Agentic Control in Variational Language Models
For researchers in language modeling and agentic AI, this work demonstrates that internal uncertainty can be used as a practical control interface, though the improvements are incremental.
The paper proposes a variational language model that uses internal uncertainty as an operational signal for training regulation, checkpoint retention, and inference-time control. The model outperforms a deterministic baseline on language modeling and achieves a positive quality-cost trade-off under agentic evaluation.
We study whether a variational language model can support a minimal and measurable form of agentic control grounded in its own internal evidence. Our model combines local variational hidden computation (EVE), a homeostatic latent regulator, structurally aware checkpoint retention and a calibrated uncertainty-aware controller operating on top of the retained model. Rather than treating uncertainty as a passive diagnostic measured after prediction, we treat it as an operational signal that can regulate training, support checkpoint retention and guide inference-time intervention. The resulting framework is deliberately focused. It studies a closed-loop form of internal control in which structural and predictive signals become actionable. Empirically, the variational backbone improves over a matched deterministic reference on the language-modeling task while also exhibiting a richer and more usable uncertainty profile. On top of this backbone, the calibrated controller remains active, uses multiple actions under a full agentic evaluation and yields a positive quality-cost trade-off. These results support a precise claim: internal uncertainty can serve not only as a descriptive property of a variational language model, but also as a practical control interface for regulation, checkpoint retention and minimal agentic routing.