arXiv AI
Sep 25

How Reproducible Are Evaluation Conclusions? A Self-Audit of LLM-Inferred Prompt Structure

The paper investigates the reliability of ranking tables produced by small-sample evaluations of large language models (LLMs). Using LLM‑inferred prompt structure across eight model variants, the authors find that prompt‑structure recovery is highly unstable, with only the bottom of the ranking consistently reproducible. They demonstrate that standard evaluation practices can misrepresent model performance and propose reporting practices to improve transparency.

By Dipankar Sarkar
arXiv AI
Aug 26

Confident at the moment of action: belief miscalibration in LLM play under hidden information

The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) correctly gauge their confidence when acting in a hidden‑information chess variant. In experiments where the location of a hidden royal piece is repeatedly relocated, the models’ stated probabilities about the piece’s position were almost never accurate at high confidence levels, with a calibration deficit concentrated in those high‑confidence events. Across multiple model configurations and providers, the same pattern emerged, and conventional evaluation metrics such as legality, cost, latency, and completion rate were found to be uncorrelated with belief quality, yet a model could still win the game despite poor confidence estimates.

By Bhushan Kashinath Joshi
arXiv Machine Learning
2d ago

Frozen Judges, Moving Agents: Version-Dependent LLM-Judge Error and the Limits of Judge-Assisted Agent Evaluation

The paper investigates how language‑model judges can make version‑dependent errors when evaluating upgraded agents. Using 35 public coding‑agent submissions, two customer‑service agents, and over a thousand expert‑labeled trajectories, the authors show that fixed judges often reject task‑conditioned error invariance and can incorrectly approve failed patches, especially as agent capability increases. Paired audits of current outputs reduce interval width only marginally, and the study concludes that independent human patch review is still necessary.

By Jiapeng Li
arXiv AI
Sep 16

LSREP: A Longitudinal State-Replay Protocol for Evaluating Conversational Memory, with ICE v2 as an Audited Local-First Architecture

The paper introduces LSREP, a Longitudinal State‑Replay Evaluation Protocol designed to assess how conversational memory evolves over time, incorporating ordered replay, lifecycle schedules, repeated probes, evolving reference answers, and mechanism‑fidelity checks. It applies LSREP to ICE v2, a local‑first memory middleware, and reports that on three ordinary‑density datasets ICE v2 achieves near‑zero mean quality difference from vector‑RAG while using fewer fragments but slightly more prompt tokens, yet fails catastrophically on a dense dataset. In a public diagnostic, ICE v2 underperforms pure vector‑RAG on LongMemEval, revealing significant multi‑session and temporal failures and a quality‑cost trade‑off rather than superior efficiency.

By Deepesh Sonar
arXiv AI
Aug 24

Calibrating Criterion Revision in LLM Agents: Failure Modes and a Trace-Anchored Protocol

The paper introduces a framework for evaluating how large language model agents revise their success criteria after failures, defining five non‑compensatory conditions that must be met for a criterion revision to be considered valid. Using the CMB‑0.1 protocol, the authors test twelve cross‑domain scenarios across four system configurations, finding that no model trial satisfies all five conditions and highlighting specific failure modes such as zero‑state reconstruction and inadequate intervention sensitivity. They propose a more stringent trace‑anchored CMB‑0.4 protocol to better isolate and measure criterion revision in future studies.

By Guodong Xu