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Stay Focused: Problem Drift in Multi-Agent Debate

Jonas Becker, Lars Benedikt Kaesberg, Andreas Stephan, Jan Philip Wahle, Terry Ruas, Bela Gipp · Feb 26, 2025 · Citations: 0

General Llm As Judge Multi Agent
Open arXiv Find Implementation RSS feed Shortlist (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

Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks. However, these methods show limitations when solving complex problems that require longer reasoning chains. We analyze how multi-agent debate drifts away from the initial problem over multiple turns, thus harming task performance. We define this phenomenon as problem drift and quantify its presence across ten tasks (i.e., three generative, three knowledge, three reasoning, and one instruction-following task). We find that generative tasks drift often due to the subjectivity of the answer space (76-89%), compared to high-complexity tasks (7-21%). To identify the reasons, eight human experts analyze 170 multi-agent debates suffering from problem drift. We find the most common issues related to this drift are the lack of progress (35% of cases), low-quality feedback (26% of cases), and a lack of clarity (25% of cases). We propose DRIFTJudge, an LLM-as-a-judge method, as a first baseline to detect problem drift. We also propose DRIFTPolicy, which mitigates 31% of problem drift cases. Our study is a step toward understanding a key limitation of multi-agent debate, highlighting why longer debates can harm task performance and how problem drift could be addressed.

Low-signal caution for protocol decisions

Use this page for context, then validate protocol choices against stronger HFEPX references before implementation decisions.

  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
  • The abstract does not clearly name benchmarks or metrics.
Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub

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 secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

12/100 • 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 40%

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub Tool-Use Eval Hub

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.

"Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks."

Evaluation Modes

partial

Llm As Judge

Includes extracted eval setup.

"Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks."

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks."

Rater Population

partial

Domain Experts

Helpful for staffing comparability.

"To identify the reasons, eight human experts analyze 170 multi-agent debates suffering from problem drift."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Domain Experts
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes: Llm As Judge
  • Agentic eval: Multi Agent
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks.

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

Key Takeaways

  • Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks.
  • However, these methods show limitations when solving complex problems that require longer reasoning chains.
  • We analyze how multi-agent debate drifts away from the initial problem over multiple turns, thus harming task performance.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • 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

  • Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks.
  • We analyze how multi-agent debate drifts away from the initial problem over multiple turns, thus harming task performance.
  • We propose DRIFTJudge, an LLM-as-a-judge method, as a first baseline to detect problem drift.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Multi-agent debate - multiple instances of large language models discussing problems in turn-based interaction - has shown promise for solving knowledge and reasoning tasks.
  • We propose DRIFTJudge, an LLM-as-a-judge method, as a first baseline to detect problem drift.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Pass: Evaluation mode is explicit

    Detected: Llm As Judge

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Gap: Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

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