Confidence Calibration in Large Language Models

📰 ArXiv cs.AI

arXiv:2605.23909v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We investigate the calibration of large language models' (LLMs') confidence across diverse tasks. The results of our preregistered study show that the current crop of LLMs are, like people, too sure they are right: confidence exceeds accuracy, on average. Importantly, however, this tendency is moderated by a powerful hard-easy effect, wherein overconfidence is greatest on difficult tests; by contrast, easy tests actually show substantial underconfi

Published 26 May 2026

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Title: Confidence Calibration in Large Language Models

Abstract:
arXiv:2605.23909v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We investigate the calibration of large language models' (LLMs') confidence across diverse tasks. The results of our preregistered study show that the current crop of LLMs are, like people, too sure they are right: confidence exceeds accuracy, on average. Importantly, however, this tendency is moderated by a powerful hard-easy effect, wherein overconfidence is greatest on difficult tests; by contrast, easy tests actually show substantial underconfi
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