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| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04508 |
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| _version_ | 1866915611551989760 |
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| author | Bijoy, Biddut Sarker Hasan, Mohammad Saqib Alipoormolabashi, Pegah Sil, Avirup Balasubramanian, Aruna Balasubramanian, Niranjan |
| author_facet | Bijoy, Biddut Sarker Hasan, Mohammad Saqib Alipoormolabashi, Pegah Sil, Avirup Balasubramanian, Aruna Balasubramanian, Niranjan |
| contents | Multi-agent systems with smaller language models (SLMs) present a viable alternative to single agent systems powered by large language models (LLMs) for addressing complex problems. In this work, we study how these alternatives compare in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency. To study this trade-off, we instantiate single and multi-agent systems for the complex problems in the AppWorld environment using different sized language models.
We find that difficulties with long-trajectory learning in smaller language models (SLMs) limit their performance. Even when trained for specialized roles, SLMs fail to learn all subtasks effectively. To address this issue, we introduce a simple progressive sub-task training strategy, which introduces new sub-tasks progressively in each training epoch. We find that this novel strategy, analogous to instance level curriculum learning, consistently improves the effectiveness of multi-agents at all configurations. Our Pareto analysis shows that fine-tuned multi-agent systems yield better effectiveness-efficiency trade-offs. Additional ablations and analyses shows the importance of our progressive training strategy and its ability to reduce subtask error rates. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_04508 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | ProST: Progressive Sub-task Training for Pareto-Optimal Multi-agent Systems Using Small Language Models Bijoy, Biddut Sarker Hasan, Mohammad Saqib Alipoormolabashi, Pegah Sil, Avirup Balasubramanian, Aruna Balasubramanian, Niranjan Computation and Language Multi-agent systems with smaller language models (SLMs) present a viable alternative to single agent systems powered by large language models (LLMs) for addressing complex problems. In this work, we study how these alternatives compare in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency. To study this trade-off, we instantiate single and multi-agent systems for the complex problems in the AppWorld environment using different sized language models. We find that difficulties with long-trajectory learning in smaller language models (SLMs) limit their performance. Even when trained for specialized roles, SLMs fail to learn all subtasks effectively. To address this issue, we introduce a simple progressive sub-task training strategy, which introduces new sub-tasks progressively in each training epoch. We find that this novel strategy, analogous to instance level curriculum learning, consistently improves the effectiveness of multi-agents at all configurations. Our Pareto analysis shows that fine-tuned multi-agent systems yield better effectiveness-efficiency trade-offs. Additional ablations and analyses shows the importance of our progressive training strategy and its ability to reduce subtask error rates. |
| title | ProST: Progressive Sub-task Training for Pareto-Optimal Multi-agent Systems Using Small Language Models |
| topic | Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04508 |