arXiv:2608.16707cs.CLcs.AI2026-08

语言标签会误导大模型决策,让其过度依赖语义先验。

Semantic Bandits: In-Context Exploration-Exploitation is Biased by Semantic Priors

论文配图:Semantic Bandits: In-Context Exploration-Exploitation is Biased by Semantic Priors
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用带语义标签的多臂老虎机测试模型探索行为
  • 语义标签与奖励一致时提升性能,不一致则严重下降
  • 负奖励引发更多探索,反映预训练数据的奖励习惯偏差

大型语言模型(LLMs)越来越多地被用于需要复杂环境探索的决策场景。然而,现有研究质疑这些模型如何真正平衡探索与利用。不同于传统智能体,LLM通过自然语言与任务交互,从而暴露于无正式对应关系的语义信息中。本文提出语义老虎机(Semantic Bandit),在多臂老虎机框架中显式引入动作的文本标签,研究语义先验——即预训练期间从语言与预期奖励关联中学习到的归纳偏置——如何影响LLM的探索行为。结果发现,语义丰富的动作标签会减少探索、增强利用:当标签与奖励结构对齐时性能提升,偏离时则显著下降。此外,负奖励触发的探索远多于等量正奖励,符合预训练数据中普遍存在的奖励尺度偏差。总体而言,以语言定义环境和奖励会引入不可避免的偏差,源于模型训练基于词共现,这对现实决策场景中LLM代理的可靠性与鲁棒性构成挑战。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as decision-making agents in settings that require sophisticated environmental exploration. However, existing work has raised questions about how LLMs actually balance exploration and exploitation. Unlike classical agents, LLM agents engage with tasks through natural language, exposing them to semantic information with no formal counterpart in the task structure. We introduce the semantic bandit, an extension of the multi-armed bandit setting that explicitly considers the textual labels assigned to actions, and use it to study how semantic priors --- inductive biases arising from associations between language and expected reward learned during pre-training, shape LLM exploration behaviour. We find that semantically informative action labels reduce exploration in favour of exploitation, improving performance when aligned with the reward structure and severely degrading it when misaligned. We further find that negative rewards trigger substantially more exploration than equivalent positive rewards, consistent with an expected-scale bias induced by reward conventions common in pre-training data. Overall, we argue that the use of language to define the environment and rewards introduces unavoidable biases derived from the fact that the model is trained on word co-occurence, with implications for the reliability and robustness of LLM agents in real-world decision-making settings.

语言模型决策偏差探索利用

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