arXiv AI By Shan Peng, Shuaiqi Cheng, Miao Peng, Chenyi Zi, Jia Li

DMAIC-Bench: From Self-Reflection to Self-Restraint for Agents in Multi-Stage Analytical Tasks

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DMAIC-Bench is a new benchmark that tests large‑language‑model agents on their ability to exercise self‑restraint—deciding when to continue, redirect, or stop a multi‑stage analytical task based on intermediate evidence. It contains 97 seeded tasks across 15 industrial cases in four sectors, with paired counterfactual variants that require opposite actions to distinguish warranted restraint from indiscriminate stopping. Evaluation involves a private scorer for execution traces and independent expert review, revealing that while agents often route correctly on GO decisions, they frequently act on invalid evidence at NO‑GO decisions, with a 47% average error rate. whyItMatters":"The benchmark provides a systematic way to measure whether agents can appropriately use evidence to control their own actions, a capability that current benchmarks largely overlook."

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