Two Conformal Constructions for Adaptive Within-Document AI-Text Screening
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Abstract (arXiv)
We study false-alert control when screening for text generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The screening procedure selects document prefixes and detectors from observed evidence and may stop before exhausting its inspection budget. We give two finite-sample constructions under document-level exchangeability between human calibration documents and a new null document, with no restriction on dependence among tokens within a document. Construction A registers a finite family of prefix-detector scores and allocates a false-alert budget across their conformal ranks. A union bound protects any executed subset of that family. Construction B calibrates the complete-path maximum of a development-fixed adaptive policy. Each partial-path maximum is bounded by the complete maximum, so a terminal conformal rank protects early stopping without splitting the error budget. We prove marginal control of any false alert across the permitted inspection path and derive necessary calibration counts for rejection. We also state oracle testing, distribution-shift, and independent-audit bounds with their additional assumptions. Both constructions protect stopping within their specified scope; neither proof constructs an e-process or justifies multiplying conformal ranks. Detection power and computational savings remain questions for empirical evaluation.
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References · 11
- 2023DetectGPT: Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection using Probability Curvaturecited by 726
- 2023A Watermark for Large Language Modelscited by 725
- 2022Conformal prediction beyond exchangeabilitycited by 355
- 2023Fast-DetectGPT: Efficient Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Text via Conditional Probability Curvaturecited by 287
- 2024Spotting LLMs With Binoculars: Zero-Shot Detection of Machine-Generated Textcited by 263
- 2023GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writerscited by 178
- 2021Testing for Outliers with Conformal p-valuescited by 134
- 2025AdaDetectGPT: Adaptive Detection of LLM-Generated Text with Statistical Guaranteescited by 21
- 2024Online Detection of LLM-Generated Texts via Sequential Hypothesis Testing by Bettingcited by 11
- 2025Reliably Bounding False Positives: A Zero-Shot Machine-Generated Text Detection Framework via Multiscaled Conformal Predictioncited by 10
- 2025Anytime Validity is Free: Inducing Sequential Testscited by 4
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