arXiv:2506.17419cs.CLcs.AI2025-06被引 34

提出UProp框架,量化大模型多步决策中的不确定性传播。

UProp: Investigating the Uncertainty Propagation of LLMs in Multi-Step Agentic Decision-Making

  • 用互信息分解决策不确定性,区分内在与外在不确定
  • 在AgentBench和HotpotQA上优于现有单轮量化方法
  • 适合安全关键场景中对大模型决策可信度评估

随着大语言模型(LLMs)被应用于涉及多步序列决策的现实世界安全关键任务,明确何时可信任其决策至关重要。现有不确定性量化(UQ)方法主要针对单轮问答设计,难以覆盖多步决策场景,如大模型代理系统。本文提出一种基于信息论的严谨框架,将多步决策不确定性分解为两部分:(i) 当前决策的内在不确定性,聚焦于已有UQ方法;(ii) 外在不确定性,即互信息(MI)量,描述前序决策带来的不确定性继承。据此提出UProp,一种高效有效的外在不确定性估计器,将直接估计MI转化为在多个轨迹依赖决策过程(TDPs)上估计点互信息(PMI)。UProp在包括AgentBench和HotpotQA在内的广泛多步决策基准上,使用GPT-4.1和DeepSeek-V3等前沿模型进行评估。实验结果表明,UProp显著优于配备合理聚合策略的现有单轮UQ基线。此外,我们提供了对UProp的全面分析,涵盖采样效率、潜在应用及中间不确定性传播,验证其有效性。代码将发布于https://github.com/jinhaoduan/UProp。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

As Large Language Models (LLMs) are integrated into safety-critical applications involving sequential decision-making in the real world, it is essential to know when to trust LLM decisions. Existing LLM Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) methods are primarily designed for single-turn question-answering formats, resulting in multi-step decision-making scenarios, e.g., LLM agentic system, being underexplored. In this paper, we introduce a principled, information-theoretic framework that decomposes LLM sequential decision uncertainty into two parts: (i) internal uncertainty intrinsic to the current decision, which is focused on existing UQ methods, and (ii) extrinsic uncertainty, a Mutual-Information (MI) quantity describing how much uncertainty should be inherited from preceding decisions. We then propose UProp, an efficient and effective extrinsic uncertainty estimator that converts the direct estimation of MI to the estimation of Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI) over multiple Trajectory-Dependent Decision Processes (TDPs). UProp is evaluated over extensive multi-step decision-making benchmarks, e.g., AgentBench and HotpotQA, with state-of-the-art LLMs, e.g., GPT-4.1 and DeepSeek-V3. Experimental results demonstrate that UProp significantly outperforms existing single-turn UQ baselines equipped with thoughtful aggregation strategies. Moreover, we provide a comprehensive analysis of UProp, including sampling efficiency, potential applications, and intermediate uncertainty propagation, to demonstrate its effectiveness. Codes will be available at https://github.com/jinhaoduan/UProp.

大模型不确定性决策推理

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