The study shows that large language model (LLM) agents are far more likely to commit to a directional prediction when presented with a professional‑looking market panel than when asked the same question directly, with commitment rates rising from 6.5% to 54.0% across 12 frontier models. Even when the panel’s data is entirely fabricated, commitment still increases significantly, indicating that the authority of the presentation, rather than the truth of the information, drives confident action. The authors demonstrate that this act/don’t‑act decision gate is narrow, model‑specific, and can be mitigated through supervised fine‑tuning, though its effectiveness depends on response format and context.
whyItMatters":"The findings reveal a specific vulnerability in LLMs where presentation style can override factual accuracy, highlighting the need for careful design and training to prevent misleading confidence in uncertain scenarios."
By Pranav Aggarwal
The paper shows that large language model agents are far more likely to commit to a directional answer when presented with a professional-looking market panel, even if the panel’s data is fabricated. Across 12 frontier models, commitment rates jump from 6.5 % for a bare question to 54.0 % with evidence, and remain high (≈37 %) even when all numbers are invented. The study finds that the act/don’t‑act decision gate is the key failure point, can be trained to reduce false commitments, but is fragile to response format changes.
arXiv:2609.21942v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: A robot that fails at a task faces the first decision in corrective dialogue: act on its own diagnosis, consult another onboard sensor, or interrupt...
By Eshika Pathak, Leela Krishna
LAVOIR is a single‑pass decision encoder that not only predicts answers to typed questions but also identifies which missing pieces of information (slots) would most improve its confidence. By placing candidate slots next to answer options, one forward pass yields both the decision distribution and the expected value of asking each slot, without requiring human labels. In controlled experiments, LAVOIR’s question policy matches a greedy oracle and improves accuracy by up to 14.1 points over never asking, while on real conversations it raises accuracy by 8.3 points with minimal questioning.
By Furkan Yilmaz, Habibe Aleyna Tasdemir, Muhammed Faruk Gozay
The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) correctly gauge their confidence when acting in a hidden‑information chess variant. In experiments where the location of a hidden royal piece is repeatedly relocated, the models’ stated probabilities about the piece’s position were almost never accurate at high confidence levels, with a calibration deficit concentrated in those high‑confidence events. Across multiple model configurations and providers, the same pattern emerged, and conventional evaluation metrics such as legality, cost, latency, and completion rate were found to be uncorrelated with belief quality, yet a model could still win the game despite poor confidence estimates.
By Bhushan Kashinath Joshi
Agentic systems increasingly gate actions on a model's own stated confidence, which assumes confidence tracks correctness at the moment of acting. We test this in a hidden-information chess variant wh...
A 0.6B language model consistently answers YES to 1,200 logical tests, yet its behavior shows no discrimination. Linear probes reveal the correct verdict with high AUC (0.96) and transfer to unseen structures, but a single scalar readout fails due to a saturated decision threshold offset by +4.6 σ. Adjusting this threshold restores behavior accuracy from 50 % to 81 % and improves higher‑scale models, demonstrating that miscalibrated readouts, not hidden knowledge loss, drive performance gaps.
By Gnaneswar Villuri, Hashmath Shaik, Alex Doboli
arXiv:2606. 11349v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In hierarchical reasoning, failures often originate at intermediate decision points where the agent commits to a wrong branch without recognizing that it lacks critical information.
By Aijing Gao, Yiming Kang, Mengdie Flora Wang, Jae Oh Woo
arXiv:2607. 08456v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A model should refuse two different things: answers it would get wrong, and questions it should not answer at all, such as unanswerable ones or ones resting on a false premise.
By Benedikt J. Wagner
arXiv:2606. 24281v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reasoning language models are increasingly asked not only to answer difficult questions, but also to estimate their likelihood of success.
By Conor Finlay, Joshua Kurien, Saurabh Dash, Marzieh Fadaee, Beyza Ermis
arXiv:2605. 27752v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Is verbalized confidence better calibrated than token likelihood?
By Hankyeol Kim, Pilsung Kang
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