The paper introduces SycoLens, a modular replay protocol that measures how large language models (LLMs) respond to pushback by tracking flip rates—instances where a model changes its answer or capitulates. By replaying items with a committed answer and a scripted user line against a control where the line is removed, the study evaluates eleven frontier models across ~760,000 controlled replays, revealing that flip effects intensify near a model’s decision boundary and that different models exhibit distinct behaviors (some correcting themselves, others abandoning correct answers). The authors propose a consolidated reporting profile to compare these behaviors and plan to release the records and analyses upon publication.
By Haonan Huang, Tianlin Zhang
arXiv:2609.22939v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Long-context models read a novel the way a person reads a printout: one token after another, in narrative order, with the whole history competing for...
By Wenji Fu
The paper investigates how short memory representations of large‑language‑model (LLM) group discussions affect final decision quality. It introduces CrossProfile, a benchmark of 480 hidden‑profile tasks that separates supporting, decoy, and irrelevant facts while keeping their wording constant. Experiments with Qwen2.5‑7B, Llama‑3.1‑8B, and DeepSeek models show that heuristics based on rarity or relevance both fail in predictable ways, and that the decision model’s social‑proof bias further degrades accuracy. Removing attribution tags or randomizing them improves performance, yet natural transcripts still lose more evidence than no notes at all.
By Anouar Imel, Imad Charradi, Abderrahman Sghir, Khalil El Khammar
The paper investigates how language models transform factual news into narrative stories, revealing that standard source‑agreement metrics misjudge the quality of these retellings. By having three model families rewrite 2,000 news articles as summaries and as stories, the authors measured changes across the five Ws and identified distortions—especially in place, causation, and accountability—that are often overlooked by fact‑checking. They found that stories tend to lose critical contextual details while amplifying accountability distortions, which can shift blame and remain undetected by conventional checks.
By Kwangsuk Park, JiWoong Yang, Vaniushkina Kseniia
The paper investigates how language models transform factual news into stories, revealing that standard source‑agreement metrics misjudge intentional changes. By rewriting 2,000 news articles into summaries and stories, the authors measured alterations across the five Ws, finding that stories often lose place and causation details while increasing accountability distortions—sometimes downplaying perpetrators. The study introduces ReTold‑2k, a corpus and scoring protocol to detect and mitigate such distortions.
The study evaluates six frontier language models on a two‑agent <log(N)>‑Questions game using Wikipedia lead paragraphs. In each game a questioner must identify a target paragraph with exactly <log2 N> yes/no questions, while an answerer only sees the target and the question and replies with a single word. Across 408 games, the models perform similarly, with Claude Opus 5 winning 28 of 68 games and the top five models showing only marginal differences; win rates decline sharply with larger document sets, following a reliability parameter of 0.928 per question.
"whyItMatters":"The results reveal how well language models can communicate under information asymmetry, highlighting that even top models struggle to extract a full bit per question and that reasoning token usage does not strongly predict success."
By Peter Potash