arXiv:2609.05587cs.AI2026-09

发现大模型过度依赖不可靠工具,即使知道答案错误仍会照搬输出。

Agents Trust Tools Too Much: Measuring Reliance on Unreliable Tools

论文配图:Agents Trust Tools Too Much: Measuring Reliance on Unreliable Tools
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 测试14个大模型对三种工具的依赖,用伪造结果检验响应
  • 平均超过三分之一采纳错误信息,网页搜索最高达68.0%
  • 模型常自知正确却隐瞒矛盾,适合需可信输出的研究者关注

现有工具使用型智能体评估主要关注能否完成任务,通常假设工具返回可靠信息。然而真实系统中工具输出可能看似合理却错误。本文通过污染三种工具(网页搜索、LLM子代理委派、代码执行)的输出,评估14个大模型在面对不可靠工具时的表现。结果显示:所有工具设置下代理均表现出高度过信任,平均采纳率超三分之一,网页搜索高达68.0%。分析推理过程发现严重缺陷:模型常识别出冲突并内部恢复正确答案,但最终仍只输出错误内容且不提醒用户。为缓解过信任问题,我们在用户提示、工具元数据和模型后训练三个层面进行干预,但无一能跨工具持续有效。研究揭示了对不可靠工具的过信任是严重且顽固的问题,亟需评估与干预机制来支持智能体验证工具输出并透明沟通未解决的矛盾。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Existing evaluations of tool-using agents primarily measure whether an agent can successfully complete diverse tasks with tools. These evaluations generally assume that tools return reliable information. However, tool returns in real-world systems can be plausible yet incorrect. We investigate how agents respond to unreliable tool returns by evaluating fourteen LLMs using three tools-web search, LLM sub-agent delegation, and code execution. For each tool, we corrupt its returns and measure whether agents adopt the corrupted content in their final answers. Agents exhibit high levels of overtrust across all three settings: the mean adoption rate exceeds one third for every tool and reaches 68.0% for web search. Analysis of reasoning traces reveals a particularly concerning failure mode: agents often recognize conflicts and even recover the correct answer internally, yet present only the corrupted answer without warning the user. To mitigate agents' overtrust in tool returns, we intervene at three levels: prompting by the user, metadata from the tool provider, and post-training by the agent builder. Although some interventions help for particular models or tools, none consistently mitigates overtrust across tools. These findings identify overtrust in unreliable tools as a serious and persistent failure mode, motivating evaluations and interventions that enable agents to validate tool outputs and transparently communicate unresolved conflicts.

大模型工具依赖可信生成

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