Papers for
customer service chatbot developers
Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.
Label wording changes improve accuracy for unfamiliar words in typed-decision models
Label-Wording Augmentation in a Typed-Decision Encoder: Gains on Unfamiliar Words, Not on Abbreviations or Codes
Abstract: Typed-decision models score options that the caller supplies at request time, so their accuracy depends on label wording that the model's developer does not control. We compare two releases of a 307M-parameter multilingual cross-encoder, Ru-Jev, trained on thirteen Russian-language tasks; the later release adds an augmentation that presents labels in several surface forms. Holding questions fixed and varying only how eighteen routing labels are worded, we evaluate ten label vocabularies, produced by three separate processes and checked for overlap with the training data, with five candidates per question and, for eight of them, also with eighteen. On held-out vocabularies made of ordinary or borrowed words (English-derived jargon, office slang, department names), the augmented release is more accurate in every setting, by up to 0.24. Eleven of these fourteen gains survive a Holm correction (slang with eighteen candidates and descriptive sentences with five do not), and for jargon on all labels the label-level interval excludes zero in both settings. On abbreviations and opaque codes it gives no usable gain: on abbreviations it is not better, and worse on the clean slice, and on opaque codes both releases stay at or below chance once labels related to training options are removed. In most cells where accuracy rises, the risk-coverage area falls, but with eighteen candidates confident errors rise on jargon and slang. On two datasets neither release saw, accuracy moves by -8.4 and +5.6 points. We also report four evaluation hazards from comparing the two releases.
Self refining prompts improve streaming text to SQL accuracy significantly
Self-Refining Prompt Induction for Streaming Text-to-SQL
Abstract: Text-to-SQL assistants for streaming engines must handle dialect-specific types, windowing rules, and temporal semantics, including constructs poorly handled by generic prompts. We present Self-Refining Prompt Induction (SRPI), an offline method that converts generation failures into reusable dialect instructions while keeping model weights fixed. A Refiner revises the Generator's prompt using reference-conditioned feedback from three LLM judges; a sampled regression guard checks earlier successes, and a separate Compressor reduces prompt length. Inference uses the frozen prompt without retrieval or query repair. We evaluate cross-domain and cross-model transfer on Confluent Cloud Flink SQL using a controlled synthetic workload seeded by 30 expert-written examples, with 335 induction examples and 257 questions from held-out domains. The same induced prompt improves mean judge scores across seven Generators by 7.1-19.2 percentage points, including an increase from 85.3% to 97.5% for the induction model. A separate compression study reduces prompt length by 52.7% with a 0.19-percentage-point score decrease. An assistant using the induced prompt is in early access, with initial user feedback to inform subsequent refinement.
Partner specific confidence guides social decision making in interactions
Partner-Specific Affective Precision in Social Active Inference
Abstract: In multi-agent social settings, model reliability varies across relationships. Beyond inferring what others will do, an agent must calibrate how confidently those inferences should guide policy selection for each relationship. An agent may maintain a well-validated model of one partner, a fragile model of another, and a model under revision for a third; collapsing these into a single confidence estimate loses information relevant to policy selection. We therefore formalize affective precision as a relationship-specific metacognitive estimate of confidence in the current partner model. Each partner's behavioral evidence updates a local confidence estimate that modulates policy precision during selection, regulating how strongly current beliefs are expressed in policy rather than changing the content of those beliefs. Simulations in a multi-partner graded trust game show that partner-local affective precision influences behavior primarily through policy commitment rather than direct improvement of partner-state inference. Because the mechanism tracks partner-response predictability rather than realized payoff, greater confidence produces sharper policy commitment without necessarily producing higher rewards. Under abrupt shifts in social behavior, confidence accumulated from previously reliable predictions can remain behaviorally active after the relationship changes, showing that confidence revision can lag behind social change. Finally, varying precision gain and priors produce distinct trust-calibration dynamics, showing how confidence accumulation and revision depend on model parameters. Together, these results show how relationship-specific affective precision can distinguish social prediction from social policy commitment.