arXiv AI

TUX: Measuring Human--AI Tacit Understanding

The paper introduces TUX, a Tacit Understanding Index that measures how similarly humans and large language models (LLMs) place concepts along subjective spectra in a task inspired by the game Wavelength. Using 241 human participants and 200 profile-conditioned LLM agents across four models, the study finds that human–agent pairs with similar traits achieve higher TUX scores, indicating that tacit alignment is linked to person-level characteristics. Regression analyses show that richer predictor sets—including individual traits, decision-making styles, and confidence—improve the explainability of TUX beyond simple trait-distance baselines.

arXiv AI
Jun 9

Aligned but Not Partner-Specific: Distinguishing How Multimodal LLM Agents Succeed in Reference Games Without Human-Like Conventions

arXiv:2606. 08081v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Repeated reference games test whether interlocutors replace their initially long descriptions with shorter, partner-specific conventions grounded in shared interaction history.

By Po-Ya Angela Wang, Chinmaya Mishra, Asl{\i} \"Ozy\"urek, Paula Rubio-Fern\'andez, Esam Ghaleb
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Assessing mentalization in humans and large language models

The study evaluates mentalization—the capacity to infer others’ beliefs and intentions—in large language models (LLMs) using two economic games and cognitive computational modeling. Researchers tested 2,099 LLM agents from four model families (DeepSeek, GPT‑4.1, GPT‑5, Gemini 2.0 Flash) against opponents of varying sophistication, comparing their performance to 251 human participants. Results show that LLMs exhibit distinct mentalizing behaviors that vary by model provider and size, with strategic prompting generally enhancing performance; notably, GPT‑5 agents adapt their recursive reasoning depth to match opponent sophistication, outperforming humans in one task.

By Aamir Sohail, Xintong Zhong, Arkady Konovalov, Patricia L. Lockwood, Lei Zhang
arXiv AI
Jul 7

The Rise of Verbal Tics in Large Language Models: A Systematic Analysis Across Frontier Models

arXiv:2604. 19139v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) continue to evolve through alignment techniques such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and Constitutional AI, a growing and increasingly conspicuous phenomenon has emerged: the proliferation of verbal tics--repetitive, formulaic linguistic patterns that pervade model outputs.

By Shuai Wu, Xue Li, Yanna Feng, Yufang Li, Zhijun Wang, Ran Wang
arXiv Computer Vision
5d ago

Iron: Intent-Aligned and Retrospective Dual Learning Framework for Enhancing Generalist Virtual Agents

Iron is a new framework for training generalist virtual agents that aligns low‑level actions with high‑level intents using a stepwise cycle‑consistent reward. It also repurposes failed trajectories through a hindsight reproduction mechanism to improve learning efficiency and task diversity. Experiments show Iron‑trained agents outperform those trained with three times more data, achieving a 25.06% relative improvement on unseen web tasks and better performance on complex tasks.

By Jiahe Ying, Wendong Bu, Kaihang Pan, Bingchen Miao, Siyu Chen, Wen Wang, Xueming Jiang, Juncheng Li, Siliang Tang