arXiv:2601.04748cs.AIcs.MA2026-01被引 35

用单智能体选技能替代多智能体,能省资源但规模受限。

When Single-Agent with Skills Replace Multi-Agent Systems and When They Fail

论文配图:When Single-Agent with Skills Replace Multi-Agent Systems and When They Fail
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 把多智能体通信转为单智能体内部技能选择,降低开销。
  • 技能库超过临界大小后,选择准确率骤降,呈相变特征。
  • 相似技能易混淆是主因,分层组织可缓解此问题。

多智能体系统在复杂推理中表现优异,但依赖专门智能体间显式通信,计算开销大。本文探讨能否用单个智能体从技能库中选择行为来实现类似模块化优势。将技能视为内化的智能体行为,可将多智能体系统编译为等效的单智能体系统,以技能选择替代智能体间通信。初步实验表明,该方法显著降低令牌消耗与延迟,同时在推理基准上保持竞争力。然而,这一效率提升引出一个未被充分关注的问题:技能选择能力随技能库增长如何变化?基于认知科学原理,我们提出大型语言模型(LLM)的技能选择具有类人决策的有限容量。研究发现,技能选择准确率在达到临界库大小前保持稳定,之后急剧下降,呈现类似人类认知容量限制的相变现象。进一步分析表明,语义相似性导致的混淆比库大小本身更关键。该视角提示,人类用于管理复杂选择的分层组织结构,可能同样适用于AI系统。初步实验显示,分层路由策略可有效缓解性能下降。本工作揭示了基于语义的技能选择在LLM中的根本局限,并提供了认知基础框架与可扩展设计指南。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Multi-agent AI systems have proven effective for complex reasoning. These systems are compounded by specialized agents, which collaborate through explicit communication, but incur substantial computational overhead. A natural question arises: can we achieve similar modularity benefits with a single agent that selects from a library of skills? We explore this question by viewing skills as internalized agent behaviors. From this perspective, a multi-agent system can be compiled into an equivalent single-agent system, trading inter-agent communication for skill selection. Our preliminary experiments suggest this approach can substantially reduce token usage and latency while maintaining competitive accuracy on reasoning benchmarks. However, this efficiency raises a deeper question that has received little attention: how does skill selection scale as libraries grow? Drawing on principles from cognitive science, we propose that LLM skill selection exhibits bounded capacity analogous to human decision-making. We investigate the scaling behavior of skill selection and observe a striking pattern. Rather than degrading gradually, selection accuracy remains stable up to a critical library size, then drops sharply, indicating a phase transition reminiscent of capacity limits in human cognition. Furthermore, we find evidence that semantic confusability among similar skills, rather than library size alone, plays a central role in this degradation. This perspective suggests that hierarchical organization, which has long helped humans manage complex choices, may similarly benefit AI systems. Our initial results with hierarchical routing support this hypothesis. This work opens new questions about the fundamental limits of semantic-based skill selection in LLMs and offers a cognitive-grounded framework and practical guidelines for designing scalable skill-based agents.

单智能体技能选择认知机制可扩展性

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