让大模型学会判断何时该用工具,避免盲目调用。
Adaptive Tool Use in Large Language Models with Meta-Cognition Trigger
- 用元认知信号评估模型自身能力,决定是否调用外部工具。
- 无需微调,开销极小,显著减少无效工具调用。
- 适用于各类大模型,提升复杂任务决策准确性。
大型语言模型(LLMs)展现出惊人的涌现能力,通过调用外部工具处理需要专门计算或最新数据的复杂任务。现有研究扩展了模型对多种工具(如程序解释器、搜索引擎、计算器)的访问,但忽视了工具使用的必要性,导致随意调用。这种做法带来两个问题:增加延迟,以及因与外部工具交互出错而引入错误。本文提出以元认知作为模型自我评估能力的代理,反映其对自身局限性的认识。基于此,我们设计了MeCo——一种无需微调、成本极低的自适应工具使用策略。MeCo通过捕捉表示空间中的高层认知信号量化元认知分数,指导何时调用工具。实验在多个主干模型和基准测试上验证,MeCo能可靠检测模型内部认知信号,并显著提升工具使用决策能力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable emergent capabilities, transforming the execution of functional tasks by leveraging external tools for complex problems that require specialized processing or up-to-date data. While existing research expands LLMs access to diverse tools (e.g., program interpreters, search engines, calculators), the necessity of using these tools is often overlooked, leading to indiscriminate tool invocation. This naive approach raises two key issues: increased latency due to unnecessary tool calls, and potential errors resulting from faulty interactions with external tools. In this paper, we introduce meta-cognition as a proxy for LLMs self-assessment of their capabilities, reflecting the model's awareness of its own limitations. Based on this, we propose MeCo, an adaptive decision-making strategy for external tool use. MeCo quantifies metacognitive scores by capturing high-level cognitive signals in the representation space, guiding when to invoke tools. Notably, MeCo is fine-tuning-free and incurs minimal cost. Experiments across multiple backbone models and benchmarks show that MeCo reliably detects LLMs' internal cognitive signals and significantly improves tool-use decision-making.
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