Rational Clarification by Assistive Agents via Value-of-Information Reasoning
Quick summary
arXiv:2609.37588v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Users of language-based assistive agents often make ambiguous requests. In response, an assistant can either directly act on its interpretation of the request --- risking misalignment with the user --- or ask a clarifying question. Which option is the most safe and helpful? A common approach is to ask questions that minimize uncertainty about the user's intent until a threshold is reached. However, this neglects the impact of uncertainty reduction on downstream performance, the costs of asking versus acting immediately, and the possibility that u
Key takeaways
- arXiv:2609.37588v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Users of language-based assistive agents often make ambiguous requests.
- In response, an assistant can either directly act on its interpretation of the request --- risking misalignment with the user --- or ask a clarifying question.
- Which option is the most safe and helpful?
Why it matters
“Rational Clarification by Assistive Agents via Value-of-Information Reasoning” should be evaluated beyond branding and benchmark scores. Its practical importance will emerge in task accuracy, latency, unit cost, safety and integration with real workflows.
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