Probabilities Are All You Need: A Probability-Only Approach to Uncertainty Estimation in Large Language Models

arXiv — cs.LG•Wednesday, November 12, 2025 at 5:00:00 AM

The recent publication titled 'Probabilities Are All You Need' introduces a novel approach to uncertainty estimation in large language models (LLMs), which are known for their strong performance in natural language processing but also for their susceptibility to hallucinations—producing factually incorrect outputs. The proposed method utilizes an efficient, training-free technique that approximates predictive entropy through the top-K probabilities of model responses. This adaptive mechanism not only enhances flexibility but also effectively filters out low-confidence probabilities. Experimental results across three free-form question-answering datasets demonstrate that this new method significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art baselines. This advancement is crucial as it contributes to the broader objective of enhancing the trustworthiness of LLMs, addressing a critical concern in the deployment of these models in real-world applications.

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