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arXiv · 2611.03836

A Conditional Mutual Information Analysis of Response Variety in Language Models

R. I. Cukier
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Abstract

Large language models provide a variety of responses at inference (generation) that conventionally depend on a temperature parameter. Using a conditional mutual information approach, a quantitative, entropy based analysis of response variety is given. Three limiting behaviors are defined: arbiter, independent (conditionally) and neutral (deterministic) that span no to maximal mutual information. We give examples of each behavior and suggest their application to: temperature analysis, language analysis, prompt compression, and knowledge graphs.

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R. I. Cukier. 2026-11-02. A Conditional Mutual Information Analysis of Response Variety in Language Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03836

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