Daily Papers

Large language models (LLMs) are expected to be trained to act as agents in various real-world environments, but this process relies on rich and varied tool-interaction sandboxes. However, access to real systems is often restricted; LLM-simulated environments are prone to hallucinations and inconsistencies; and manually built sandboxes are hard to scale. In this paper, we propose EnvScaler, an automated framework for scalable tool-interaction environments via programmatic synthesis. EnvScaler comprises two components. First, SkelBuilder constructs diverse environment skeletons through topic mining, logic modeling, and quality evaluation. Then, ScenGenerator generates multiple task scenarios and rule-based trajectory validation functions for each environment. With EnvScaler, we synthesize 191 environments and about 7K scenarios, and apply them to Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) for Qwen3 series models. Results on three benchmarks show that EnvScaler significantly improves LLMs' ability to solve tasks in complex environments involving multi-turn, multi-tool interactions. We release our code and data at https://github.com/RUC-NLPIR/EnvScaler.

As claims about recursive self-improvement (RSI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI) proliferate, we ask a simple question: do frontier AI models have a sense of data, i.e., can they reliably select the right data for training? We introduce DataSense-Bench to study this capability through the fundamental problem of data selection and performance forecasting in machine learning. We ask AI agents to select and rank candidate training subsets that can be used to fine-tune a small LLM model. Agents are allowed to inspect the data, write and execute analysis code, and run model forward passes, but can not train the model or access the actual evaluation tasks. We then fine-tune the base model on each selected subset and evaluate its post-training performance under a standardized protocol. We instantiate the benchmark in terminal problem solving and tool use, selecting trajectories from OpenThoughts-Agent and EnvScaler and evaluating on TBLite and BFCL, respectively. We then evaluate the agents along two complementary dimensions: the post-training performance of the top-ranked subset, reflecting the ability to identify high-value training data, and ranking accuracy, reflecting the ability to predict the relative performance of the selected subsets. In our experiments, selection gains over random selection are limited; agents do not reliably rank their selected groups, and ranking ability does not hold consistently across tasks: Astra identifies the best group in all three tool-use runs but in only one of three terminal runs. Analysis of execution traces on both tasks shows that agents often use similar data signals while interpreting their training value differently.

A small trainable advisor can steer a frozen language-model executor using natural-language advice. In addition to learning from task rewards, the advisor can use feedback from completed interactions to improve its advice. However, a plausible correction need not change execution, yet learning from such corrections can still affect the advisor's future decisions in other contexts. In a shared-parameter model, we prove that such corrections can limit learning if their targets favor useful advice less strongly than those of other corrections. Keeping them less often than the rest improves the model's eventual performance compared to learning from every correction. Motivated by this, our method, Advisor Self-Distillation (AdviSD), pairs outcome-based reinforcement learning with self-distillation from a feedback-conditioned copy of the advisor selectively. Reflection proposes corrections, and the advisor scores the same recorded executor response with and without its issued advice, using the magnitude of the difference to select decisions for supervision. This approach does not require executor likelihoods or additional executor rollouts. Experiments with Qwen3-8B advisors for Gemini and Claude show that AdviSD outperforms advisor-GRPO by 4.2-6.4 percentage points on BFCL-v3 and by 3.9-5.1 score points on EnvScaler. The trained advisors generalize to out-of-domain tasks and transfer across different executor versions and model families. AdviSD also beats matched-count random selection, supporting the value of its selection rule.