Explicit Abstention Knobs for Predictable Reliability in Video Question Answering

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00138v1
• Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2025 23:27:32 GMT
• Title: Explicit Abstention Knobs for Predictable Reliability in Video Question Answering
• Abstract summary: High-stakes deployment of vision-language models requires selective prediction.<n>We investigate whether confidence-based abstention provides reliable control over error rates in video question answering.
• Score: 0.41288208387994896
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: High-stakes deployment of vision-language models (VLMs) requires selective prediction, where systems abstain when uncertain rather than risk costly errors. We investigate whether confidence-based abstention provides reliable control over error rates in video question answering, and whether that control remains robust under distribution shift. Using NExT-QA and Gemini 2.0 Flash, we establish two findings. First, confidence thresholding provides mechanistic control in-distribution. Sweeping threshold epsilon produces smooth risk-coverage tradeoffs, reducing error rates f

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