用模板代替具体动作,让智能体更高效处理长周期任务。
The Cognitive Bandwidth Bottleneck: Shifting Long-Horizon Agent from Planning with Actions to Planning with Schemas
- 用动作模板(schema)替代具体动作序列,压缩动作空间。
- 在动作数超35后,模板法表现优于传统动作规划法。
- 适合研究大场景自主智能体或长程规划系统的人参考。
让大语言模型有效执行需长期规划和多轮交互的开放世界任务,是实现通用自主性的关键。传统方法采用动作规划(PwA),依赖可执行动作列表作为参考,但在动作空间组合爆炸(如真实开放环境)时不可行。本文系统比较两种动作表示:动作规划(PwA)与模板规划(PwS)。PwS将动作模板(如“将[物体]移到[物体]”)实例化为具体动作,以保持动作空间简洁并具备可靠扩展性,其设计契合人类认知且符合环境动作格式约束。本文提出认知带宽视角,定性分析两者差异,并在ALFWorld(约35个动作)与SciWorld(约500个动作)间观察到表示选择的拐点,证明了可扩展表示的必要性。控制实验表明:更强的规划能力使拐点右移,而更好的模板实例化则使其左移。最后针对PwS性能不足,给出构建更强大模板规划智能体的实用建议。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Enabling LLMs to effectively operate long-horizon task which requires long-term planning and multiple interactions is essential for open-world autonomy. Conventional methods adopt planning with actions where a executable action list would be provided as reference. However, this action representation choice would be impractical when the environment action space is combinatorial exploded (e.g., open-ended real world). This naturally leads to a question: As environmental action space scales, what is the optimal action representation for long-horizon agents? In this paper, we systematically study the effectiveness of two different action representations. The first one is conventional planning with actions (PwA) which is predominantly adopted for its effectiveness on existing benchmarks. The other one is planning with schemas (PwS) which instantiate an action schema into action lists (e.g., "move [OBJ] to [OBJ]" -> "move apple to desk") to ensure concise action space and reliable scalability. This alternative is motivated by its alignment with human cognition and its compliance with environment-imposed action format restriction. We propose cognitive bandwidth perspective as a conceptual framework to qualitatively understand the differences between these two action representations and empirically observe a representation-choice inflection point between ALFWorld (~35 actions) and SciWorld (~500 actions), which serve as evidence of the need for scalable representations. We further conduct controlled experiments to study how the location of this inflection point interacts with different model capacities: stronger planning proficiency shifts the inflection rightward, whereas better schema instantiation shifts it leftward. Finally, noting the suboptimal performance of PwS agents, we provide an actionable guide for building more capable PwS agents for better scalable autonomy.
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