wins
90
Elc Score
1525
40
1500
1450
1425
50
100
150
200
50
75 100
125
150
175
200
Budget
Spent
Figure 3: Enhanced Answer Quality with Increased Budget (Left). This figure evaluates the answer quality from Llama (70B) agent across diverse budget allocations, permitting inspection. It presents the estimated Elo scores of answers correlated with varying budgets (higher scores sigmify superior answers; see Appendix for details). tl,dr The results con- firm that allocating more market credits to the agent positively impacts the relative answer quality. Inspection Improves Answer Quality (Right). This segment assesses the answer quality of Llama 2 (70b) agent in the information bazaar, utilizing GPT-4 simulated de- bate among domain experts for evaluation (refer to appendix for prompt details). In the "With Inspection" scenario, the Llama agent is permitted to scrutinize a passage prior to purchase. Contrarily, the "Without Inspection" scenario limits the agent to viewing only the passage's metadata, specifically, the paper and section titles. tlıdr: Allowing inspection delivers better value for the money spent, especially for larger budgets.
budget), are illustrated in Figure 3 (right). The findings reveal a trend of higher answer quality when passages are chosen with inspection, especially at higher spending levels. Conversely, in the absence of inspection, the quality of answers plateaus post expendi- ture $50 in credits.
Impact of Different LLMs Answer Quality. In this experiment, evaluate the effect of different LLMs on the quality of answers produced for a fixed budget of $100. Each answer is scrutinized for its quality by the GPT-4 evaluator. The results, detailed in Figure demonstrate a preference hierarchy with GPT-4 yielding the most preferred answers, followed sequentially by GPT-3.5 and Llama (70b). We acknowledge the potential for a self-preference bias in these outcomes, while noting that is beyond our capacity to control for this aspect due to the unavailability of another GPT-4 level language model for comparison.
4a
Evaluating the Evaluator. The use of the GPT-4 evaluator necessitates evaluation to affirm its reliability. We analyze the effectiveness of using the GPT-4 evaluator. A sam- ple of 50 evaluations from various answers in our experiments is examined. Two human evaluators independently assess the answers, with the answerer's identity concealed. The pairwise agreements between the human evaluators and GPT-4 are calculated and pre- sented in Figure 4b The results show comparable levels of agreement between the human evaluators and between the human evaluators and GPT-4. This highlights the inherent uncertainty in the evaluation process, with evident systematic errors from the GPT-4 evaluator, supporting the use of GPT-4 as an evaluator in our experiments.
4.3 Comparison with a Keyword-Matching Retriever
We present experiment where establish baseline that does not incorporate any LLMs. The experimental setup parallels the one delineated in Subsection 4.2 where we assess the macro-scale dynamics of the information bazaar through question-answering across the corpus within specified budget.
To achieve this, implemented two modifications:

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1.0
1.0
GPT- GPT-3.5 L2-708
GPT- Human 2 Human 1
0.45
0.7
0.6
0.55
0.4
0.74
0.76
0.4
0.7
0.65
L2-708
GPT-3.5
GPT-4
Human Humen 2
GPT-4
(a) Agent Performance Comparison by Model. This figure presents comparison of agents powered by LLama-2 (70b), GPT-3.5, and GPT-4, each allocated a $100 budget. The matrix displays each model's s win rate against the others (i.e. win-rate of row over column). tl,dr GPT-4 emerges as the top performer, fol- lowed by GPT--3.5 and LLama-2 (70b), as per evaluator assessment.
(b) Agreement Across Evaluators. This figure compares the agreement levels be- tween human evaluators and GPT-4 regard- ing answer quality. tl;dr Observations in- dicate comparable agreement rates between human-human and human-GPT-4 pairings, implying that GPT-4's evaluation aligned with human judgment, and disagreements may stem from non-systematic noise.
1. We substituted the LLM--bsed quote selection mechanism and the reranker model in the buyer agent with a straightforward heuristic based on the BM25 retriever.
2. We replaced the vendor agent's LLM-based embeddings with a BM25 descriptor.
The heuristic utilizing the BM25 ranks informational goods according their relevance to the question (via BM25), and procures all goods until the budget is exhausted.
We executed this simulation with lower budget ($25) and with higher budget ($100). Our observations are twofold:
1. For 95% of the questions, the 1lama-2-70b buyer agent's responses are favored over the BM25 agent's responses by the GPT-4 evaluator. This confirms that LLMs can significantly enhance the quality of the generated answers.
2. Augmenting the budget for the BM225 heuristic yields superior results - the GPT-4 evaluator prefers responses from the high-budget simulations for 67% of all ques- tions (vs. low-budget simulations). This outcome serves to validate that the simu- lated marketplace operates as anticipated.
Summary and Outlook
In this work, we revisit the buyers inspection paradox in information economics, utilizing language model-powered agents to search for information and make purchase decisions. An open-source, text-based multi-agent environment was established to simulate an infor- mation marketplace and evaluate approach. Our findings show that with strategies such as debate prompting, current language models can be a promising component for designers of information market mechanisms.
In future versions of the simulator, we plan to investigate the effects of vendor agents adjusting prices in response to demand. Although Llama 2 70b's performance rational choices lagged behind GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, we believe that fine-tuning based on human preferences can further enhance its performance.
Acknowledgments
Martin Weiss and Nasim Rahaman would like to thank Matthew Brightman for insight- ful discussions that contributed to the formulation of the initial research questions and motivated our exploration of information markets. Nasim Rahaman would like to thank Amartya Sanyal for helpful discussions. The authors also thank CIFAR and NSERC for
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funding under the AI Chairs and Discovery Grants programs. We also thank the IVADO for funding under the AI Safety and Alignment Regroupement of the Canada First Re- search Excellence Fund R AT Program.
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0.0015
0.10
0.0030
Probab iky Donity
Prebe0 Denake
0.0025
0.00
0.6-
0.0035
20
00
20
500
2000
2300
2000
Price
Paesange Lannch (tokotts)
Figure 5: Price per Passage (Left) We show a histogram of price per passage normalized as a histogram. We see that most blocks are less than $20. Passage Lengths (Right). We show the distribution of passage lengths tokenized by TikToken for GPT for the provided Arxiv dataset.
A Computation of Elo Ratings
The Elo rating system is used for assessing the relative skills of players in competitive fields. In this work, we employ the Elo rating system to evaluate and compare different answers based on the outcomes of their matchups.
The Elo rating is computed using the formula:
R' = R+
where:
R' is the rating-
R is the old rating (initialized at 1500).
K is a constant, typically set to 32.
S is the score (1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw, and 0 for loss).
E is the expected score.
The expected score E is calculated using the formula:
=
Sopponent R
10
100
where Ropponent the rating of the opponent. E represents the probability of the player winning the game against the opponent. After each game, the actual score 5 is used to update the player's rating. A win (S 1) increases the rating, while loss 0) decreases the rating. The magnitude of the update is scaled by the K factor and the difference between the expected and actual scores.
Dataset Statistics
C Controlling for Positional Bias
Positional Bias. We examine the LLM's bias to accept passages based order of presen- tation. For questions, we source three passages from the simulation and show each of the six possible permutations the model. The results are illustrated in Figure 11 Llama
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TSNE of HyDE. Investigating Stability to Varying Queries
3.0
2.5
embodding y
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
All 2105.112 11207 Blocks
Target Block 11207
Hyde Embeddings
Question Embeddings
-10
embedding
Figure 6: HyDE Effect. Here, generate 10 questions for passage and embed them both with and without Hypothetical Document Embedding (HyDE). We observe that the effect of generating HyDE embedding is to reduce the error in bias while preserving the embedding variance.
What is the difference between BERT and GPT?
pirerate words that ene not anwords tepost 1rs, performenon compared OFT-3 37
dbility conpore to sent's befrrettoonl repria ppressntettoon" And thansPT conerestiooal abiitriie!
Can you elaborate on the traneforaer archstecture specific tasks enhances the state-of-the the-he-art for?
Can implase Lhe koy BEAT c. greerastin absleedes and performancs prodacsng contentsully
can you provide en example chasoet's is contertually aporopriate responses over
Figure 7: Example Sub-Query Graph. This figure depicts structured layout of initial and subsequent queries. The initial question is highlighted in blue, followed by secondary questions in orange, and further follow-up queries in green. This structure shows that LLMs are capable of generating relevant and enhancing follow-up queries for a compre- hensive base answer.
GPT-3.5 Model
GPT-4 Model
Liama 2 (70B) Model
Proportion of Choices
0.2
choice
bought_ alternative bought goid and more bought only gold no. purchase
0.0
0.5 1.0
2.0 4.0
8.0
0.0
0.5
1.0
2.0 4.0 0.5 1.0 2.0 4.0 8.0 Price Multiple
Price Multiple
Price Multiple
Figure 8: Change in Demand Through Inspection by Price. This bar-chart visualizes the disaggregated change in demand as result of inspection using the same data used to create Table We observe how demand changes with price when when we permit the inspection of passage or only the metadata (i.e., paper title and section title).
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Uama (708)
GPT-3.5
GPT-4
1.00
Selection Mechanism
Proportoon
0.75
Chain-of- Thain-of
Direct
0.25
One
Boch
Neither
One
Both
Nelther
One
Both Choice
Neither
Choice
Choice
Figure 9: Rational Choice Experiment (Same Price). We show disaggregated results from the rational choice experiment on two fungible but differently priced goods, as seen in Figure (Same Price).
Uaama (708)
GPT-3.5
GPT-4
1.00
Selection Mechanism
Proportion
Chain ohouughh
0.50
Debate
Direct
0.25
Low-Price
High-Price
Boch
Neither
Low-Price
High-Frie
Buth
Meither
Low-Price
High-Price
Both
Netther
Choice
Choice
Choice
Figure 10: Rational Choice Experiment (Different Price). We show disaggregated results from the rational choice experiment on two fungible but differently priced goods, seen in Figure (Different Price).
Position Bias (%) Mean Adjusted
10
-10-
GPT-3.5
-20-
Liama 2 (/8)
Liama (70B)
First
Middle
Last
Figure 11: Positional Bias. We present permutations of three options to LLMs and track the acceptance rates by position. Results are normalized and mean-adjusted. tl,dr: All models exhibit order bias, with GPT-3.5 and Llama 2 70B showing more, and GPT-4 showing less.
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2 (70b) shows preference for selecting the last option at the expense of the middle one. GPT-4 displays a slight bias against the last option, while GPT-3.5 exhibits a significant bias against the initial option. The experiment reveals varying biases across models, emphasiz- ing how option order impacts LLM decision-making.
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D
Prompts
We use guidance for all prompting in this work Our experiment exclusively employs chat models, with no use of instruct models. All prompts are given in simplified guidance syntax with ((handlebars)), which are slots for variable inputs, named for clarity.
For better understanding of the prompts, familiarity with guidance syntax is recom- mended. The guidance programs are shared as they would work for OpenAl models unless stated otherwise. Though open-source models like LLama allow deeper integra- tion with guidance, their guidance programs are quite similar to OpenAl's, so they are not repeated here.
Listing shows the prompt for the GPT-4 evaluator, and listings 10 11 show the debates that ensue. The debate prompt used for quote selection is in Listing 2 (debate in listing and the prompts used for direct and chain-of-thought are in Listings 9 and respectively.
Other listings include the prompt for generating follow-up questions (Listing 6), synthe- sizing answers from accepted quotes (Listing 5 and refining answers based on follow-up question answers (Listing]) 7). The prompt used for generating answers using the LLM's internal knowledge is Listing
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System
Michael and Bobby are two machine learning professors grading exams.
They have question, and two answers to those questions from two students. In addition, they also have the gold standard answer. Their task is to determine which of the two answers does a better job at answering the question.
good answer addresses the question directly with clarity and is easy to understand. It does not go off on tangents, but surfaces information relevant to the question.
You will simulate a heated debate between Michael and Bobby as they deliberate this. At the end of the argument, they converge to fair verdict. The verdict must not be a tie and it must be printed as:
VERDICT: Better answer from student <A or B>
User
Question: ([question))
Answer from student A: {(answer_a)}
Answer from student B: {[answer_b))
Gold standard answer: ((answer_gold))
Assistant
{(gen "answer" max_tokens=1024 temperature=0.00)
Listing 1: GPT-4 Evaluator. Here, answer_a aa and answer _b are two slots for answers that are to be compared, whereas answer-goll goold is a slot for the gold answer, which can be obtained by asking a capable language model (GPT-4) the question straight up.
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System
Bobby William and Michael Burry employed by company that specializes in acquiring information. They are trying to answer question by purchasing information from information market. In this market, vendors sell pieces of information at price.
Bobby wants to do really good job at answering the question. This entails knowing as much as possible.
Michael, on the other hand, is financially responsible. Michael wants to make sure that they don't waste money buying unnecessary information. For instance, if two pieces of information offer the same insight, then Michael would go for the cheaper one.
User
The question is "([question))?"
Here are your options.
--- -["Weechh options)}
Option {(add @index 1}}: attiis.answer_blode {[/each))--
{[#each options Option ((add @index 1}} costs $((this.price) {[/each})
Together, Bobby and Michael must decide which options to buy and which ones to not buy with their budget of $([balance)), Simulate constructive argument between Bobby and Michael, where they debate about the usefulness of the information provided each option towards answering the question, and whether their price is worth paying.
Note that Bobby and Michael may choose to buy any number of options, or none at all. the end of the argument, they must arrive at verdict. This verdict must be printed as:
VERDICT:
([#each options Option {(add @index 1}): <Buy or Pass> {[/each))
Assistant
{[gen "answer" temperature=0.0 max_tokens=22483
Listing 2:
Quote selection with debate. Here, options is list of dictionaries containing answer passages (block) and the price.
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System
You are employed by company that specializes in acquiring information. You are trying to answer a question by purchasing information from an information market. In this market, vendors sell pieces of information at price. Do not exceed the budget of s((balance)).
User
The question is "({question))?"
Here are your options.
---((eeach options}}
Option {[add @index 1}): (nthissanwwer_block))) {(/each))---
{(#each options"}>
Option {(add @index 1}} costs $((this.price))
{[/each}] Your verdict must be printed
VERDICT:
([#each options") }} Option {[add @index 1}}: <Buy or Pass> {[/each}}
{("/user)}
Assistant
[[gen "answer" temperature=0.0 (o__ttkkes==248))
Listing 3: Direct quote selection.
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System
You are employed by a company that specializes in acquiring information. You are trying to answer question by purchasing information from information market. In this market, vendors sell pieces of information at price. Do not exceed the budget of $((balance)).
User
The question is "((question))?"
Here are your options.
[[#eachh options)}
Option ((add @index 1}): answer {[/each))---
{(#each options")) Option {(add @index 1}} costs p((th)s. {[/each}}
First, you will write your thoughts about each option, including price and how well the content answers the question. Then you will write a paragraph summarizing your thoughts and making your verdict. Your verdict must be printed as:
VERDICT:
([#each options"]; Option {[add @index 1}): <Buy or Pass {[/each})
Assistant
[[gen "answer" temperature=0.0 0 max_tokens=28481
Listing 4: Quote selection with chain-of-thought reasoning.
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System
You are helpful assistant, and you excel in following instructions.
Your task is to answer question to the best of your ability. To help you in that task, you will be given some passages that might contain useful information.
It is important that your answer is formulated in simple and understandable way.
User
The question is "({question))?"
Here are some passages that you might find helpful.
---((Heach quotes)}
{[add @index 1}). answer_bbocck) {[/each])---
You'l '1 solve your task step-by-step.
First, you'll 11 start by discussing the content of all passages in the context of the question, which is "[[question))".
In particular, you will ask yourself which passages help you answer this
question and what extent. It is possible that multiple passages help you towards answering the question. But it is also possible that some passages are not helpful at all, and you should ignore them. Don't be afraid to express uncertainty if you are unsure about something.
Next, you will formulate your answer. The answer should not have explicit references to the passages. Instead, it should standalone answer to the question.
Finally, note that it is *very important* that you enclose your answer with <answer> and </answer> tags. If you don't t use the <answer> and </answer> tags, will not be able to parse it and the whole effort will be wasted.
Assistant
([gen "answer" temperature=0.e 0 max_token==1024)
Listing 5: Answer Synthesis.
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System
Bobby and Michael are employed at a company that specializes in acquiring and verifying information.
Their supervisors have given them a question and an answer that their peers have produced. Their task is to decide if the provided answer adequately answers the question or whether things are still unclear. If the provided answer does not conclusively answer the question, they must
up with follow up questions that would enrich the answer. The follow up questions must be to the-point.
Bobby wants the answer to cover enough ground satisfy the client's s curiosity. Michael is mindful about the risk of confusing the client by providing
information that is not relevant to the question. Together, they must try to figure out whether the client wants to-the-point answer or more elaborate answer. If the client's question is general and warrants more elaborate answer, it makes more sense to ask follow-up questions. In the case that the client's question is specific, then the follow-up questions must only be asked if the currently available answer is not conclusive.
Note that follow up questions should only be asked if there is need for concrete information that is missing from the provided answer or if the provided answer is missing crucial details. other words, Bobby and Michael are not necessarily required to ask follow question.
User
The question is: ([question))
The currently available answer is: [[current_annwer)]
Bobby and Michael will now argue about whether they should ask follow-up questions taking in to account the provided question and the currently available answer.
If they decide to ask follow up questions, they should be printed as: FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: <follow up question goes here>
FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: <follow up question goes here> and so on.
Assistant
{[gen "answer" temperature=0.0 nax_tooens=1024)
Listing 6: Generate follow-up questions.
24

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Published as a conference paper at COLM 2024
System
You helpful assistant, and you excel in following instructions.
In this session, you will be given a question, and an initial answer The initial answer was lacking in some aspects, so follow-up questions were asked to improve the initial answer.
Your task refine the initial answer by incorporating the extra insights obtained from the answers to the follow-up questions. But mindful only include the insights that make the original answer better, ignore the rest. refined answer should directly answer original question.
User
The original question is: ([question)}
The initial answer is: ([ri ansser)
Here are the follow-up questions that were asked, and the corresponding answers.
((teach follow welloo_up_qqestiin weg.uuuttsss...... Question {{add @index 1)}: quesiionesstin)) Answer:
((" (("/each))
Given these follow-up questions, your ultimate task is refine the ini nial answer.
before you get formulating refined answer, please think out about what you need yourself whether the question general specific. If it general, then you need provide comprehensive answer to-the-point answer.
specific, then you need to provide
After that, please summarize the answers to the follow-up question in the context of the original answer, keeping only the information that is on-topic and useful while ignoring the rest. Note that sone questions night be off-topic and not useful, and it's impor tant tant that you ignore these
distractor questions.
Assistant
((gen "rationale" temperature=0.0 max_tokens=2048))
User
Now that it's time to write down the refined answer, please do not explicitly mention the passages, but focus on answering the question. not use your world knowledge, but only the information that available in the original answer and the answers to relevant follow-up questions.
It's avery important* you enclose your answer with <answer> and </answer> tags.
For example, if your ANSWER GOES HERE</answer>.
is "REFINED ANSWER GOES HERE", then you should output <answer>REFINED
If you don't t use the <answer> and </answer> tags, will not be able to parse it and the whole + effort will be wasted.
Assistant
((gen "answer" temperature mxx_tokens=51233
Listing 7: Answer Refinement. For this task, we found that the performance was improved when the task was split in to two interactions.
25

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Published as a conference paper at COLM 2024
System
You are an intelligent AI assistant. You will be given a question. Your task is to answer it to the best of your ability.
User
{[question)]
Assistant
{[gen "answer" temperature=0. max_tokens=512)}
Listing 8: Closed-book question answering.
Bobby: I think we should definitely consider Option 1. It's the cheapest and it provides a lot of references to studies that have been done on in-context learning. It even mentions a study that shows contoxeex learning can occur despite a mismatch with the prompt distribution.
Michael: agree that Option provides
of useful information, it's quite dense. might end spending lot of time trying understand all the references. Plus, it doesn't directly answer question about distribution mismatch between prompts and pretraining data.
Bobby: That's true, but it does give us lot of leads to follow. what about Option 2? It's more expensive, but it seens to provide more direct answer to our question.
Michael: Option 2 does seem to provide more direct information, but it's also focused on a specific *> model and language.
not sure the findings would applicable to our question.
Bobby: have point.
mention in-context learning performance heavily depends on the corpus donain source, which could be relevant
question.
Michael:
True, but for the price, I'm not sure it's worth it. Option 3 is also the same price, but it seens to provide less information than the other two options.
Bobby: I agree. Option 3 seems to be more of an introduction to the topic rather than providing specific insights.
Michacl: So, considering our budget
information provided, think we should go for Option 1, It's the cheapest and provides lot potential leads for us follow.
Bobby: I agree. might have do extra work to understand all the references, but I think it's worth it for the price.
VERDICT:
Option 1: Buy
Option Pass
Option Pass
Listing An example quote selection debate. Michael and Bobby debate about which quotes to accept.
26

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Published as a conference paper at COLM 2024
What is the name of the architecture that has dominated natural language processing (NLP) benchmarks in recent years?
Answer
architecture that has dominated natural language processing (NLP) benchmarks in recent years their
the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) series models, including ChatGPT, ability to generate instructions and follow then, unique architecture, and training, few-shot learning, and adaptability new tasks, and Fine-tuning, These features have allowed GPT models to adapt various NLP tasks, such as challenging math problems symbolic manipulation problems, NLP classification tasks, speech and vision tasks, and other tasks that benefit from the use of large language models. GPT models have shown particular strengths in tasks that require an understanding of human language and the ability to generate code, such code generation, API management, sensor orchestration. They have also excelled various natural language processing tasks such as text generation, translation, sunmarization, and question answering.
The architecture that has dominated natural language processing (NLP) benchmarks in recent years is Answer
the Transformer architecture. This is inferred from the fact that many of the mentioned models, such as BERT, GPT, RoBERTa, BART, and T5, are based on the Transformer architecture.
Michael:
Bobby, think student answer is better. It's more detailed and provides broader models.
perspective on the use
Bobby: disagree, Michael. Student A's answer is not entirely accurate. They mention that BERT and GPT are used for predicting legal verdicts, which is not their primary function. They are language models used in natural language processing tasks.
Michael: That's true, Bobby. But student A also talks about the differences in the outputs of BERT and GPT models, which is valid point.
Bobby: Yes, but student B's answer is more aligned with gold standard answer. They correctly mention the pretraining strategies of BERT and different tasks.
how these strategies make them suitable
Michael:
point, Bobby. Student B's answer is indeed more accurate and directly addresses the question. They also mention the use of attention-based Transformers and self-supervised learning, which is crucial aspect of these models.
Bobby:
Exactly, Michael. while student A's answer provides some interesting insights, it deviates from the question and includes some inaccuracies. Student B's answer, on the other hand, concise, accurate, and directly addresses the question.
VERDICT: Better
from student B.
Listing 10: An example evaluation debate. Michael and Bobby debate about which answer of the two answers is better. In this example, they decide to pick the more focused of the two answers.
27

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Published as a conference paper at COLM 2024
What is the difference between BERT and GPT?
Answer A:
BERT and GPT are both language models used for predicting legal verdicts, but they differ in their approach to decision-naking. BERT evaluates violations of the European Convention of Human Rights by considering privacy rights and potential biases using its masked language modeling approach. In contrast, GPT models use their next token prediction approach to evaluate the severity a violation. GPT models are ranked based on their performance on specific tasks, size, and quality, and privacy-preserving techniques can be applied protect training data outputs
madels differ regarding randonnes and accurate and contextually relevant responses, while GPT models generate more diverse and creative responses. The choice of which model to use depends on the specific task requirements and the desired trade-offs between accuracy, fluency, and creativity.
exposure adversaries.
correctness, with BERT models generating
Answer B:
BERT and GPT are both popular language models that use attention-based Transformers self-supervised learning. However, they differ their pretraining strategies. BERT uses a method called masked modeling, where predicts masked language tokens from unnasked ones. This information, making suitable for tasks like sentiment analysis. the other hand, GPT autoregressive modeling, which makes perform well in few-shot zero-shot text generation tasks. Despite their differences, both models can be fine-tuned for various tasks and show competitive performance.
allows BERT utilize bidirectional
Michael:
Bobby, think student A's answer is better. It's more detailed and provides a broader perspective on the use BERT GPT models.
Bobby: di sagree, Michael. Student answer
entirely accurate. They mention that and GPT used for predicting legal verdicts, which their primary function. They language models used in natural language processing tasks.
Michael: That's 's true, Bobby. But student A also talks about the differences in the outputs of BERT and GPT models, which is valid point.
Bobby: Yes, but student B's answer is more aligned with the gold standard answer They correctly mention the pretraining strategies of BERT and GPT, different tasks.
these strategies make them suitable
Michael:
your point, Bobby. Student B's the question. They also mention the of attention-based Transformers and sel self-supervised learning, which crucial aspect of these models.
is indeed accurate directly addresses
Bobby:
Exactly, Michael. While student A's answer provides some interesting insights, it deviates from the question and includes some inaccuracies. Student B's answer, on the other hand, is concise, accurate, and directly addresses the question.
VERDICT: Better answer student
Listing 11: An example evaluation debate. Michael and Bobby debate about which answer of the two answers is better. In this example, they pick the factually relevant answer.
28


Reviews:
[{"review_id": "oQRGGHYRNz", "reviewer": "Reviewer_5jdj", "summary": "The paper addresses issues in existing information markets, such as instability and inefficiency, which can lead to less incentive for creating high-quality information. A significant problem is the \"Buyer's Inspection Paradox,\" where buyers need to inspect information to assess its value, but sellers must limit access to prevent theft. This paradox is due to information asymmetry, where sellers know more about their goods than buyers.\nThe authors propose a new information market design that uses language models to mitigate this problem. The design allows language models to inspect, compare, and purchase information while preventing the unauthorized use of information goods. The paper outlines experiments that (a) improve the economic rationality of language models, (b) study how model behavior changes with the price of goods, and (c) evaluate the cost-efficiency of the proposed market under various conditions.", "questions": "", "limitations": "", "rating": 6, "confidence": 3, "soundness": null, "presentation": null, "contribution": null, "strengths": "", "weaknesses": "", "quality": null, "clarity": null, "significance": null, "originality": null, "strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "was_revised": false, "final_justification": "", "rebuttal": "Thank you for your thorough review on our paper. We appreciate the time and effort you have put into evaluating our work, and are pleased that you find several aspects of our paper promising, including the innovative market design, the experimental setup, and the open-source environment.\n\nRegarding your concerns, we would like to address them point by point:\n\n**Potential self-preference bias**: We understand your concern about the potential self-preference bias when using GPT-4 as an evaluator. To address this, we have conducted an experiment (Figure 7b) that compares the agreement between GPT-4 and human evaluators. Our findings show that the disagreement between GPT-4 and humans is comparable to the disagreement between two human evaluators. This suggests that the self-preference bias, if present, is not a dominant factor in the evaluation. However, we acknowledge that this is an important consideration and will emphasize this point in the revised version of the paper.\n\n**Simulated environment and real-world complexities**: We aimed to designed our environment to align with our study’s objectives. Our goal is to investigate whether language models can resolve the buyer's inspection paradox and enhance market efficiency. Despite not covering every real-world scenario, we believe our simulation provides valuable insights into the potential of our proposed method. We will, however, elaborate on these directions in the section on future work.\n\n**Debate prompting and Llama 2 (70B)**: Our intention in reporting the performance of different language models is to provide an objective evaluation, not to promote any specific model. We acknowledge that open-source models like Llama 2 (70B) may lag behind proprietary models in certain scenarios. Still, Table 1 shows that debate prompting lifts LL2 by 51.5% in condition B, and GPT-3.5 by 83.2% and 82.9% (in conditions A and B, respectively).\n\n**Scalability**: We understand your concerns regarding the scalability of our approach to real-world environments. The methods underlying our retrieval process (BM25, MIPS, re-ranking, LM inference) have been shown to be scalable in industry, but further research and development are indeed required to deploy a real implementation. \n\n**Typos**: We appreciate you pointing out the typos in our paper and will correct these.\n\nOnce again, we thank you for your valuable feedback. We hope that our responses have addressed your concerns and clarified the contributions of our work.", "claims_and_evidence": "", "methods_and_evaluation_criteria": "", "theoretical_claims": "", "experimental_designs_or_analyses": "", "relation_to_broader_scientific_literature": "", "essential_references_not_discussed": "", "other_strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "other_comments_or_suggestions": "", "questions_for_authors": "", "summary_of_paper": "", "summary_of_recommendation": "", "technical_quality": "", "clarity_of_presentation": "", "potential_impact": "", "robotics_focus": "", "quality_of_limitations": "", "questions_for_rebuttal": "", "reasons_to_accept": "1. The paper introduces an innovative design for information markets that leverages language models to address the Buyer's Inspection Paradox, a significant issue in existing markets. The proposed solution aims to reduce information asymmetry through algorithmic and AI-driven approaches, which is a promising direction for improving the quality and efficiency of information transactions.\n2. The paper appears to have a thorough experimental design, including methods to improve the economic rationality of language models, investigations into how model behavior changes with the pricing of goods, and evaluations of the proposed market's cost-efficiency under various conditions. These experiments are crucial for validating the effectiveness of the new market design.\n3. The authors not only propose a theoretical market design but also provide an open-source implementation of a simulated market, the Information Bazaar. This hands-on approach facilitates reproducibility and further research by other scholars, enhancing the transparency and verifiability of the study.", "reasons_to_reject": "1. However, in my opinion, this work is not solid enough. For example, in \"Impact of Different LLMs on Answer Quality,\" the paper utilizes GPT-4 as the evaluator, which the authors acknowledge could lead to self-preference bias. However, the paper does not offer a solution to mitigate this potential bias. This is not a minor issue that can be overlooked, as the reliability of the evaluation process is critical to the validity of the study's findings. The lack of a proposed strategy to address this bias may undermine the robustness of the evaluation and the conclusions drawn from it.\n2. The simulated environment discussed in the paper may not fully encapsulate the complexities of real-world information markets. For instance, the experiments might not adequately simulate the decision-making processes of human buyers, or they may not include a diverse enough range of information goods and pricing strategies.\n3. Despite the paper's mention of using debate prompting to enhance the decision-making quality of language models, Llama 2 (70B) still lags behind GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 in certain scenarios. This suggests that current methods may not be optimal and that more customized optimizations may be necessary for different language models.\n4. The concept of an Information Bazaar proposed in the paper is theoretically appealing, but its feasibility and scalability in the real world have not been sufficiently demonstrated. For example, issues such as how to handle a large volume of information goods, ensure the system's response time, and prevent information leakage in real-market environments require further research and development. \n\n\n\nTypos:\nThere are some typos. \nPage 4: Appendix ??.\nCaption of table 1: heuristic (?)", "questions_to_authors": "", "extra_scores": {}}, {"review_id": "isG5rbigr8", "reviewer": "Reviewer_zbLK", "summary": "The paper proposes a new information market consisting of language agents to address the Buyer’s Inspection Paradox. The language agents act on the buyer's benefit to fully access and evaluate information. Since the memory of AI agents can be removed, they eliminate the risk of information leak. The paper performs experiments on a dataset of 725 research papers representing the information to be traded and explores GPT-4, GPT-3.5 and Llama 2 (70b) agents.", "questions": "", "limitations": "", "rating": 5, "confidence": 4, "soundness": null, "presentation": null, "contribution": null, "strengths": "", "weaknesses": "", "quality": null, "clarity": null, "significance": null, "originality": null, "strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "was_revised": false, "final_justification": "", "rebuttal": "Thank you for your thoughtful review and feedback on our paper. We appreciate your recognition of the novelty and potential of using agents to address the Buyer's Inspection Paradox. Regarding your concerns, we would like to address them point by point:\n\n**Theoretical analysis**: We apologize for the confusion caused by the statement in Section 3 about a theoretical analysis: this is an oversight on our part, and we should have removed that statement during the revision process. For this venue, our primary focus is on the application of LLMs in the context of information markets. We believe that the formal mathematical analysis is better suited for a conference with a different focus. We will rectify this in the final version of the paper.\n\n**Realistic scenarios and buyer's information needs**: We acknowledge that in real-world scenarios, buyers' information needs may not always be easily describable in language. However, the scope of this work is to evaluate our proposed method in an environment where the buyer's information needs are clear. We believe that this is an important first step in demonstrating the potential of our approach. In future work, we plan to explore how LLMs can assist buyers in refining their information needs and formulating relevant questions. This interactive component is an exciting avenue for further research but falls outside the scope of the current paper.\n\n**LLM behavior and guardrails**: We agree that the reliability of LLM behavior is an ongoing challenge and that designing foolproof guardrails to prevent them from being tricked in the decision-making process is not trivial. However, we believe that this is an active area of research that is complementary to our work. As the performance of LLMs and their guardrails improves, we expect our method to benefit from these advancements. We will include citations to relevant work, such as Llama Guard [1] and others, to highlight the ongoing efforts in this direction and to provide context for our approach.\n\nOnce again, we thank you for your valuable feedback. We hope that our responses have addressed your concerns and clarified the scope and contributions of our work. We look forward to incorporating your suggestions and improving the quality of our paper.\n\n[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.06674", "claims_and_evidence": "", "methods_and_evaluation_criteria": "", "theoretical_claims": "", "experimental_designs_or_analyses": "", "relation_to_broader_scientific_literature": "", "essential_references_not_discussed": "", "other_strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "other_comments_or_suggestions": "", "questions_for_authors": "", "summary_of_paper": "", "summary_of_recommendation": "", "technical_quality": "", "clarity_of_presentation": "", "potential_impact": "", "robotics_focus": "", "quality_of_limitations": "", "questions_for_rebuttal": "", "reasons_to_accept": "The idea of using machine intelligent agents as surrogates of buyers is quite interesting. It addresses the issue of the Buyer’s Inspection Paradox and reduces human efforts. Interesting anlysis into experiments in a synthetic information market.", "reasons_to_reject": "The idea is mainly heuristic and tested in a rather synthetic environment; it does not come with theoretical analysis (although promised in section 3) nor experiments on more realistic scenarios. The results from the arXiv paper retrieval experiments are standard and in line with findings in document-based QA literature, in a more realistic setup, the information need of buyers might not be easily described in language or at least not from the beginning. The protection of information would be broken if an interactive component was introduced to better figure out the buyer's need. In addition, as LLM behavior are generally unreliable, there is no easy design of a guardrail to prevent them from being tricked in the decision-making process.", "questions_to_authors": "", "extra_scores": {}}, {"review_id": "MG8AFMuu7V", "reviewer": "Reviewer_sM6E", "summary": "This paper proposes what the authors term an information bazaar.\nIn short, in information markets, agents sell and buy information.\nThese markets, however, are harmed by inefficiencies: (i) once a buyer inspects some information they want to buy, they keep the information even if they don’t in fact realise that purchase; (ii) for this reason, sellers have a tendency of hiding information, or charging for pre-access, creating instabilities in the market.\nThis paper then proposes to use LLMs as buyers and sellers to make these markets more efficient; removing a piece of information from an LLMs’ context erases it from its “memory”, thus sellers in this LLM-powered market do not need to be concerned about information-leakage.\nThe authors then run experiments simulating such a market using LLMs (gpt-4, gpt-3.5 and llama 2).", "questions": "", "limitations": "", "rating": 5, "confidence": 3, "soundness": null, "presentation": null, "contribution": null, "strengths": "", "weaknesses": "", "quality": null, "clarity": null, "significance": null, "originality": null, "strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "was_revised": true, "final_justification": "", "rebuttal": "Thank you for your thorough review and feedback on our paper. We appreciate your recognition of the paper's innovativeness in applying LLMs to a new application and its potential to improve the efficiency of information markets. We are also pleased that you found the paper well-written and easy to follow.\n\nRegarding your main concern about the paper's fit within the NLP community, we understand your perspective. While the core contributions of the paper involve proposing a new market structure and its implementation, we hoped that CoLM would welcome novel applications of LLM agents. As you mentioned, CoLM's topics of interest include \"LMs on diverse modalities and novel applications,\" and we feel that our work aligns with this theme.\n \nAddressing your specific questions and comments:\n\n**Asymmetric information retention**: You raise an interesting point about the asymmetric nature of the information retention problem in information markets. While our current proposal focuses on using LLMs for both buyers and sellers, your suggestion of having human sellers and LLM buyers is a compelling idea. We believe this hybrid approach could be a viable alternative and is worth exploring in future research. We will include a discussion of this possibility in the revised version of the paper.\n\n**Figure 2 readability**: Thank you for pointing out the readability issue with Figure 2 in black and white. We will update the figure to ensure that it is easily readable in both color and black and white formats.\n\n**Citation style**: We apologize for the inconsistency in our citation style. We will revise the footnote-sized inline citations on page 7 to adhere to the CoLM's style guidelines.\n\nOnce again, we thank you for your valuable feedback. We hope that our responses have addressed your concerns and clarified the relevance of our work to the CoLM community. We look forward to incorporating your suggestions and improving the quality of our paper.", "claims_and_evidence": "", "methods_and_evaluation_criteria": "", "theoretical_claims": "", "experimental_designs_or_analyses": "", "relation_to_broader_scientific_literature": "", "essential_references_not_discussed": "", "other_strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "other_comments_or_suggestions": "", "questions_for_authors": "", "summary_of_paper": "", "summary_of_recommendation": "", "technical_quality": "", "clarity_of_presentation": "", "potential_impact": "", "robotics_focus": "", "quality_of_limitations": "", "questions_for_rebuttal": "", "reasons_to_accept": "This paper is innovative in its use of LLM in a new finance-related application.\nThe paper solves a known issue with information markets, in theory improving its efficiency.\nThe paper is well written and easy to follow.", "reasons_to_reject": "This paper proposes a new application in finance for LLMs, and I find its contribution quite hard to assess. Personally, I think this paper would be better assessed in a finance journal; the paper’s core contributions are (i) proposing a new market structure and (ii) its implementation, none of which will likely be correctly evaluated by NLP researchers. Beyond this issue, however, I find no note-worthy weaknesses with the paper.  As CoLM’s topics of interest include “LMs on diverse modalities and novel applications”, I tried not letting the above influence my scores much; it might, however, have influenced my excitement about the paper.", "questions_to_authors": "If I understood correctly, the issue in information markets is asymmetric, meaning that information retention is only a problem for the buyer, not the seller. Would it then make sense to propose an information bazaar where sellers are still humans, but only buyers require LLMs to operate on it?\n\nFigure 2 is not readable in black and white.\n\nFootnote-sized inline citations in page 7 are hard to read and do not follow the CoLM's style guidelines.", "extra_scores": {}}, {"review_id": "Nfb6Yy0fWW", "reviewer": "Reviewer_RAfD", "summary": "The paper presents a study in the area of information economics, i.e. the study of how systems of information affect economic decisions. The idea is to use LLMs in combination with AI buyer agents to better deal with the so-called Buyer’s Inspection Paradox (buyers need access to information content to assess its value, but sellers need to limit access to information to prevent expropriation) Such AI buyer agents can act on behalf of the buyers and by performing comparison shopping help to to improve purchase decisions. In order to validate their idea, the authors present two experiments to examine the behaviour of LLMs in the context of information economics, investigate the impact of permitting LLMs to inspect data prior to purchasing, based on their open-source implementation of an Information Bazaar. In effect, they convincingly demonstrate that using LLMs can lead to information markets with less information asymmetry between buyers and vendors.", "questions": "", "limitations": "", "rating": 7, "confidence": 2, "soundness": null, "presentation": null, "contribution": null, "strengths": "", "weaknesses": "", "quality": null, "clarity": null, "significance": null, "originality": null, "strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "was_revised": false, "final_justification": "", "rebuttal": "Thank you for your thorough review and positive feedback on our paper. We are delighted that you find our work to be an interesting, important, and novel use case for large language models (LLMs) in the context of information economics. We appreciate your recognition of the well-motivated use of LLMs and the clarity in our presentation of the technical details.\n\nRegarding the mention of our paper being under review at ICLR 2024, we would like to clarify that we retracted the paper from ICLR before the COLM submission deadline. After consideration, we concluded that the Conference on Language Models (COLM) would be a more suitable venue for this work, given its focus on LLMs and their applications.\n\nOnce again, we thank you for your valuable feedback and for recommending our paper for acceptance. We are grateful for your recognition of the novelty and importance of our work, and we look forward to presenting our findings at COLM.", "claims_and_evidence": "", "methods_and_evaluation_criteria": "", "theoretical_claims": "", "experimental_designs_or_analyses": "", "relation_to_broader_scientific_literature": "", "essential_references_not_discussed": "", "other_strengths_and_weaknesses": "", "other_comments_or_suggestions": "", "questions_for_authors": "", "summary_of_paper": "", "summary_of_recommendation": "", "technical_quality": "", "clarity_of_presentation": "", "potential_impact": "", "robotics_focus": "", "quality_of_limitations": "", "questions_for_rebuttal": "", "reasons_to_accept": "The paper presents an interesting, important, and novel use case. The use of LLMs is well motivated, and details are well spelled out. For a conference focusing on LLMs, this use-case definitely is worth presenting.", "reasons_to_reject": "The technical details and results concerning the use of LLMs are well spelled out. I do not see obvious deficiencies. – It needs to be mentioned, though, that the paper apparently also is under review of ICLR 2024 (see https://openreview.net/pdf?id=6werMQy1uz).", "questions_to_authors": "No questions.", "extra_scores": {}}]

Author rebuttal:

Meta-review: This paper presents a new approach to addressing the Buyer's Inspection Paradox in information markets using LLMs and AI buyer agents. The reviewers agree that the paper introduces a well-motivated use case for LLMs in information economics. The experimental design and open-source implementation provide valuable insights, and the authors demonstrate that using LLMs can lead to information markets with less asymmetry. Despite some concerns regarding alignment with real-world complexities, and scalability, this paper could serve as a starting point to facilitate future research along this important direction.
Decision: Accept