aiqbench analysis
This research introduces behavioral probes to make the internal information flow of LLM swarms observable, offering new metrics for optimizing multi-agent structures beyond simple utility maximization. By repurposing existing hallucination analysis scores, the study demonstrates how monitoring context and knowledge dependence can reduce redundant communication and accelerate convergence in swarm reasoning tasks.
Behavioral Probes for Information Flow in LLM Swarms
arXiv:2610.25966v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Most existing approaches to LLM swarm optimization are utility-driven, focusing on final task utility while leaving the processing, integration, and reliance of information within individual interactions largely implicit. To address this, we study LLM swarm interactions from an information-flow-based view and introduce behavioral probes to quantify information flow patterns. Specifically, we repurpose External Context Score (ECS) and Parametric Knowledge Score (PKS)---originally designed for hallucination analysis---to measure a node's external-context dependence and parametric-knowledge dependence, respectively. Across controlled and realistic swarm settings, we observe consistent patterns: ECS increases with input relevance and distinguishes useful multi-source contributions, while PKS decreases as informative context accumulates. Building on this heuristic interpretation, we demonstrate how these probes can complement utility-driven structure optimization in two controlled applications. Probe-guided node pruning reduces redundant communication and token consumption, and probe-guided reasoning-path search accelerates convergence compared to utility-only baselines. Our empirical results suggest that behavioral probes can make the internal information flow of LLM swarms observable and serve as effective auxiliary signals for structure optimization.
Abstract:Most existing approaches to LLM swarm optimization are utility-driven, focusing on final task utility while leaving the processing, integration, and reliance of information within individual interactions largely implicit. To address this, we study LLM swarm interactions from an information-flow-based view and introduce behavioral probes to quantify information flow patterns. Specifically, we repurpose External Context Score (ECS) and Parametric Knowledge Score (PKS)---originally designed for hallucination analysis---to measure a node's external-context dependence and parametric-knowledge dependence, respectively. Across controlled and realistic swarm settings, we observe consistent patterns: ECS increases with input relevance and distinguishes useful multi-source contributions, while PKS decreases as informative context accumulates. Building on this heuristic interpretation, we demonstrate how these probes can complement utility-driven structure optimization in two controlled applications. Probe-guided node pruning reduces redundant communication and token consumption, and probe-guided reasoning-path search accelerates convergence compared to utility-only baselines. Our empirical results suggest that behavioral probes can make the internal information flow of LLM swarms observable and serve as effective auxiliary signals for structure optimization.
Multiagent Systems (cs.MA); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2610.25966 [cs.MA]
(or arXiv:2610.25966v1 [cs.MA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.25966 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 262 words
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