Thinking-in-Bets reduces sycophantic revisions in LLM agents
Nghi D. Q. Bui submitted a paper introducing Thinking-in-Bets, a training-free method that asks an agent to privately record its main claims, supporting checks, and confidence before reading user feedback. The paper evaluates five Gemini models across eight benchmarks and reports that recording claims before criticism nearly eliminates false reversals in patch review, protects passing report drafts under mistaken pushback, and reduces unnecessary file edits in multi-turn coding.
The paper reports that Thinking-in-Bets can keep verified work intact while agents investigate uncertain or newly challenged claims, providing a training-free approach to reducing sycophantic revisions.
Computer Science > Software Engineering
arXiv:2610.34654 (cs)
[Submitted on 26 Oct 2026]
Title:Thinking-in-Bets at Test Time Reduces Sycophantic Revisions in LLM Agents
Authors:Nghi D. Q. Bui
View a PDF of the paper titled Thinking-in-Bets at Test Time Reduces Sycophantic Revisions in LLM Agents, by Nghi D. Q. Bui
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