Prediction-Powered Inference Across Many Tasks for AI Evaluation & Social Science Research
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Abstract (arXiv)
Many applications require statistically valid inference across many related tasks, while using only a handful of high-quality labels per hypothesis. In AI evaluation, these tasks may correspond to model behaviors across prompts, subgroups, or hypotheses; in social science surveys, they may correspond to related questions, populations, or measurement conditions. Prediction-powered inference (PPI) uses abundant but inexpensive proxy measurements to improve inference from limited, ground-truth labels, but commonly used methods treat tasks independently and therefore fail to exploit shared structure across related tasks. This limitation is especially important in settings where only a small number of labels are available per task. To address this issue, we introduce a multi-task prediction-powered inference framework that uses labeled data from related tasks to improve power while preserving task-specific inference. Our methods exploit the shared structure in the proxy-ground-truth relationship through cross-task recalibration, while retaining within-task rectification and power tuning to construct accurate point estimates and confidence intervals. We prove that efficiency gains beyond power-tuned PPI are only possible when the proxy-ground-truth relationship contains nonlinear structure; affine cross-task recalibrations are asymptotically equivalent to using the original proxy. We complement our theoretical findings with experiments on synthetic and semi-synthetic datasets, as well as a case study auditing language models on election-related information during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Using a large human-annotation study, we show that cross-task recalibration can substantially reduce confidence interval widths when labels are scarce.
Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 22 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 May 2026.
Builds on
22 of 46 references.
References · 22
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- 2023PPI++: Efficient Prediction-Powered Inferencecited by 117
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- 2024Multicalibration for Confidence Scoring in LLMscited by 46
- 2023Using Imperfect Surrogates for Downstream Inference: Design-based Supervised Learning for Social Science Applications of Large Language Modelscited by 39
- 2025Predictions as Surrogates: Revisiting Surrogate Outcomes in the Age of AIcited by 34
- 2023Assumption-Lean and Data-Adaptive Post-Prediction Inferencecited by 26
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- 2026Demystifying Prediction Powered Inferencecited by 9
- 2026Multiple-Prediction-Powered Inferencecited by 9
- 2024Another look at statistical inference with machine learning-imputed datacited by 7
- 2025Prediction-Powered Adaptive Shrinkage Estimationcited by 7
- 2026PPI is the Difference Estimator: Recognizing the Survey Sampling Roots of Prediction-Powered Inferencecited by 7
- 2022Optimal Conformal Prediction for Small Areascited by 5
- 2024Precise Model Benchmarking with Only a Few Observationscited by 5
- 2026Calibeating Prediction-Powered Inferencecited by 4
- 2020Robust Empirical Bayes Confidence Intervalscited by 3
- 2025Large-Scale, Longitudinal Study of Large Language Models During the 2024 US Election Seasoncited by 3
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.
3 papers.