ANCHOR: Abductive Network Construction with Hierarchical Orchestration for Reliable Probability Inference in Large Language Models
Wentao Qiu, Guanran Luo, Zhongquan Jian, Jingqi Gao, Meihong Wang, Qingqiang Wu
Abstract
A central challenge in large-scale decision-making under incomplete information is estimating reliable probabilities. Recent approaches use Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate explanatory factors and coarse-grained probability estimates, which are then refined by a Naïve Bayes model over factor combinations. However, sparse factor spaces often yield ''unknown'' predictions, while expanding factors increases noise and spurious correlations, weakening conditional independence and degrading reliability. To address these limitations, we propose Anchor, an aggregated Bayesian inference framework over a hierarchical factor space. It constructs dense factor hierarchies through iterative generation and clustering, maps contexts via hierarchical retrieval and refinement, and augments Naïve Bayes with a Causal Bayesian Network to model latent factor dependencies. Experiments show that Anchor markedly reduces ''unknown'' predictions and produces more reliable probability estimates than direct LLM baselines, achieving state-of-the-art performance while significantly reducing time and token overhead.
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