Do Language Models Update their Forecasts with New Information?
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
Prior work has largely treated future event prediction as a static task, failing to consider how forecasts should evolve as new evidence emerges. To address this gap, we introduce EvolveCast, a framework for evaluating whether large language models (LLMs) appropriately revise their predictions in response to new information. In particular, EvolveCast assesses whether models adjust their forecasts when presented with evidence released after their training cutoff, using human forecasters as a comparative reference for prediction shifts and confidence calibration. We find that while models often track the correct update direction, their quantitative shifts remain heavily under-responsive. Furthermore, both verbalized and logits-based confidence estimates are poorly calibrated compared to the human reference standard. These findings suggest current LLMs are fundamentally limited in their response to new evidence; models treat new information as mere retrieval context rather than as variables that dynamically shift posterior probabilities. EvolveCast highlights the critical need for robust mechanisms to incorporate external knowledge into dynamic belief updating.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 20 of its 31 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2025.
Builds on
20 of 31 references.
References · 20
- 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,715
- 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
- 2019HellaSwag: Can a Machine Really Finish Your Sentence?cited by 4,100
- 2021TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoodscited by 2,975
- 2023Can LLMs Express Their Uncertainty? An Empirical Evaluation of Confidence Elicitation in LLMscited by 974
- 2023Semantic Uncertainty: Linguistic Invariances for Uncertainty Estimation in Natural Language Generationcited by 819
- 2023Evaluating Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 202
- 2022The 'Problem' of Human Label Variation: On Ground Truth in Data, Modeling and Evaluationcited by 139
- 2024ForecastBench: A Dynamic Benchmark of AI Forecasting Capabilitiescited by 110
- 2024Approaching Human-Level Forecasting with Language Modelscited by 107
- 2022Forecasting Future World Events with Neural Networkscited by 63
8 more
- 2016Mean Absolute Percentage Error for regression modelscited by 58
- 2020ForecastQA: A Question Answering Challenge for Event Forecasting with Temporal Text Datacited by 43
- 2024MIRAI: Evaluating LLM Agents for Event Forecastingcited by 41
- 2025Time-R1: Towards Comprehensive Temporal Reasoning in LLMscited by 25
- 2024Interpreting Predictive Probabilities: Model Confidence or Human Label Variation?cited by 15
- 2025FOReCAst: The Future Outcome Reasoning and Confidence Assessment Benchmarkcited by 8
- 2025TCP: a Benchmark for Temporal Constraint-Based Planningcited by 8
- 2024PRobELM: Plausibility Ranking Evaluation for Language Modelscited by 6
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.