English

Leveraging Log Probabilities in Language Models to Forecast Future Events

Computation and Language 2025-01-10 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

In the constantly changing field of data-driven decision making, accurately predicting future events is crucial for strategic planning in various sectors. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) marks a significant advancement in this area, offering advanced tools that utilise extensive text data for prediction. In this industry paper, we introduce a novel method for AI-driven foresight using LLMs. Building on top of previous research, we employ data on current trends and their trajectories for generating forecasts on 15 different topics. Subsequently, we estimate their probabilities via a multi-step approach based on log probabilities. We show we achieve a Brier score of 0.186, meaning a +26% improvement over random chance and a +19% improvement over widely-available AI systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.04880,
  title  = {Leveraging Log Probabilities in Language Models to Forecast Future Events},
  author = {Tommaso Soru and Jim Marshall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.04880},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:00:36.149Z