AIBearisharXiv – CS AI · 7h ago7/10
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Do Multimodal Agents Really Benefit from Tool Use? A Systematic Study of Capability Gains
A new study challenges claims that multimodal AI agents genuinely benefit from tool use, finding that 93-96% of problems solved with tools are also solvable without them. The research suggests these agents learn tool-calling patterns rather than actual tool-dependent capabilities, raising questions about how benchmark improvements are interpreted.