Papers › Confidence Estimation for LLM-Based Dialogue State Tracking

Confidence Estimation for LLM-Based Dialogue State Tracking

15 Sep 2024arXiv:2409.09629archive 2025-07-28

Yi-Jyun Sun, Suvodip Dey, Dilek Hakkani-Tur, Gokhan Tur

Estimation of a model's confidence on its outputs is critical for Conversational AI systems based on large language models (LLMs), especially for reducing hallucination and preventing over-reliance. In this work, we provide an exhaustive exploration of methods, including approaches proposed for open- and closed-weight LLMs, aimed at quantifying and leveraging model uncertainty to improve the reliability of LLM-generated responses, specifically focusing on dialogue state tracking (DST) in task-oriented dialogue systems (TODS). Regardless of the model type, well-calibrated confidence scores are essential to handle uncertainties, thereby improving model performance. We evaluate four methods for estimating confidence scores based on softmax, raw token scores, verbalized confidences, and a combination of these methods, using the area under the curve (AUC) metric to assess calibration, with higher AUC indicating better calibration. We also enhance these with a self-probing mechanism, proposed for closed models. Furthermore, we assess these methods using an open-weight model fine-tuned for the task of DST, achieving superior joint goal accuracy (JGA). Our findings also suggest that fine-tuning open-weight LLMs can result in enhanced AUC performance, indicating better confidence score calibration.

Code

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

12 samples harvested; 10 ran; 0 honoured the contract we drafted; 2 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

Licence: 12 of the 12 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from jennycs0830/confidence_score_dst. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

Tasks

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Methods

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections