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Large language models can disambiguate opioid slang on social media

Kristy A. Carpenter, Issah A. Samori, Mathew V. Kiang, Keith Humphreys, Anna Lembke, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Russ B. Altman · Mar 11, 2026 · Citations: 0

Data freshness

Extraction: Fresh

Check recency before relying on this page for active eval decisions. Use stale pages as context and verify against current hub results.

Metadata refreshed

Mar 11, 2026, 1:27 AM

Recent

Extraction refreshed

Mar 13, 2026, 8:37 AM

Fresh

Extraction source

Persisted extraction

Confidence 0.35

Abstract

Social media text shows promise for monitoring trends in the opioid overdose crisis; however, the overwhelming majority of social media text is unrelated to opioids. When leveraging social media text to monitor trends in the ongoing opioid overdose crisis, a common strategy for identifying relevant content is to use a lexicon of opioid-related terms as inclusion criteria. However, many slang terms for opioids, such as "smack" or "blues," have common non-opioid meanings, making them ambiguous. The advanced textual reasoning capability of large language models (LLMs) presents an opportunity to disambiguate these slang terms at scale. We present three tasks on which to evaluate four state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-4, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Claude Sonnet 4.5): a lexicon-based setting, in which the LLM must disambiguate a specific term within the context of a given post; a lexicon-free setting, in which the LLM must identify opioid-related posts from context without a lexicon; and an emergent slang setting, in which the LLM must identify opioid-related posts with simulated new slang terms. All four LLMs showed excellent performance across all tasks. In both subtasks of the lexicon-based setting, LLM F1 scores ("fenty" subtask: 0.824-0.972; "smack" subtask: 0.540-0.862) far exceeded those of the best lexicon strategy (0.126 and 0.009, respectively). In the lexicon-free task, LLM F1 scores (0.544-0.769) surpassed those of lexicons (0.080-0.540), and LLMs demonstrated uniformly higher recall. On emergent slang, all LLMs had higher accuracy (average: 0.784), F1 score (average: 0.712), precision (average: 0.981), and recall (average: 0.587) than the two lexicons assessed. Our results show that LLMs can be used to identify relevant content for low-prevalence topics, including but not limited to opioid references, enhancing data provided to downstream analyses and predictive models.

Low-signal caution for protocol decisions

Use this page for context, then validate protocol choices against stronger HFEPX references before implementation decisions.

  • Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.
  • Extraction confidence is 0.35 (below strong-reference threshold).

HFEPX Relevance Assessment

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

Extraction flags indicate low-signal or possible false-positive protocol mapping.

Trust level

Low

Eval-Fit Score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

HFEPX Fit

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence: Low

Field Provenance & Confidence

Each key protocol field shows extraction state, confidence band, and data source so you can decide whether to trust it directly or validate from full text.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

Confidence: Low Source: Persisted extraction missing

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

Evidence snippet: Social media text shows promise for monitoring trends in the opioid overdose crisis; however, the overwhelming majority of social media text is unrelated to opioids.

Evaluation Modes

partial

Automatic Metrics

Confidence: Low Source: Persisted extraction evidenced

Includes extracted eval setup.

Evidence snippet: Social media text shows promise for monitoring trends in the opioid overdose crisis; however, the overwhelming majority of social media text is unrelated to opioids.

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

Confidence: Low Source: Persisted extraction missing

No explicit QC controls found.

Evidence snippet: Social media text shows promise for monitoring trends in the opioid overdose crisis; however, the overwhelming majority of social media text is unrelated to opioids.

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

Confidence: Low Source: Persisted extraction missing

No benchmark anchors detected.

Evidence snippet: Social media text shows promise for monitoring trends in the opioid overdose crisis; however, the overwhelming majority of social media text is unrelated to opioids.

Reported Metrics

partial

Accuracy, F1, Precision, Recall

Confidence: Low Source: Persisted extraction evidenced

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

Evidence snippet: In the lexicon-free task, LLM F1 scores (0.544-0.769) surpassed those of lexicons (0.080-0.540), and LLMs demonstrated uniformly higher recall.

Rater Population

missing

Unknown

Confidence: Low Source: Persisted extraction missing

Rater source not explicitly reported.

Evidence snippet: Social media text shows promise for monitoring trends in the opioid overdose crisis; however, the overwhelming majority of social media text is unrelated to opioids.

Human Data Lens

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Unknown
  • Unit of annotation: Unknown
  • Expertise required: General
  • Extraction source: Persisted extraction

Evaluation Lens

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Confidence: 0.35
  • Flags: low_signal, possible_false_positive

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

accuracyf1precisionrecall

Research Brief

Deterministic synthesis

We present three tasks on which to evaluate four state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-4, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Claude Sonnet 4.5): a lexicon-based setting, in which the LLM must disambiguate a specific term within the context of a given post; a… HFEPX signals include Automatic Metrics with confidence 0.35. Updated from current HFEPX corpus.

Generated Mar 13, 2026, 8:37 AM · Grounded in abstract + metadata only

Key Takeaways

  • We present three tasks on which to evaluate four state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-4, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Claude Sonnet 4.5): a lexicon-based setting, in which the LLM must…
  • In both subtasks of the lexicon-based setting, LLM F1 scores ("fenty" subtask: 0.824-0.972; "smack" subtask: 0.540-0.862) far exceeded those of the best lexicon strategy (0.126…
  • Abstract shows limited direct human-feedback or evaluation-protocol detail; use as adjacent methodological context.

Researcher Actions

  • Treat this as method context, then pivot to protocol-specific HFEPX hubs.
  • Identify benchmark choices from full text before operationalizing conclusions.
  • Validate metric comparability (accuracy, f1, precision).

Caveats

  • Generated from title, abstract, and extracted metadata only; full-paper implementation details are not parsed.
  • Low-signal flag detected: protocol relevance may be indirect.

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • We present three tasks on which to evaluate four state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-4, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Claude Sonnet 4.5): a lexicon-based setting, in which the LLM must disambiguate a specific term within the context of a given post; a…
  • In both subtasks of the lexicon-based setting, LLM F1 scores ("fenty" subtask: 0.824-0.972; "smack" subtask: 0.540-0.862) far exceeded those of the best lexicon strategy (0.126 and 0.009, respectively).
  • In the lexicon-free task, LLM F1 scores (0.544-0.769) surpassed those of lexicons (0.080-0.540), and LLMs demonstrated uniformly higher recall.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Abstract shows limited direct human-feedback or evaluation-protocol detail; use as adjacent methodological context.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: accuracy, f1, precision, recall

Category-Adjacent Papers (Broader Context)

These papers are nearby in arXiv category and useful for broader context, but not necessarily protocol-matched to this paper.

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