Progressive Autonomy as Preference Learning: A Formalization of Trust Calibration for Agentic Tool Use

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Ou, Changkun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Ou, Changkun
author_facet Ou, Changkun
contents We formalize trust calibration for agentic tool use (deciding when an automated agent's proposed action may execute autonomously versus require human approval) as a preference-learning problem. A policy gateway maintains a Gaussian-process posterior over a latent human risk-tolerance function, observed through a probit likelihood on binary approve/deny feedback, and escalates to the human exactly where the approval outcome is most uncertain. We show this is structurally an instance of Preferential Bayesian Optimization, inheriting its inference machinery (approximate Gaussian-process classification) and its sample-efficiency argument (uncertainty-targeted querying), while differing in objective: classifying an action space into allow/block/ask regions rather than optimizing a design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_19151
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Progressive Autonomy as Preference Learning: A Formalization of Trust Calibration for Agentic Tool Use
Ou, Changkun
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
We formalize trust calibration for agentic tool use (deciding when an automated agent's proposed action may execute autonomously versus require human approval) as a preference-learning problem. A policy gateway maintains a Gaussian-process posterior over a latent human risk-tolerance function, observed through a probit likelihood on binary approve/deny feedback, and escalates to the human exactly where the approval outcome is most uncertain. We show this is structurally an instance of Preferential Bayesian Optimization, inheriting its inference machinery (approximate Gaussian-process classification) and its sample-efficiency argument (uncertainty-targeted querying), while differing in objective: classifying an action space into allow/block/ask regions rather than optimizing a design.
title Progressive Autonomy as Preference Learning: A Formalization of Trust Calibration for Agentic Tool Use
topic Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19151