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Record W3193068792 · doi:10.1162/coli_a_00422

Probing Classifiers: Promises, Shortcomings, and Advances

2021· preprint· en· W3193068792 on OpenAlexfundno aff
Yonatan Belinkov

Bibliographic record

VenueComputational Linguistics · 2021
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldComputer Science
TopicTopic Modeling
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersAzrieli FoundationIsrael Science Foundation
KeywordsComputer scienceArtificial intelligenceVariety (cybernetics)Classifier (UML)Machine learningProperty (philosophy)Artificial neural networkDeep neural networksNatural language processingEpistemology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Probing classifiers have emerged as one of the prominent methodologies for interpreting and analyzing deep neural network models of natural language processing. The basic idea is simple—a classifier is trained to predict some linguistic property from a model’s representations—and has been used to examine a wide variety of models and properties. However, recent studies have demonstrated various methodological limitations of this approach. This squib critically reviews the probing classifiers framework, highlighting their promises, shortcomings, and advances.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.036
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.095
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.036
Threshold uncertainty score0.190

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0360.095
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0030.001
Bibliometrics0.0030.004
Science and technology studies0.0020.005
Scholarly communication0.0080.024
Open science0.0040.004
Research integrity0.0060.012
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.003

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.036
GPT teacher head0.289
Teacher spread0.253 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations21
Published2021
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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