提出认知摩擦框架,让工具型智能体更聪明地决定何时停顿、如何选信息。
Cognitive Friction: A Decision-Theoretic Framework for Bounded Deliberation in Tool-Using Agents
- 用三元认知架构建模决策,结合网络拥堵与信息质量动态定价。
- 在两个测试环境里,比贪心策略快10%以上,资源效率提升36~33点。
- 适合做受限环境下智能体的决策优化,尤其对时间紧迫任务有效。
在网络化环境中,自主工具使用代理需决定查询哪个信息源以及何时停止查询并采取行动。缺乏对信息获取成本的合理约束会导致系统性失效:拥堵下过度使用工具、时间衰减下长期犹豫、证据模糊时行为脆弱。本文提出三元认知架构(TCA),通过认知摩擦的形式化机制建模这些失效模式。TCA结合非线性滤波、依赖拥堵的成本动态和哈密顿-雅可比-贝尔曼(HJB)最优停止理论,将推理过程建模为联合信念-拥堵状态的随机控制问题,显式根据工具信号质量和实时网络负载定价信息。TCA生成基于HJB的停止边界,并给出基于滚动计算的信念相关价值信息近似解,具备净效用停止条件。我们在两个受控环境(EMDG 和 NSTG)中验证了TCA,分别隔离了停止质量、拥堵下的动作选择和时间紧迫性。TCA在不降低准确率的前提下,显著减少行动时间并改善资源表现,在 EMDG 中获得36个可行性积分,在 NSTG 中获得33个完整性积分,优于贪心基线。消融实验表明,选择与停止必须联合优化,仅优化停止规则最多恢复4个可行性积分。对 α、β、λ_S 的敏感性分析显示准确率稳定且权衡可解释;对 η 值(0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5)的延续值分析表明,在高时间紧迫性下 η=0 最优。最后,我们展示了在黑箱大模型上基于记忆无关语料的实例,使用可实证计算的不确定性与信息价值代理实现相同停止原则。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Autonomous tool-using agents in networked environments must decide which information source to query and when to stop querying and act. Without principled bounds on information-acquisition costs, unconstrained agents exhibit systematic failure modes: excessive tool use under congestion, prolonged deliberation under time decay, and brittle behavior under ambiguous evidence. We propose the Triadic Cognitive Architecture (TCA), a decision-theoretic framework that formalizes these failure modes via cognitive friction. By combining nonlinear filtering, congestion-dependent cost dynamics, and HJB optimal stopping, TCA models deliberation as stochastic control over a joint belief-congestion state, explicitly pricing information by tool signal quality and live network load. TCA yields an HJB-inspired stopping boundary and a computable rollout-based approximation of belief-dependent value-of-information with a net-utility halting condition. We validate TCA in two controlled environments (EMDG and NSTG) designed to isolate stopping quality, action selection under congestion, and temporal urgency. TCA improves resource outcomes while reducing time-to-action without degrading accuracy, gaining 36 viability points in EMDG and 33 integrity points in NSTG over greedy baselines. Ablations show that selection and stopping must be optimized jointly, as stopping rules alone recover at most 4 viability points. Sensitivity sweeps over alpha, beta, and lambda_S yield stable accuracy and interpretable trade-offs, and a continuation-value sweep over eta values 0, 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 finds eta equal to zero is optimal under high temporal urgency. Finally, we demonstrate an illustrative instantiation around a black-box LLM on a memorisation-free corpus, where the same stopping principle executes using empirically computable uncertainty and value-of-information proxies.
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