arXiv AI
Sep 7

Adapting from Downturns: Prediction of Long-Term Conversational-Skill Development in Mental-Health Crisis Counselors

The paper introduces a method to predict whether volunteer mental‑health crisis counselors will improve their conversational skills early in their careers. It focuses on identifying moments counselors initially struggle with, tracking how they adapt to similar moments in later conversations, and using these early adaptations to forecast long‑term improvement. The approach outperforms baseline models that rely solely on conversation transcripts.

By Vivian Nguyen, Lillian Lee, Elizabeth A. Olson, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil
arXiv AI
3d ago

FIGS: Evaluating Multi-Turn Sycophancy Without Penalizing Empathy

The paper introduces FIGS, a dual‑axis evaluation framework for multi‑turn sycophancy that avoids penalizing empathy. It uses a 10‑turn conversational simulator with 500 diverse scenarios to test whether models stay truthful while keeping praise proportional, and whether they show calibrated validation of user feelings. The study finds that current models either drift toward sycophancy or become overly detached, highlighting an unresolved trade‑off in sustained dialogue.

By Sidharth Pulipaka, Ruta Binkyte, Ivaxi Sheth, Sahar Abdelnabi