Abstract
LLM-based multi-agent systems (MAS) have attracted growing attention for improving reasoning through interaction among multiple agents. In this work, we focus on parallel multi-agent reasoning systems, where several agents solve the same problem over multiple rounds and aggregate their outputs into a final answer. Despite their strong reasoning performance, uncertainty estimation for such systems remains underexplored: the reliability of a MAS depends not only on individual generations, but also on how agents interact and evolve across rounds. We propose SAUCE (Sequential Agent Uncertainty through Consensus Evolution), a lightweight, training-free uncertainty estimator that formulates MAS uncertainty as sequential inference over a latent system-level belief. SAUCE aggregates round-level agreement and generation-uncertainty signals through a filtering-style update. Across five backbones, five benchmarks, and two MAS protocols, SAUCE improves misclassification detection, selective prediction, and calibration over a broad set of uncertainty estimation baselines, including standard log-likelihood-based methods and MAS-specific estimators.
Keywords
Publication details
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Cite this article
APA 7
Zhang, T., Zhao, Z., Zhao, Y., Shi, H., Li, Z., Chen, H., Wang, H., & Metaxas, D. N. (2026). Sequential Probabilistic Uncertainty Estimation for Parallel Multi-Agent Reasoning Systems. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/sequential-probabilistic-uncertainty-estimation-for-parallel-multi-agent-reasoning-systems
MLA 9
Zhang, Tunyu, et al. "Sequential Probabilistic Uncertainty Estimation for Parallel Multi-Agent Reasoning Systems." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/sequential-probabilistic-uncertainty-estimation-for-parallel-multi-agent-reasoning-systems.
Chicago (author–date)
Zhang, Tunyu, Zihao Zhao, Yusong Zhao, Haizhou Shi, Zhuohang Li, Haoxian Chen, Hao Wang, and Dimitris N. Metaxas. 2026. "Sequential Probabilistic Uncertainty Estimation for Parallel Multi-Agent Reasoning Systems." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/sequential-probabilistic-uncertainty-estimation-for-parallel-multi-agent-reasoning-systems.
Harvard
Zhang, T., Zhao, Z., Zhao, Y., Shi, H., Li, Z., Chen, H., Wang, H. and Metaxas, D. N. (2026) 'Sequential Probabilistic Uncertainty Estimation for Parallel Multi-Agent Reasoning Systems', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/sequential-probabilistic-uncertainty-estimation-for-parallel-multi-agent-reasoning-systems.
Vancouver
Zhang T, Zhao Z, Zhao Y, Shi H, Li Z, Chen H, et al. Sequential Probabilistic Uncertainty Estimation for Parallel Multi-Agent Reasoning Systems. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/sequential-probabilistic-uncertainty-estimation-for-parallel-multi-agent-reasoning-systems
IEEE
T. Zhang, Z. Zhao, Y. Zhao, H. Shi, Z. Li, H. Chen, H. Wang, and D. N. Metaxas, "Sequential Probabilistic Uncertainty Estimation for Parallel Multi-Agent Reasoning Systems," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/sequential-probabilistic-uncertainty-estimation-for-parallel-multi-agent-reasoning-systems.