Learning to Ask: When LLM Agents Meet Unclear Instruction

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Wenxuan, Shi, Juluan, Ling, Zixuan, Chan, Yuk-Kit, Wang, Chaozheng, Lee, Cheryl, Yuan, Youliang, Huang, Jen-tse, Jiao, Wenxiang, Lyu, Michael R.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Wang, Wenxuan
Shi, Juluan
Ling, Zixuan
Chan, Yuk-Kit
Wang, Chaozheng
Lee, Cheryl
Yuan, Youliang
Huang, Jen-tse
Jiao, Wenxiang
Lyu, Michael R.
author_facet Wang, Wenxuan
Shi, Juluan
Ling, Zixuan
Chan, Yuk-Kit
Wang, Chaozheng
Lee, Cheryl
Yuan, Youliang
Huang, Jen-tse
Jiao, Wenxiang
Lyu, Michael R.
contents Equipped with the capability to call functions, modern large language models (LLMs) can leverage external tools for addressing a range of tasks unattainable through language skills alone. However, the effective execution of these tools relies heavily not just on the advanced capabilities of LLMs but also on precise user instructions, which often cannot be ensured in the real world. To evaluate the performance of LLMs tool-use under imperfect instructions, we meticulously examine the real-world instructions queried from users, analyze the error patterns, and build a challenging tool-use benchmark called Noisy ToolBench (NoisyToolBench). We find that due to the next-token prediction training objective, LLMs tend to arbitrarily generate the missed argument, which may lead to hallucinations and risks. To address this issue, we propose a novel framework, Ask-when-Needed (AwN), which prompts LLMs to ask questions to users whenever they encounter obstacles due to unclear instructions. Moreover, to reduce the manual labor involved in user-LLM interaction and assess LLMs performance in tool utilization from both accuracy and efficiency perspectives, we design an automated evaluation tool named ToolEvaluator. Our experiments demonstrate that the AwN significantly outperforms existing frameworks for tool learning in the NoisyToolBench. We will release all related code and datasets to support future research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_00557
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning to Ask: When LLM Agents Meet Unclear Instruction
Wang, Wenxuan
Shi, Juluan
Ling, Zixuan
Chan, Yuk-Kit
Wang, Chaozheng
Lee, Cheryl
Yuan, Youliang
Huang, Jen-tse
Jiao, Wenxiang
Lyu, Michael R.
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Software Engineering
Equipped with the capability to call functions, modern large language models (LLMs) can leverage external tools for addressing a range of tasks unattainable through language skills alone. However, the effective execution of these tools relies heavily not just on the advanced capabilities of LLMs but also on precise user instructions, which often cannot be ensured in the real world. To evaluate the performance of LLMs tool-use under imperfect instructions, we meticulously examine the real-world instructions queried from users, analyze the error patterns, and build a challenging tool-use benchmark called Noisy ToolBench (NoisyToolBench). We find that due to the next-token prediction training objective, LLMs tend to arbitrarily generate the missed argument, which may lead to hallucinations and risks. To address this issue, we propose a novel framework, Ask-when-Needed (AwN), which prompts LLMs to ask questions to users whenever they encounter obstacles due to unclear instructions. Moreover, to reduce the manual labor involved in user-LLM interaction and assess LLMs performance in tool utilization from both accuracy and efficiency perspectives, we design an automated evaluation tool named ToolEvaluator. Our experiments demonstrate that the AwN significantly outperforms existing frameworks for tool learning in the NoisyToolBench. We will release all related code and datasets to support future research.
title Learning to Ask: When LLM Agents Meet Unclear Instruction
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.00557