DiscussLLM: Teaching Large Language Models When to Speak

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Patel, Deep Anil, Melvin, Iain, Malon, Christopher, Min, Martin Renqiang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Patel, Deep Anil
Melvin, Iain
Malon, Christopher
Min, Martin Renqiang
author_facet Patel, Deep Anil
Melvin, Iain
Malon, Christopher
Min, Martin Renqiang
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in understanding and generating human-like text, yet they largely operate as reactive agents, responding only when directly prompted. This passivity creates an "awareness gap," limiting their potential as truly collaborative partners in dynamic human discussions. We introduce $\textit{DiscussLLM}$, a framework designed to bridge this gap by training models to proactively decide not just $\textit{what}$ to say, but critically, $\textit{when}$ to speak. Our primary contribution is a scalable two-stage data generation pipeline that synthesizes a large-scale dataset of realistic multi-turn human discussions. Each discussion is annotated with one of five intervention types (e.g., Factual Correction, Concept Definition) and contains an explicit conversational trigger where an AI intervention adds value. By training models to predict a special silent token when no intervention is needed, they learn to remain quiet until a helpful contribution can be made. We explore two architectural baselines: an integrated end-to-end model and a decoupled classifier-generator system optimized for low-latency inference. We evaluate these models on their ability to accurately time interventions and generate helpful responses, paving the way for more situationally aware and proactive conversational AI.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_18167
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DiscussLLM: Teaching Large Language Models When to Speak
Patel, Deep Anil
Melvin, Iain
Malon, Christopher
Min, Martin Renqiang
Computation and Language
Human-Computer Interaction
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in understanding and generating human-like text, yet they largely operate as reactive agents, responding only when directly prompted. This passivity creates an "awareness gap," limiting their potential as truly collaborative partners in dynamic human discussions. We introduce $\textit{DiscussLLM}$, a framework designed to bridge this gap by training models to proactively decide not just $\textit{what}$ to say, but critically, $\textit{when}$ to speak. Our primary contribution is a scalable two-stage data generation pipeline that synthesizes a large-scale dataset of realistic multi-turn human discussions. Each discussion is annotated with one of five intervention types (e.g., Factual Correction, Concept Definition) and contains an explicit conversational trigger where an AI intervention adds value. By training models to predict a special silent token when no intervention is needed, they learn to remain quiet until a helpful contribution can be made. We explore two architectural baselines: an integrated end-to-end model and a decoupled classifier-generator system optimized for low-latency inference. We evaluate these models on their ability to accurately time interventions and generate helpful responses, paving the way for more situationally aware and proactive conversational AI.
title DiscussLLM: Teaching Large Language Models When to Speak
topic Computation and Language
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18167