arXiv AI
Jun 15
Can Editing 1 Neuron Fix Repetition Loops in LLMs?
arXiv:2606. 13705v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Yes.
Visible but Not Avoided: State-Dependent Re-Proposal of Rejected Candidates in Catalog-Based LLM Optimization Loops
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arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 8
The Winner's Curse in LLM Self-Improvement Loops: Selection Noise, Lock-in, and Acceptance Rules
The paper investigates how self‑improving large language models (LLMs) can suffer from the winner’s curse when selecting better candidates based on noisy evaluation sets. By modeling correlated errors and empirically testing Qwen models that rewrite their own instructions, the authors find that most proposals after the first are harmful and that the reported gains on the selection set often overstate true held‑out performance. The study shows that larger selection sets can improve held‑out gains on some tasks (e.g., TREC) but not others (e.g., GSM8K), and that common acceptance rules do not outperform simple greedy selection across entire runs.
arXiv AI
Aug 26
When Can One Neuron Fix Repetition Loops in LLMs?
The paper investigates whether targeted edits to a few internal components of Gemma 4 instruction‑tuned models can reduce persistent repetition loops that occur during long factual enumeration prompts. By combining per‑layer ablation with per‑neuron attribution, the authors identify specific neurons whose weight edits dramatically lower loop frequency—one sign‑inverted neuron suffices for Gemma 4 E2B. Across all four Gemma variants, loop occurrences drop from 46/384 to 12/384 on held‑out prompts, while general‑purpose benchmarks show no significant regressions. The study also demonstrates that similar sparse edits can mitigate repetition in other families such as Qwen3.5 and LFM2.5, though the effect varies.
arXiv AI
Sep 3
Belief-Calibrated Optimization: An Explicit World Model for Agentic Optimization
The paper introduces Belief-Calibrated Optimization (BCO), a method that records and updates a persistent in‑context document representing an agent’s belief about how the environment responds to edits. By continually revising this world model as new candidates are evaluated, BCO improves the performance of frozen LLM agents across five benchmarks, outperforming a control lacking the world model. An offline ablation shows that the document’s content provides reusable, accurate predictions of environmental responses, beyond mere form.
arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 9
TRACE: Diagnosing Verifier Brittleness in Agentic Evaluation
The paper introduces TRACE, a protocol designed to diagnose whether changes in verifier scores for large language model agents reflect actual changes in agent behavior or merely alterations in the evaluation process. TRACE works by applying targeted changes to evaluation components, running paired experiments, and re‑scoring unchanged trajectories to isolate the source of score variation. Experiments on synthetic tasks and public benchmark tasks demonstrate that seemingly significant score shifts can often be attributed to evaluation artifacts, while TRACE can also detect genuine behavioral changes.
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 24
Exact Feedback Is Not Control: Evaluating Text-based Closed-Loop Revision in LLMs
The paper introduces a fixed‑budget revision protocol that uses deterministic verifiers to expose all remaining violations across exact‑length, lexical, and compositional constraints, thereby isolating model‑side revision behavior. Experiments on 19 open‑ and closed‑source LLMs show wide variability in controller‑level success, with some models achieving up to 99.8% success while others remain below 20%. Controlled studies reveal that post‑training and scale affect model responses to exact feedback, but do not consistently improve exact correction, and that recurrence of earlier outputs is linked to lower recoverability.
arXiv AI
6d ago
Running Fewer Loops Removes Refusal Behaviour in Recurrent-Depth Language Models
arXiv:2610.15218v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A recurrent-depth language model reuses one block of weights several times in a row. The number of repetitions, which we call loops, is chosen when the...
arXiv AI
Jun 29
When Is an LLM Worth It for Hyperparameter Optimization? A Budget-Matched Study on Tabular Data Finds the Warm-Start Is a Default Configuration, Not the Model
arXiv:2606. 21641v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been proposed as hyperparameter-optimization (HPO) advisors that "warm-start" search from prior knowledge, proposing strong configurations in very few evaluations.
arXiv AI
Oct 5
VERSE: Verified Self-Evolving Optimizer for Agent Harnesses
The paper introduces VERSE, a Verified Self‑Evolving optimizer that enhances LLM agent harnesses by allowing the optimizer to test edits, replay failures, and perturb steps while tracking fixes and regressions. VERSE builds its own tools for failure analysis, verification, training audits, and workflow control, and uses this feedback to revise the harness’s prompts, skills, tools, hooks, and notes without changing model weights. In experiments across five executors and multiple languages, VERSE improves all evaluated harness optimizers, achieving higher accuracy on held‑out and out‑of‑distribution tasks compared to the strongest baselines.
arXiv AI
Jun 9
PACE: Anytime-Valid Acceptance Tests for Self-Evolving Agents
arXiv:2606. 08106v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Self-evolving agents improve by repeatedly proposing changes to their own prompts, skills, or workflows and keeping those that score higher on a small held-out set.
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 25
Reclaim Evaluation: A Lossy Memory Is Worse Than an Empty One
arXiv:2606. 25449v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A language model's memory can be worse than having no memory at all.
arXiv AI
Jun 10
Regimes: An Auditable, Held-Out-Gated Improvement Loop Demonstrated on LongMemEval with ActiveGraph
arXiv:2606. 10241v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous improvement loops are hard to trust because the improvement process is usually external scaffolding bolted onto the agent: failures go unlogged, diagnoses cannot be replayed, and promote-or-discard decisions land in a side database rather than the agent's own history.