arXiv AI

Uncertainty-Aware Clarification in LLM Agents with Information Gain

arXiv:2606. 03135v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM) agents often operate under underspecified user instructions, where latent uncertainty over user intent leads to erroneous tool actions.

arXiv AI
Jun 19

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.

By Gregory Matsnev
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 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
Jun 3

Adaptive Latent Agentic Reasoning

arXiv:2606. 02871v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large reasoning models improve performance by generating extended chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning, but this behavior becomes inefficient when applied to LLM agents.

By Dongwon Jung, Peng Shi, Yi Zhang, Junshan Zhang, Muhao Chen