Smart Alone, Blind Together: Why Accuracy Fails to CertifyTheory of Mind in Multi-Agent Teams
Coordinators that act on what they infer about teammates are usually certified by the accuracy of those inferences. We argue that accuracy is the wrong certificate, for two reasons. First, the accuracy needed to act depends on what a wrong action costs, so the bar belongs to the deployment, not the module. Second, a module's errors are rarely independent, and dependence has a sign: positively associated errors help where their damage overlaps and hurt where it compounds, so an accuracy threshold fails in a predictable direction, and once wrong beliefs interact and can do harm, no rule based on accuracy is right for every module. We test these predictions in task assignment, Level-Based Fo...
| Authors | Will Beaumaster, Paul Schrater |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 13 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 13 October 2026 |
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