arXiv AI

Beyond Successful Play: Diagnosing Opponent Modeling in Large Language Models

arXiv Computation and Language
4d ago

BASIS: Evaluating Belief-Aware Solutions in Interactive Settings beyond Instructions

BASIS is a benchmark that tests large language model agents on their ability to infer users’ mental states, detect belief‑reality mismatches, and use this insight to craft better solutions in interactive settings. The study shows that current models often ignore users’ mental states, leading to poorer outcomes, while explicitly eliciting and incorporating such information improves solution quality. Additional experiments compare BASIS with Chain‑of‑Thought prompting, targeted training, and multi‑agent collaboration to demonstrate the practical benefits of mental‑state awareness.

By Minyuan Ruan, Ziyue Wang, Kaiming Liu, Yunghwei Lai, Peng Li, Yang Liu
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Assessing mentalization in humans and large language models

The study evaluates mentalization—the capacity to infer others’ beliefs and intentions—in large language models (LLMs) using two economic games and cognitive computational modeling. Researchers tested 2,099 LLM agents from four model families (DeepSeek, GPT‑4.1, GPT‑5, Gemini 2.0 Flash) against opponents of varying sophistication, comparing their performance to 251 human participants. Results show that LLMs exhibit distinct mentalizing behaviors that vary by model provider and size, with strategic prompting generally enhancing performance; notably, GPT‑5 agents adapt their recursive reasoning depth to match opponent sophistication, outperforming humans in one task.

By Aamir Sohail, Xintong Zhong, Arkady Konovalov, Patricia L. Lockwood, Lei Zhang
arXiv AI
Oct 9

Memento 3: Model-Based Recursive Self-Improvement through Reflective Rulebooks

Memento 3 is a frozen large‑language‑model agent that learns explicit world models by maintaining a natural‑language rulebook in external memory. The agent iteratively observes, reflects, revises the rulebook, compiles it into executable code, and verifies updates through prediction error and replay, accepting only code that the LLM deems faithful to the rulebook. In experiments, a single‑model version solved all 25 public ARC‑AGI‑3 games with perfect efficiency, and a learned feedback controller achieved perfect scores in Atari Pong without further LLM calls.

By Haoyu Zhao, Zhengxu Yu, Zhiyuan He, Meng Fang, Rasul Tutunov, Haitham Bou-Ammar, Weilin Luo, Jun Wang
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 1

S3Gym: Can LLMs Turn Self-Testing and Self-Judging into Self-Improvement?

S3Gym is an interactive benchmark designed to evaluate large language models (LLMs) on their ability to self-improve through self-testing, self-judging, and self-improvement. It separates permissive exploration from strict held-out evaluation across seven text-based games with executable environment verifiers. Experiments show that self-improvement varies by task, with different experience incorporation pathways (direct history, summary memory, or parameter training) yielding mixed results and highlighting the need for agents to transform feedback into executable, transferable policies.

By Jiajun Shi, Siyuan Tao, Yuhao Wu, Zexuan Wang, Jingyuan Zhang, Jiaheng Liu, Xinping Lei, Xinrong Zhang, Siyuan Fang, Zhewen Tan, Tianle Cai, Junhao Fang, Jiameng Huang, Yueyang Wang, Jinkai Liu, Yuxuan Zhang, Jian Yang, Zhoujun Li, Shen Yan, Wenhao Huang, Ge Zhang
arXiv AI
Sep 24

Verifiable Hidden Dynamics Play: Generating Agentic RL Environments from Solved Mechanisms

The paper introduces VHD-Play, a pipeline that first samples and solves a mathematical model before generating agentic reinforcement learning environments, ensuring that dynamics and evaluation are aligned from the outset. This approach yields 3,300 diverse environments at a low cost and significantly improves the performance of a large language‑model agent (Qwen3.6‑35B‑A3B) across multiple diagnostic families and external benchmarks. The study demonstrates that stateful interaction is a key factor in learning gains and that scaling the training substrate can further enhance performance.

By Xinjie Shen, Wei Fan, Xudong Guo, Jianhong Tu, Yang Su, Chuqiao Kuang, Yinger Zhang, Dayiheng Liu
arXiv AI
Sep 21

Why Do LLMs Struggle in Strategic Play? Broken Links Between Observations, Beliefs, and Actions

The paper investigates why large language models (LLMs) struggle in strategic decision-making under incomplete information. It identifies two key gaps: an observation‑belief gap where LLMs’ internal representations of game states are accurate but brittle, and a belief‑action gap where converting these internal beliefs into actions is weak, leading to suboptimal payoffs. Experiments with Llama 3.1, Qwen3, and gpt‑oss confirm that acting optimally on decoded beliefs would improve outcomes in most games, highlighting a bottleneck in belief‑to‑action conversion.

By Jan Sobotka, Mustafa O. Karabag, Ufuk Topcu
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 30

Theory of Mind and Persuasion Beyond Conversation: Assessing the Capacity of LLMs to Induce Belief States via Planning and Action

Theory of Mind (ToM) benchmarks for Large Language Models (LLMs) typically rely on passive question-answering formats, but the deployment of LLMs in increasingly agentic and autonomous forms demands new evaluations. In this paper we evaluate an agent's ability to induce specific belief states in other agents by taking actions rather than using conversational persuasion, a capability we call Non-Conversational Planning ToM (NCP-ToM).