AI & ML
Same Query, Different Answer: Run-to-Run Variance in Semantic Query Processing
arXiv cs.DB0 views
arXiv:2610.13823v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Semantic query engines ask a large language model (LLM) to judge individual rows, and benchmarks compare these engines on the quality of a few executions at temperature 0. We measure how much another execution changes. We re-execute the text and tabular workloads of SemBench, LRO-Bench, and UDA-Bench through their own harnesses, log every one of 1.2 million model calls, and reanalyze SemBench's published executions. At temperature 0, between 0.07% and 10.2% of rows change their operator output over five executions, depending on the model, and up to 24.0% on one task. Plans amplify these changes exponentially in the number of rows an answer exposes, as a possible-worlds model predicts: on UDA-Bench, a few percent of extracted values change, but about two thirds of the answers do. In SemBench's published results, 21% of text results change quality between executions, including on engines whose plans are deterministic. Several per-query system comparisons, and 16 of 28 tests of LRO-Bench's implementation recommendations, are not settled by the executions the benchmarks run. Changing rows are rows on which models disagree with each other; identical requests within one execution disagree as often as across executions; and one execution's decision margin or reasoning length predicts which rows change. Voting reduces the variance but does not remove it, and a calibrated cascade keeps its guarantee while the rows it returns change. We derive reporting rules for benchmarks and design rules for engines.
Source:https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13823PreviousProvQML: Efficient Provenance Capture for Machine Learning as Recursive Aggregate SQL [Extended Version]NextMetaJoin: Adaptive Join Selections for Heterogeneous Tables
Related posts
The Autonomous Edge — Issue #13: Cheaper Agents, Harder Governance (Week of November 2, 2026)
0dev.to AI

Plano Físico vs Plano Funcional en AWS Networking: cómo los arquitectos senior resuelven lo que otros no ven
0dev.to AWS
We built Origami Tutor: free paper-craft lessons you can turn and replay in 3D
0dev.to WebDev
From two authorized photos to a short AI rap video (consent-first workflow)
0dev.to WebDev
Check a File Hash in the Browser, Without Uploading the File
0dev.to WebDev
Your AI keys were leaked at a platform. A local guard you can paste catches the abuse before the invoice.
0dev.to Security