Evaluating the Utility of Conformal Prediction Sets for AI-Advised Image Labeling
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Abstract (arXiv)
As deep neural networks are more commonly deployed in high-stakes domains, their black-box nature makes uncertainty quantification challenging. We investigate the presentation of conformal prediction sets--a distribution-free class of methods for generating prediction sets with specified coverage--to express uncertainty in AI-advised decision-making. Through a large online experiment, we compare the utility of conformal prediction sets to displays of Top-1 and Top-k predictions for AI-advised image labeling. In a pre-registered analysis, we find that the utility of prediction sets for accuracy varies with the difficulty of the task: while they result in accuracy on par with or less than Top-1 and Top-k displays for easy images, prediction sets offer some advantage in assisting humans in labeling out-of-distribution (OOD) images in the setting that we studied, especially when the set size is small. Our results empirically pinpoint practical challenges of conformal prediction sets and provide implications on how to incorporate them for real-world decision-making.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 27 of its 68 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Jan 2024.
Builds on
27 of 68 references.
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15 more
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 5; 2026: 4.
12 papers.
- 2024Towards Human-AI Complementarity with Prediction Setscited by 25
- 2024Conformal Prediction Sets Can Cause Disparate Impactcited by 14
- 2024Controlling Counterfactual Harm in Decision Support Systems Based on Prediction Setscited by 9
- 2025Conformal Prediction and Human Decision Makingcited by 8
- 2025Conformal Prediction for Long-Tailed Classificationcited by 7
- 2025Human-AI Collaborative Uncertainty Quantificationcited by 6
- 2026Conformal Policy Controlcited by 5
- 2025Towards Uncertainty Aware Task Delegation and Human-AI Collaborative Decision-Makingcited by 4
- 2025Test-time augmentation improves efficiency in conformal predictioncited by 3
- 2026A Framework for Measuring Appropriate Reliance on Set-Valued AI Advicecited by 1
- 2026Questioning the Coverage-Length Metric in Conformal Prediction: When Shorter Intervals Are Not Bettercited by 0
- 2026Toward Human-AI Complementarity Across Diverse Taskscited by 0
- 2026A Framework for Measuring Appropriate Reliance on Set-Valued AI Advice4 Jun 2026
- 2026Toward Human-AI Complementarity Across Diverse Tasks13 Apr 2026
- 2026Conformal Policy Control2 Mar 2026
- 2026Questioning the Coverage-Length Metric in Conformal Prediction: When Shorter Intervals Are Not Better29 Jan 2026
- 2025Human-AI Collaborative Uncertainty Quantification27 Oct 2025
- 2025Conformal Prediction for Long-Tailed Classification9 Jul 2025
- 2025Test-time augmentation improves efficiency in conformal prediction28 May 2025
- 2025Towards Uncertainty Aware Task Delegation and Human-AI Collaborative Decision-Making23 May 2025
- 2025Conformal Prediction and Human Decision Making12 Mar 2025
- 2024Conformal Prediction Sets Can Cause Disparate Impact2 Oct 2024
- 2024Controlling Counterfactual Harm in Decision Support Systems Based on Prediction Sets10 Jun 2024
- 2024Towards Human-AI Complementarity with Prediction Sets27 May 2024