arXiv:2603. 28371v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: When an agent can articulate why something works, we typically take this as evidence of genuine understanding.
By Camilo Chac\'on Sartori
The study investigates why small language model agents tend to repeat a tool call that just failed. By recording the failed call and its error message in the transcript, the authors measure a negative corrective gain—agents are more likely to repeat the failed action, with a drop of about 1.03 nats per token. The problem is traced to the harness design rather than the model’s understanding of errors, and the authors show that replacing the verbatim call with a runtime-generated description of the failure can reduce this backfiring effect by 76%.
By Esmail Gumaan
RealCompanion is a benchmark that evaluates an AI companion’s ability to understand a human over long, real-world conversations. It consists of ten real relationships with 27,218 messages spanning up to 120 days, along with derived files such as a profile, persona, chat ground truth, and a question set that cites the relevant messages. The study finds that past context is rarely needed, memory detection is challenging, and agent systems vary widely in cost while achieving similar persona reconstruction.
By Arman Behnam, Sunglyoung Kim, Liangwei Yang
The paper defends the 'Whole Hog Thesis', arguing that sophisticated large language models such as ChatGPT are full linguistic and cognitive agents, possessing understanding, beliefs, desires, knowledge, and intentions. It rejects low‑level computational starting points and instead builds its case from high‑level behavioral observations, using Holistic Network Assumptions to link actions to mental states. The authors systematically rebut common objections—such as hallucinations and planning errors—by showing these resemble human fallibility and by challenging the necessity of traditional conditions like embodiment or semantic grounding.
By Herman Cappelen, Josh Dever
arXiv:2607. 23927v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A conversational AI that cannot tell its own output from what a user said will treat its own mistakes as user-provided facts.
By Saurabh Ranjan, Konstantina Sokratous, Brian Odegaard
arXiv:2608. 19206v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Contemporary Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly aligned to suppress hallucinations, prioritizing factual retrieval over combinatorial creativity.
By Nicolas Rodriguez-Alvarez (IES Parquesol, Valladolid, Spain)