Implementation of a Metacognition Framework for Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation in Ensembles of LLMs

Large Language Models (LLMs) are notorious for struggling with assessing their own uncertainty, detecting knowledge conflicts, or recognizing when problems exceed their expertise; such limitations inevitably undermine reliability and trust in LLMs. In this paper, we present the first implementation of a metacognitive framework for ensembles of LLMs that addresses these challenges through explicit monitoring and control mechanisms. Our system computes a Metacognitive State Vector (MSV) quantifying self-awareness for monitoring across five dimensions derived from cognitive psychology: Emotional Response, Correctness Evaluation, Experiential Match, Conflicting Information, and Problem Importance. MSV values also provide self-regulation for control, automatically switching between System 1 (fast, single- or multi-node) and System 2 (deliberative, multi-node) processing based on query complexity. For System 2 execution, graph-theoretic algorithms control the assignment of specialized roles (Domain Expert, Critic, Evaluator, Synthesizer, and Generalist) to ensemble nodes according to their MSV-quantified metacognitive states. Our implementation allows users to explore how different query types trigger distinct processing modes. The Proof-of-Concept (PoC) demo showcases the framework with illustrative examples showing appropriate System 1/System 2 routing and helps visualize the metacognitive process via real-time radar charts and decision indicators. This PoC implementation demonstrates the feasibility of creating a framework for metacognitive self-awareness and self-regulation in LLM systems.

Uncertainty-Aware Trust Estimation for Multi-LLM Systems via Structured Expert Judgement

Large Language Model (LLM) ensembles are increasingly used to improve reliability by combining predictions from multiple LLMs. However, existing aggregation methods typically assume that all models are equally trustworthy, overlooking differences in uncertainty quality. This assumption is poorly suited to heterogeneous LLMs, whose reliability and capability vary significantly, making naive aggregation vulnerable to unreliable or adversarial experts. In this work, we formulate multi-LLM aggregation as a problem of uncertainty-aware trust estimation. We adapt structured expert judgment from decision theory, using context-aware calibration questions to estimate expert reliability based on the quality of its probabilistic predictions. Specifically, we employ Cooke-style log weighting, which penalises overconfident incorrect predictions and favours well-calibrated experts. We evaluate our approach on MMLU and MMLU-Pro across homogeneous, heterogeneous, and contaminated expert panels. Results show that while aggregation methods perform similarly in homogeneous settings, Cooke weighting becomes critical under heterogeneity and contamination. It achieves a superior accuracy-reliability balance and remains robust when unreliable experts are introduced. These findings suggest that Multi-LLM aggregation requires not just combining predictions, but calibrating trust under uncertainty.