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Black-Box Reliability Certification for AI Agents via Self-Consistency Sampling and Conformal Calibration

Charafeddine Mouzouni · Feb 24, 2026 · Citations: 0

How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Validate the exact study setup in the full paper before operational use.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Given a black-box AI system and a task, at what confidence level can a practitioner trust the system's output? We answer with a reliability level -- a single number per system-task pair, derived from self-consistency sampling and conformal calibration, that serves as a black-box deployment gate with exact, finite-sample, distribution-free guarantees. Self-consistency sampling reduces uncertainty exponentially; conformal calibration guarantees correctness within 1/(n+1) of the target level, regardless of the system's errors -- made transparently visible through larger answer sets for harder questions. Weaker models earn lower reliability levels (not accuracy -- see Definition 2.4): GPT-4.1 earns 94.6% on GSM8K and 96.8% on TruthfulQA, while GPT-4.1-nano earns 89.8% on GSM8K and 66.5% on MMLU. We validate across five benchmarks, five models from three families, and both synthetic and real data. Conditional coverage on solvable items exceeds 0.93 across all configurations; sequential stopping reduces API costs by around 50%.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A benchmark-and-metrics comparison anchor.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

15/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 55%

What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Given a black-box AI system and a task, at what confidence level can a practitioner trust the system's output?"

Evaluation Modes

strong

Automatic Metrics

Includes extracted eval setup.

"Given a black-box AI system and a task, at what confidence level can a practitioner trust the system's output?"

Quality Controls

strong

Calibration

Calibration/adjudication style controls detected.

"We answer with a reliability level -- a single number per system-task pair, derived from self-consistency sampling and conformal calibration, that serves as a black-box deployment gate with exact, finite-sample, distribution-free guarantees."

Benchmarks / Datasets

strong

MMLU, GSM8K, TruthfulQA

Useful for quick benchmark comparison.

"Weaker models earn lower reliability levels (not accuracy -- see Definition 2.4): GPT-4.1 earns 94.6% on GSM8K and 96.8% on TruthfulQA, while GPT-4.1-nano earns 89.8% on GSM8K and 66.5% on MMLU."

Reported Metrics

strong

Accuracy

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

"Weaker models earn lower reliability levels (not accuracy -- see Definition 2.4): GPT-4.1 earns 94.6% on GSM8K and 96.8% on TruthfulQA, while GPT-4.1-nano earns 89.8% on GSM8K and 66.5% on MMLU."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Not reported
  • Expertise required: Math

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes: Automatic Metrics
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Calibration
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

MMLUGSM8KTruthfulQA

Reported Metrics

accuracy

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Given a black-box AI system and a task, at what confidence level can a practitioner trust the system's output?

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Given a black-box AI system and a task, at what confidence level can a practitioner trust the system's output?
  • We answer with a reliability level -- a single number per system-task pair, derived from self-consistency sampling and conformal calibration, that serves as a black-box deployment gate with exact, finite-sample, distribution-free guarantees.
  • Self-consistency sampling reduces uncertainty exponentially; conformal calibration guarantees correctness within 1/(n+1) of the target level, regardless of the system's errors -- made transparently visible through larger answer sets for harder questions.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against others mentioning MMLU and GSM8K.
  • Validate inferred eval signals (Automatic metrics, Tool-use evaluation) against the full paper.
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • Weaker models earn lower reliability levels (not accuracy -- see Definition 2.4): GPT-4.1 earns 94.6% on GSM8K and 96.8% on TruthfulQA, while GPT-4.1-nano earns 89.8% on GSM8K and 66.5% on MMLU.
  • We validate across five benchmarks, five models from three families, and both synthetic and real data.
  • Conditional coverage on solvable items exceeds 0.93 across all configurations; sequential stopping reduces API costs by around 50%.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • We validate across five benchmarks, five models from three families, and both synthetic and real data.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Automatic Metrics

  • Pass: Quality control reporting appears

    Detected: Calibration

  • Pass: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    Detected: MMLU, GSM8K, TruthfulQA

  • Pass: Metric reporting is present

    Detected: accuracy

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