Papers for

customer support centers

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.

LLM learns to facilitate group tasks with less friction and more comfort

Learning to GUIDE the Group: Self-Learning LLM Facilitation Across Multi-Party Tasks

Abstract: As large language models are increasingly adopted as multi-party communication facilitators, there is a growing demand for agents capable of balancing diverse group dynamics across contexts. However, existing LLM facilitators are often fine-tuned for task-specific objectives; generalized LLM-based facilitation methods that can adapt to different types of tasks and diverse group dynamics are underdeveloped. To address this gap, we present GUIDE (Generalized Unified Intervention for Dynamic Exchanges, a framework for developing generalized LLM-based facilitators across different multi-party contexts. GUIDE evaluates facilitation across both objective task outcomes and subjective metrics, including psychological safety and perceived friction. Within this framework, we study whether LLMs can self-learn generalized facilitation strategy offline to real-time interventions. We first collect multi-party human interactions guided by task-specific expert LLM facilitators (N=432 conversations). We then employ a self-learning method in which an LLM induces an actionable strategic playbook from conversations and iteratively refines it using feedback from an LLM judge aligned with human annotators (N=20), developing a single generalized facilitator that outperforms the three task-specific expert facilitators on held-out conversations 61.4% win rate. Finally, we evaluate these improvements empirically; in a real-time online empirical study, the self-learned generalized facilitator preserves facilitator performance and group productivity, improves speaking comfort and reduces interpersonal friction, while using 24.7% fewer turns and 29.0% fewer words than the expert prompts. These findings provide empirical evidence that LLMs can learn generalizable, task-agnostic social facilitation from task-specific human interactions, on-par with hand-crafted task-specific prompts across diverse group settings.

Mon 12 OctArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Facilitating group conversations is hard because different people and tasks require different approaches. The authors created a method where a large language model (LLM) learns how to guide group discussions by studying many example talks led by expert LLM facilitators. This new model can help groups work better and feel more comfortable while using fewer words and turns to keep the conversation smooth. Their tests show this approach works well across different kinds of tasks without needing to be retrained for each one.
Open → 2610.16231v1

Multi agent systems improve collaboration by limiting role overstepping

Mind Your Own Role: Reducing Role Overstepping for Effective and Efficient Multi-Agent Collaboration via Dynamic Role Activation Steering

Abstract: Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have shown strong capability in solving complex tasks by assigning different agents specialized roles and corresponding subtasks. However, agents may overstep their assigned responsibilities and perform subtasks belonging to other roles, which can disrupt workflow, reduce system efficiency, and degrade task performance. To address this issue, we investigate role-related patterns in the model's internal activation space and uncover two key observations: (i) role instructions induce consistent directional shifts in activation space, and (ii) role-adherent and role-overstepping trajectories exhibit distinct activation patterns. Based on these observations, we propose Dynamic Role Activation Steering (DRAS), a lightweight and effective inference-time activation intervention approach to reduce role overstepping in multi-agent collaboration. Specifically, DRAS constructs a role steering vector and a lightweight role-overstepping detector for each role. During LLM generation, the detector estimates the probability of role overstepping from the current activation state, and DRAS dynamically adjusts the steering strength accordingly to guide the agent toward its assigned responsibilities. Experimental results show that DRAS effectively reduces the number of role-overstepping trajectories by up to 86.6% compared with Vanilla MAS, thereby improving task quality score by 10.0%--11.1%, achieving a 1.50$\times$--1.61$\times$ task-completion speedup, and reducing token consumption by 26.8%--38.7%.

Sun 11 OctMultiagent Systems
The gist
When multiple AI agents work together on tasks, each agent has a specific role to play. Sometimes agents try to do work meant for others, which can cause confusion and slow things down. The authors found that they can detect and gently guide agents back to their own roles during task execution. Their method, called Dynamic Role Activation Steering, helps agents stick to their roles and makes teamwork more efficient and accurate.
Open → 2610.15907v1

Multi-agent systems evolve workflows to reduce redundant computation

Inherit-MAS: Test-Time Evolution of Multi-Agent Systems through Workflow and Execution Inheritance

Abstract: Multi-agent systems (MAS) built from large language models coordinate specialized agents to tackle complex tasks, but effective workflows are difficult to design in advance. Test-time evolution refines workflows using execution feedback, yet broad revisions can disturb useful components, while re-executing unchanged requests can incur redundant computation. Inspired by the interplay of inheritance and selection in biological evolution, we introduce Inherit-MAS, which makes inheritance explicit at the workflow and execution levels. A meta-model first synthesizes a workflow of worker agents with declared roles, communication inputs, and tool permissions, and a separately prompted judge scores each executed candidate and diagnoses its deficiencies. In ordinary refinement rounds, \emph{workflow inheritance} starts from the latest completed candidate, may discard removable nodes judged unhelpful, and applies a validated edit to address the diagnosed deficiency. When the new candidate executes, \emph{execution inheritance} inherits eligible stored results only if the complete resolved request and execution context match, avoiding redundant model and tool calls. With GPT-4o-mini workers, Inherit-MAS achieves 55.4\% completion on WorkBench and 49.7\% joint F1 on HotpotQA FullWiki, outperforming EvoAgent, EvoMAS, and TacoMAS. With Qwen3-32B workers, it also exceeds these evolving-MAS baselines on both benchmarks. Compared with rerunning the same controller with execution inheritance disabled, execution inheritance reduces worker-token usage by 29.1\% on WorkBench and 34.6\% on HotpotQA, and total token usage by 5.3\% and 18.1\%.

Thu 1 OctMachine LearningArtificial Intelligence
The gist
Multi-agent systems made from language models help solve complex tasks by dividing work among specialized agents, but designing good workflows beforehand is hard. The authors propose Inherit-MAS, a method that evolves these workflows during test time by learning from past execution feedback and reusing useful parts without repeating work unnecessarily. It borrows ideas from biological inheritance to make workflow changes more efficient and reduces the amount of repeated computation. Their approach outperforms earlier systems on complex task benchmarks and uses fewer computational resources.
Open → 2610.02396v1

Selectively sharing information improves human decisions under budget constraints

Should I stay or should I show? Learning to selectively disclose information

Abstract: In many high-stakes settings, human decision-makers can acquire support information before making a decision. However, acquiring information is costly, and disclosure may fail to improve human decisions or may even impair them. We tackle this problem by studying selective disclosure, i.e., the problem of learning when to reveal support information to a human decision-maker under a budget constraint. We first show that the optimal policy is a threshold rule on the Value of Information (VoI), i.e., the expected reduction in human decision risk induced by disclosure. Since VoI is unknown in practice, we estimate the regime-specific human risks and bound the possible degradation of the resulting plug-in policy relative to lack of disclosure, as well as its regret relative to the optimal policy. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that selective disclosure outperforms both no disclosure and full disclosure, regardless of whether the support information is beneficial or harmful. Two user studies show that human-AI team performance can improve when disclosure is led by our learned policy and not human-selected, although this advantage varies across tasks. A counterfactual benchmark, which replaces participants' predictions with a machine-learning prediction when disclosure occurs, suggests that these differences might depend on lower adherence to advice when the information is automatically provided rather than self-requested.

Wed 30 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Sometimes people get extra information to help make big decisions, but getting and sharing this info costs time and effort, and can sometimes confuse rather than help. The authors studied how to decide when it's best to share helpful information and when it's better not to. They found a smart rule based on weighing the value of the information against costs and risks. Their experiments showed sharing only useful info at the right times helps people make better choices compared to always sharing or never sharing. They also tested this with real human teams and found their approach often improves teamwork between people and AI.
Open → 2609.39818v1

Full duplex voice agents adapt speech while others talk

Continue, Adapt, or Yield: In-Turn Adaptation to Overlapping Speech in Full-Duplex Agents

Abstract: Full-duplex evaluation often emphasizes whether an agent keeps speaking or stops. That binary cannot express a third response humans use routinely: continuing to speak while incorporating what the listener just contributed. The contribution may be a missing word, a correction or a clarification. We introduce Duplex Cue, an evaluation of this \emph{in-turn adaptation} in full-duplex voice agents. Duplex Cue separates listener intent (backchannel, collaboration, or interruption) from speaker behavior: continuing unchanged, adapting within the turn, or yielding. Adaptation includes acknowledgment as well as content revision. In a single-model case study using 300 human-confirmed cues from unscripted English conversations, we compare recorded human responses with PersonaPlex continuations generated while replaying the listener's audio. We retain 208 pairs with the ongoing speaker active at cue onset and a scorable response in each condition. On the 66 collaborative pairs, recorded speakers adapt in 68.2\% of cases, compared with 34.8\% for PersonaPlex. The model otherwise continues unchanged (42.4\%) or yields (22.7\%). These findings show why evaluating natural voice interaction requires measuring how an agent responds to a listener's contribution as well as whether it keeps speaking.

Fri 11 SeptComputation and LanguageSound
The gist
Talking with a voice-controlled assistant can be tricky when people speak at the same time. The authors point out that humans don’t just stop or continue speaking when interrupted; they often adjust their words on the fly to include what the other person said. They developed a new way, called Duplex Cue, to measure how well AI voice agents do this kind of in-turn adaptation. Testing with a model named PersonaPlex showed it adapts less than humans, suggesting current AI still struggles with natural back-and-forth talking.
Open → 2609.13117v1

Deep learning powers faster bug report sorting and assignment

Deep Learning-based Bug Triage System

Abstract: Effective bug triage is crucial for streamlining the software development lifecycle by accurately categorizing and assigning reported software defects. In this paper, we propose an automated bug triage system built upon the pre-trained RoBERTa-base transformer architecture. By leveraging deep contextual representations, our approach efficiently classifies incoming bug reports to optimize assignment. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed system achieves a strong bug identification accuracy of 0.90 within just five training epochs. These findings highlight the efficiency and high performance of fine-tuned transformer models for practical software engineering automation.

Thu 10 SeptSoftware Engineering
The gist
Software teams need to quickly figure out what kind of problems users report and who should fix them. The authors created a system that uses a powerful AI called RoBERTa to read bug reports and decide their category and who should handle them. Their system gets this right 90% of the time after just a bit of training. This shows that these AI models can help automate and speed up software maintenance.
Open → 2609.11420v1

LLM answer review ranking cuts wrong-answer exposure with limited checks

Risk Is Not Review Value: Wrong-Answer Exposure Under Bounded Review Budgets

Abstract: LLM assistants often produce more answers than humans can review before users see them. Most evaluations ask whether an answer is wrong, unsupported, or low-confidence. Bounded review budgets instead ask which answers should be checked first under a fixed review budget. Risk alone is not enough: a high-risk answer may be hard to repair, while a moderately risky answer may be directly correctable from available evidence. For generated-answer evaluation, we model review prioritization as exposure reduction, where review value combines estimated wrongness, intervention affordance, impact, and cost. We evaluate review queues with Wrong-Answer Exposure Ratio (WAER), the fraction of wrong answers left unreviewed, and post-repair residual exposure (PRRE), the fraction still exposed after deterministic benchmark-supported repairs. PRRE uses repairability rules that do not numerically reuse the affordance scores used for ranking. On a 720-item TAT-QA/SciFact stress benchmark, review-value ranking keeps answer-level WAER nearly unchanged at 20% budget (0.605 vs. 0.600) but lowers PRRE from 0.881 to 0.716. These results show that trustworthy LLM evaluation should measure not only error detection, but also how limited review capacity reduces exposed wrong answers.

Mon 7 SeptArtificial IntelligenceComputation and Language
The gist
Large AI assistants often produce more answers than people can check before use. The authors point out that just spotting risky answers isn’t enough because some mistakes are easier to fix than others. They propose a method to prioritize which answers to review based on how wrong they are, how easy they are to fix, their impact, and review cost. Testing on a science question benchmark shows their method leaves fewer wrong answers exposed after limited human checks and automatic fixes. This means review systems should consider not just error detection but how reviewing reduces overall wrong answers.
Open → 2609.07095v1