arXiv:2606. 02132v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Agentic reinforcement learning can induce tool abuse, where models overuse external tools even for queries solvable by internal reasoning.
By Liuji Chen, Dianxing Tang, Xing Shi, Dingshuo Chen, Qiang Liu, Shu Wu, Liang Wang
The paper investigates how reinforcement learning can cause large language model agents to adopt shortcut policies for tool use, relying on superficial prompt cues rather than actual task needs. By creating synthetic environments that mix factual QA and math reasoning, the authors show that agents often invoke tools when cues are present, even when those tools are unnecessary, with spurious invocation rates rising up to 39%. They find that shortcut learning occurs mainly when agents have already mastered the target tool and that semantic alignment between cues and tools amplifies the effect. To counter this, they propose a dense, decision-level reward where an LLM judge assesses tool necessity, which reduces cue-driven tool use while maintaining performance.
By Yiwei Yang, Haoxiang Zhang, Bingbing Wen, Yao Lu, Yuchen Wu, Lei Zhang, Julian McAuley, Pan Lu, Bill Howe
arXiv:2602.00994v3 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Agentic Reinforcement Learning (ARL) trains large language models to interleave reasoning with external tool execution to solve complex tasks. Most...
By Yu Li, Mingyang Yi, Xiuyu Li, Ju Fan, Fuxin Jiang, Binbin Chen, Peng Li, Jie Song, Tieying Zhang
arXiv:2601. 15141v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Agentic Reinforcement Learning (RL) has empowered Large Language Models (LLMs) to utilize tools like Python interpreters for complex problem-solving.
By Tianshi Xu, Yuteng Chen, Meng Li
arXiv:2607. 06987v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has become the standard paradigm for enhancing the complex reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs).
By Chongyu Fan, Pengfei Liu, Jingjia Huang, Sijia Liu, Yi Lin
arXiv:2512. 13278v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Agentic reinforcement learning has advanced large language models (LLMs) to reason through long chain-of-thought trajectories while interleaving external tool use.
By Jiaru Zou, Ling Yang, Yunzhe Qi, Sirui Chen, Mengting Ai, Ke Shen, Jingrui He, Mengdi Wang