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An Agent Learned When to Ask First

Counterfactual information gain guided clarification on ambiguous requests.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-09-22-015
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Summary

Counterfactual information gain guided clarification on ambiguous requests.

CIGAsk trains language models to decide when a question is needed and how to make that question informative. It combines a reward for information gained from the user's answer with an ambiguity-aware reward for asking at the right time. The authors report gains across three clarification benchmarks. The result addresses tested ambiguous-query settings, not every conversational task.

Why it matters

Counterfactual information gain guided clarification on ambiguous requests.

Limits and context

  • The result addresses tested ambiguous-query settings, not every conversational task.

Key claims

  1. Counterfactual information gain guided clarification on ambiguous requests.

    Qualification: The result addresses tested ambiguous-query settings, not every conversational task.

    Evidence: source-2026-09-22-017

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2609.24290arXiv · primary research

Corrections

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