通过收益权衡优化大模型工具调用,平衡回答质量与成本
Utility-Guided Agent Orchestration for Efficient LLM Tool Use
- 设计收益导向的决策框架,动态选择回应、检索、调用工具等动作
- 相比自由推理,工具调用次数减少30%以上,延迟降低且结果更稳定
- 适合需要可控成本与可解释性的实际部署场景
使用工具的大语言模型代理常面临回答质量与执行成本之间的根本矛盾。固定流程虽稳定但缺乏灵活性,而类似ReAct的自由多步推理虽提升任务表现,却带来过多工具调用、更长轨迹、更高令牌消耗和延迟。本文将代理编排视为显式决策问题,而非完全依赖提示层行为。提出一种收益导向的编排策略,通过权衡预估收益、步骤成本、不确定性与冗余度,决定是否回应、检索、调用工具、验证或停止。目标并非追求普遍最优性能,而是提供一个可控制、可分析的框架,用于研究工具型大模型代理的质量-成本权衡。在直接回答、阈值控制、固定流程、ReAct及多种策略变体上的实验表明,显式编排信号显著影响代理行为。对成本定义、流程公平性及冗余控制的进一步分析显示,轻量级收益设计可提供合理且实用的代理控制机制。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Tool-using large language model (LLM) agents often face a fundamental tension between answer quality and execution cost. Fixed workflows are stable but inflexible, while free-form multi-step reasoning methods such as ReAct may improve task performance at the expense of excessive tool calls, longer trajectories, higher token consumption, and increased latency. In this paper, we study agent orchestration as an explicit decision problem rather than leaving it entirely to prompt-level behavior. We propose a utility-guided orchestration policy that selects among actions such as respond, retrieve, tool call, verify, and stop by balancing estimated gain, step cost, uncertainty, and redundancy. Our goal is not to claim universally best task performance, but to provide a controllable and analyzable policy framework for studying quality-cost trade-offs in tool-using LLM agents. Experiments across direct answering, threshold control, fixed workflows, ReAct, and several policy variants show that explicit orchestration signals substantially affect agent behavior. Additional analyses on cost definitions, workflow fairness, and redundancy control further demonstrate that lightweight utility design can provide a defensible and practical mechanism for agent control.
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