Recent advances in equipping Large Language Models (LLMs) with search tools and outcome-reward reinforcement learning (RL) have achieved new state-of-the-art results on open-domain QA tasks. However, we argue that current training paradigms harbor a critical vulnerability: they predominantly reward correct answers but fail to penalize fabricated ones when retrieval fails, thereby implicitly exacerbating hallucinations.
arXiv:2607. 10738v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent advances in equipping Large Language Models (LLMs) with search tools and outcome-reward reinforcement learning (RL) have achieved new state-of-the-art results on open-domain QA tasks.
AdaSearch introduces a two‑stage reinforcement learning framework that separates problem solving from the decision to search in large language models. By using an F1‑based decision metric, it explicitly evaluates when external search is needed, reducing unnecessary search calls while maintaining high question‑answering performance. Experiments show that AdaSearch improves search‑decision quality with only a minor impact on accuracy compared to always‑search strategies.
The paper introduces BRIDGE, a bilevel optimization framework that jointly trains a large language model (LLM) and a retriever for agentic reinforcement learning (ARL). It demonstrates that adapting the retriever before the policy yields better rewards, and that BRIDGE outperforms existing methods on seven open‑domain QA benchmarks and medical QA tasks, achieving significant gains in accuracy and reasoning quality.
Agent skills are increasingly used to equip large language model (LLM) agents with reusable procedural knowledge. Although recent work has substantially improved skill retrieval due to the increasing skill libraries, retrieving a plausible skill bundle does not guarantee that executing it is worthwhile.
arXiv:2608. 05102v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-horizon search agents must make multiple sequential actions (steps) to search, retrieve, verify, and integrate evidence to reach a final answer.
arXiv:2608. 09168v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agent skills are increasingly used to equip large language model (LLM) agents with reusable procedural knowledge.
arXiv:2509. 25760v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: While large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong performance on factoid question answering, they are still prone to hallucination and untruthful responses, particularly when tasks demand information outside their parametric knowledge.
arXiv:2605. 01248v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) post-training has enabled newer capabilities in models, such as agentic tool-use for search.
The paper introduces a search‑aware reinforcement learning framework for multi‑component query understanding in Roblox game search. It first uses teacher‑student supervised fine‑tuning to create a schema‑compliant policy, then applies reinforcement learning that optimizes each query‑understanding component with component‑specific rewards derived from live search engine interactions. Experiments show that this approach improves per‑component utility and overall search quality, raising NDCG@20 by 8.9 points over the supervised baseline and 3.5 points over a single end‑to‑end reward strategy.
arXiv:2606. 02373v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Search agents are often trained as policies over growing transcripts: the model must decide how to search while also remembering what it has seen, which evidence is useful, which constraints remain open, and which claims have actually been checked.
The paper introduces Conformalized Agentic Search (CAS), a framework that applies Conformal Prediction to improve the reliability of search agents during reinforcement learning fine-tuning. CAS uses an Adaptive Prediction Set (APS) to dynamically truncate retrieved documents based on statistical coverage, and Adaptive Conformal Inference (ACI) to construct confidence-aware prediction sets that penalize low‑confidence trajectories in the Group Relative Policy Optimization objective. Experiments on single‑hop and multi‑hop QA datasets show that CAS enhances reasoning accuracy and reduces redundant tool invocations, offering a more reliable and efficient agent paradigm.
arXiv:2608. 07531v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Search-augmented language agents should retrieve external information only when necessary and ground their answers in retrieved evidence.