cs.MAJul 6, 2026

Collective Intelligence with Foundation Models

Authors: J. de Curtò, I. de Zarzà

Abstract

As foundation models grow in scale and diversity, coordinating multiple models into cooperative reasoning systems offers a path toward safer, more reliable AI. This chapter presents a multi-agent framework where solver models generate independent drafts, each undergoes structured critique and revision by a critic agent, and an aggregator agent synthesizes a final consensus solution. A scoring module provides semantic, numerical, and procedural evaluation across all agents. Through ablation studies on a benchmark spanning calculus, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, optimization, statistics, and mathematics, we isolate the contributions of framework architecture versus model diversity. We compare four configurations: (1) Individual Baseline, (2) Homogeneous Framework using one shared model, (3) Redundant Homogeneous Solvers using multiple instances of the same model, and (4) Heterogeneous Framework with diverse specialized models. Results show that while framework structure and redundant sampling yield modest gains, model heterogeneity is the critical factor driving substantial performance improvements. The heterogeneous configuration achieves superior step-wise accuracy (0.64 vs. 0.54 for individual models; 2.3x improvement over homogeneous configurations) with reduced variance across categories and difficulty levels. Step-wise reasoning quality (correctness of intermediate steps, not just final answers) improves dramatically only with model diversity, showing that heterogeneous agents provide complementary error detection and reasoning refinement essential for explainability and auditability. We discuss architectural principles, evaluation methodology, and implications for Global Applied AI, showing how heterogeneous multi-agent coordination supports transparent, auditable, high-confidence decision-making across scientific and industrial domains.

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