arXiv AI

Uncertainty Decomposition for Clarification Seeking in LLM Agents

arXiv:2606. 19559v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent position papers argue that the classical aleatoric/epistemic uncertainty framework is insufficient for interactive large language model (LLM) agents and call for underspecification-aware, decomposed, and communicable uncertainty representations that can unlock new agent capabilities such as proactive clarification seeking and shared mental-model building.

arXiv AI
Jul 14

AgentAbstain: Do LLM Agents Know When Not to Act?

arXiv:2607. 10059v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agent systems based on large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed for autonomous tasks, yet existing evaluations mostly focus on task success rather than whether agents know when to abstain.

By Xun Liu, Yi Evie Zhang, Vira Kasprova, Parisa Rabbani, Pardis Sadat Zahraei, Tianyu Zhang, Ali Ebrahimpour-Boroojeny, Varun Chandrasekaran
arXiv AI
Sep 11

Belief-State Engine: Augmenting LLMs for Principled Planning Under Partial Observability

The paper introduces the Belief-State Engine (BSE), an inference module that supplies a large language model (LLM) with a Bayesian posterior over hidden states in a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). By keeping the raw action‑observation log hidden from the LLM, the BSE ensures the agent behaves as a sound Markov policy on the belief MDP, thereby inheriting classical POMDP optimality guarantees. Experiments on the Tiger POMDP and a red‑team attack‑graph task show that BSE‑augmented agents outperform six baselines in task return, belief calibration, and decision consistency.

By Arnab Chattopadhayay, Debdipta Halder
arXiv AI
Sep 7

From Answers to Interpretations: Rethinking Ambiguity-Induced Aleatoric Uncertainty Estimation in LLMs

The paper challenges the common practice of estimating aleatoric uncertainty in large language models (LLMs) by generating multiple clarified inputs and comparing the resulting answers. It argues that answers are unnecessary, costly, and can introduce epistemic leakage, proposing instead a clarification-only method that directly assesses ambiguity from the space of plausible interpretations. Experiments on three benchmarks show the new approach improves AUROC, reduces computational cost, and yields uncertainty estimates less correlated with epistemic uncertainty.

By Omer Nahum, Niv Nayman, Jonathan Fhima, Alon Zolfi, Jeremy Levy, Shai Mazor, Paolo Favaro
arXiv AI
Jul 7

ASK in the Dark: Uncertainty-Gated LLM Assistance under Partial Observability

arXiv:2607. 02686v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning agents operating under partial observability must act on incomplete information, making them natural candidates for guidance from small language models (SLMs) that carry broad reasoning priors.

By Juarez Monteiro, Nathan Gavenski, Guilherme Lima, Francisco Galuppo, Odinaldo Rodrigues, Adriano Veloso
arXiv AI
Aug 18

From Sequence to Structure: Relational Uncertainty Propagation for LLM Agents

The paper introduces RUPA, a trajectory‑level uncertainty quantification framework for large language model agents. RUPA models an agent’s execution as a directed graph of reasoning states, tool interactions, and environment feedback, then propagates uncertainty across this graph to capture long‑range dependencies. Experiments on benchmarks such as τ‑2, Terminal‑Bench‑2, and GAIA show that RUPA outperforms existing methods, enabling earlier failure detection and more reliable agent execution.

By Zhengzhao Ma. Boxi Cao, Yaojie Lu, Hongyu Lin, Xianpei Han, Le Sun
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 7

How to Speculate about Uncertainty in Agentic Coding? A Draft-Model Gate Method

The paper introduces Speculative Uncertainty (SU), a technique that infers a failure likelihood for black‑box LLM agents by evaluating their generated token sequences with a lightweight draft model, without needing internal model details. SU extracts phase‑aware features from reasoning and action spans, calibrates them against verifiable outcomes, and produces a failure‑likelihood score usable by downstream policies. Applying a pre‑execution veto gate based on SU to software‑engineering agents such as Qwen3‑Coder‑480B and Claude 3.5 Sonnet reduced execution error rates by 6‑8 percentage points and token costs by 14‑19 %, while maintaining performance on out‑of‑distribution benchmarks and across different agent models.

By Konstantin Grotov, Valentin Malykh
arXiv AI
Jun 10

Decoupling Thought from Speech: Knowledge-Grounded Counterfactual Reasoning for Resilient Multi-Agent Argumentation

arXiv:2606. 10475v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multi-agent debate frameworks have been shown to improve large language model performance in convergent tasks, but they are currently optimized in a way that heavily favors final output accuracy rather than stability of the process.

By Jakub Mas{\l}owski, Jaros{\l}aw A. Chudziak