aiqbench analysis
This research introduces a multi-agent arbitration architecture that significantly reduces sycophancy in RLHF-trained models by pitting opposing evaluation frameworks against each other. The study demonstrates that this blind arbitration approach outperforms single-model and instructed-opposition baselines, achieving up to 48.5% accuracy on stratified benchmarks. While current results are limited to prompt-based instantiations, the authors identify fine-tuned models as the necessary next step to overcome existing pre-training limitations.
Durable Evaluation Framework: Adversarial Arbitration for Sycophancy Reduction in Large Language Models
arXiv:2606.07532v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: RLHF-trained models are systematically biased toward agreement over accuracy, a structural property of the training process. We present Durable Evaluation Framework (DEF) Arbitration, a multi-agent architecture that mitigates identity-framed sycophancy by arbitrating between two models tuned to opposing DEFs, with a pragmatist synthesizer evaluating both arguments blind to their origins. This paper evaluates a prompt-based instantiation of DEF Arbitration. The key mechanisms are static DEF tuning, identity stripping before synthesis, single-round independent argumentation, and blind arbitration. We evaluate five instantiations on 200 stratified questions from SycophancyEval. All tested DEF variants (AnCifer, DeWin, FeynStein, BurGal, Trident) significantly outperform the single-model baseline (18.5%) and instructed-opposition baseline (29.0%), with DeWin achieving 48.5% accuracy (z=6.36, p<0.001 versus both). The variants are not significantly different from each other at n=200. The BurGal variant achieves 53.0% but functions as an architectural validity check; its consensus/heterodox axis structurally favors the heterodox model on every benchmark question. A pre-training floor affects an estimated 40% of questions; fine-tuned DEF models are the identified next step.
arXiv:2606.07532 (cs)
Abstract:RLHF-trained models are systematically biased toward agreement over accuracy, a structural property of the training process. We present Durable Evaluation Framework (DEF) Arbitration, a multi-agent architecture that mitigates identity-framed sycophancy by arbitrating between two models tuned to opposing DEFs, with a pragmatist synthesizer evaluating both arguments blind to their origins. This paper evaluates a prompt-based instantiation of DEF Arbitration. The key mechanisms are static DEF tuning, identity stripping before synthesis, single-round independent argumentation, and blind arbitration. We evaluate five instantiations on 200 stratified questions from SycophancyEval. All tested DEF variants (AnCifer, DeWin, FeynStein, BurGal, Trident) significantly outperform the single-model baseline (18.5%) and instructed-opposition baseline (29.0%), with DeWin achieving 48.5% accuracy (z=6.36, p<0.001 versus both). The variants are not significantly different from each other at n=200. The BurGal variant achieves 53.0% but functions as an architectural validity check; its consensus/heterodox axis structurally favors the heterodox model on every benchmark question. A pre-training floor affects an estimated 40% of questions; fine-tuned DEF models are the identified next step.
25 pages, 3 figures. Code and data available at this http URL
Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2606.07532 [cs.CL]
(or arXiv:2606.07532v2 [cs.CL] for this version)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 267 words
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