{"paper":{"title":"Fail Fast, or Ask: Mitigating the Deficiencies of Reasoning LLMs with Human-in-the-Loop Systems Engineering","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.LG","cs.SY","eess.SY"],"primary_cat":"cs.AI","authors_text":"Matt Thomson, Michael J. Zellinger","submitted_at":"2025-07-18T23:25:26Z","abstract_excerpt":"State-of-the-art reasoning LLMs are powerful problem solvers, but they still occasionally make mistakes. However, adopting AI models in risk-sensitive domains often requires error rates near 0%. To address this gap, we propose collaboration between a reasoning model and a human expert who resolves queries the model cannot confidently answer. We find that quantifying the uncertainty of a reasoning model through the length of its reasoning trace yields an effective basis for deferral to a human, e.g., cutting the error rate of Qwen3 235B-A22B on difficult MATH problems from 3% to less than 1% wh"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2507.14406","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2507.14406/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}