arXiv AI

Clarify User Expertise: Towards Proactive Conversational Agents Tailoring Responses to User Proficiency

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 3

A Tri-Agent Framework for Evaluating and Aligning Question Clarification Capabilities of Large Language Models

The paper presents a tri‑agent framework for evaluating large language models’ question‑clarification abilities. It involves a Question Clarifying Agent that identifies ambiguities and asks follow‑up questions, a Respondent Agent that simulates human replies, and an Evaluator Agent that judges the dialogue using metrics such as ambiguity handling, question quality, dialogue efficiency, language appropriateness, and intent alignment. The authors illustrate the approach with synthetic supply‑chain data and discuss validating the evaluator against human judgments.

By Yikai Zhao, Saurabh Pandey, Pradeep Kumar Misra
arXiv AI
Aug 11

How to Ask the AI: A User Perspective Survey for Large Language Model Prompting

arXiv:2608. 07494v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AI tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), allow users to obtain instant and effective content responses simply by typing requests, such as ``plan a three-day Vienna trip'', ``solve the attached mathematical problem'', ``draft an email to inquire review progress'', etc.

By Yiqun Zhang, Yunfan Zhang, Mingjie Zhao, Sen Feng, Yiu-ming Cheung
arXiv AI
2d ago

Characterizing Web Search by Conversational LLM Agents: From Search Decisions and Strategies to Results and Responses

The study examines how conversational LLM agents—specifically ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek—use Web search, combining real user interactions with controlled API experiments. It finds that agents differ in when they decide to search, how they craft queries, and which domains they favor, and that more frequent searching does not always improve answer quality. While most responses are grounded in search results, some claims are unsupported, raising attribution concerns.

By Mahsa Amani, Seungeon Lee, Abhisek Dash, Asmaa El Fraihi, Yunah Jang, Elisabeth Kirsten, Qinyuan Wu, Krishna P. Gummadi, Manish Gupta, Abhilasha Ravichander, Muhammad Bilal Zafar, Soumi Das
arXiv AI
Sep 4

When Users Don't Ask: Benchmarking Context-Driven Memory Retrieval in Conversational Agents

The paper introduces LOCOMO-CONV, a conversational memory benchmark that expands on the existing LoCoMo dataset with four query styles—dialog, implicit, counterfactual, and composed—designed to evaluate memory systems in realistic conversational settings. Experiments across five memory systems reveal that conversational framing uncovers significant retrieval gaps missed by traditional QA benchmarks, particularly for implicit and composed queries, and that strong retrieval does not necessarily translate into higher response quality. The study also highlights silent grounding in implicit queries, where memory enhances contextual grounding without explicitly presenting the gold fact, suggesting a need for reasoning-based memory elaboration.

By Wen-Yu Chang, Yun-Nung Chen
arXiv AI
Jul 31

Ask don't tell: Reducing sycophancy in large language models

arXiv:2602. 23971v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Sycophancy, the tendency of large language models to favour user-affirming responses over critical engagement, has been identified as an alignment failure, particularly in high-stakes advisory and social contexts.

By Magda Dubois, Cozmin Ududec, Christopher Summerfield, Lennart Luettgau
arXiv AI
Jul 7

Exploring Plan Space through Conversation: An Agentic Framework for LLM-Mediated Explanations in Planning

arXiv:2603. 02070v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: When automating plan generation for a real-world sequential decision problem, the goal is often not to replace the human planner, but to facilitate an iterative reasoning and elicitation process, where the human's role is to guide the AI planner according to their preferences and expertise.

By Guilhem Fouilh\'e, Rebecca Eifler, Antonin Poch\'e, Sylvie Thi\'ebaux, Nicholas Asher