The paper evaluates how modern large language models use internal web search to answer factual questions. Using 783 static queries and 288 dynamic queries, the authors find that enabling retrieval improves accuracy on static questions but hurts confidence calibration. On dynamic queries, models often retrieve but still achieve less than 70% accuracy, mainly due to poor query formulation and source selection, indicating that internal web search works better as a quick verification tool than a full information‑retrieval system.
By Sahil Kale
arXiv:2607. 25600v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Retrieval-augmented generation improves knowledge-intensive question answering, but indiscriminate retrieval can introduce irrelevant evidence and unnecessary computation.
By Chandan Kumar Sah, Xiaoli Lian, Li Zhang
Retrieval-augmented generation improves knowledge-intensive question answering, but indiscriminate retrieval can introduce irrelevant evidence and unnecessary computation. We investigate whether verbalized confidence from black-box language models can serve as an actionable signal for retrieval routing.
arXiv:2608. 14808v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: When a user question is underspecified, a capable model should recognize that its context is insufficient, identify the missing information, ask for it, and respond only once that information determines a unique answer.
By Yepeng Huang, Jiawen Zhang, Michelle Dai, Xiaorui Su, Shanghua Gao, Zi Wang, Marinka Zitnik
Clarify-Then-Search is a benchmark that tests whether large language models can ask clarification questions to improve the usefulness of deep search results. It uses 518 real-world query pairs from Baidu, where each intent query is paired with an underspecified version. The evaluation involves a clarifier asking up to three questions, a user answerer providing only explicit information, and a rewriter generating a new query that is then searched; performance is measured by a weighted nugget-recall score.
By Deqiang Huang, Jingbo Zhou, Xinjiang Lu, Tong Xu, Hua Wu, Enhong Chen
Mnemon is a memory agent that stores conversations as raw, dated records and uses a fast System 1 decision model (Jev) to quickly judge the relevance of records, while a slow System 2 LLM plans searches and composes answers. The agent consolidates records into topic timelines and value histories in the background, enabling efficient retrieval without rewriting conversations into structured formats. Experiments show Mnemon achieving high scores on LoCoMo and LongMemEval‑S with low context length and cost, and Jev outperforming LLMs in evidence separation and speed.
By Guangren Wang
arXiv:2608.01822v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Training LLM-based search agents requires high-quality search data: tasks that demand genuine multi-hop retrieval and trajectories that use search...
By Wentao Tan, Qiong Cao, Jiaqi Wang, Nan Duan
The paper investigates how short memory representations of large‑language‑model (LLM) group discussions affect final decision quality. It introduces CrossProfile, a benchmark of 480 hidden‑profile tasks that separates supporting, decoy, and irrelevant facts while keeping their wording constant. Experiments with Qwen2.5‑7B, Llama‑3.1‑8B, and DeepSeek models show that heuristics based on rarity or relevance both fail in predictable ways, and that the decision model’s social‑proof bias further degrades accuracy. Removing attribution tags or randomizing them improves performance, yet natural transcripts still lose more evidence than no notes at all.
By Anouar Imel, Imad Charradi, Abderrahman Sghir, Khalil El Khammar
arXiv:2607.10198v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Search APIs expose ranked snippets, URLs, and metadata on which agents decide whether to answer, search again, or fetch pages. We evaluate these in...
By Sriram Selvam, Anneswa Ghosh
Search-G1 is a reward framework that encourages language agents to retrieve external information only when necessary and to ground their answers in that evidence. It uses two hidden‑state readouts—one predicting whether a closed‑book answer suffices and another measuring sensitivity to evidence deletion—to calibrate retrieval necessity and evidence reliance. The reward system gates evidence credit by necessity, rewards sufficient direct answers, and penalizes redundant searches, all without requiring costly annotations or LLM‑judge inference.
By Ruoxi Cheng, Haoxuan Ma, Hongyi Zhang, Junming Zhang, Ranjie Duan, Qiaolin Xia, Hao Wang, Yu Lu, Haibo Shi, Xingjun Ma
The paper introduces a penalty‑aware evaluation framework for Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) systems that uses asymmetric scoring, knowledge‑gap canaries, and a failure‑attribution pipeline. Applying this framework to three commercial RAG products and a baseline on SimpleQA‑Verified, the authors find that while overall accuracy is similar across systems, canary violation rates vary dramatically, showing that systems differ more in when they answer than in what they answer. The study demonstrates that penalty‑aware scoring can reorder system rankings and is robust across different penalty settings.
By Alden Do Rosario, Hussein Younes, Felipe Pires
DeclineCraft is a dynamic abstention benchmark for retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) that tests whether models can recognize when neither retrieved documents nor parametric knowledge can answer a question. The benchmark uses unanswerable Minecraft feature‑addition queries that appear after a corpus cut‑off, allowing evaluation of future models. Across 27 large language models, the study measures Correct Abstention Rate (CAR), Answerable Attempt Rate, and Answer Accuracy, finding that single‑shot retrieval boosts CAR, iterative RAG reduces CAR with minimal impact on accuracy, and larger models improve accuracy but not CAR.
By Atharva Thakur, Abulhair Saparov, Bruno Ribeiro