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While large language models (LLMs) showcase unprecedented capabilities, they also exhibit certain inherent limitations when facing seemingly trivial tasks. A prime example is the recently debated "reversal curse", which surfaces when…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-25 Zhengkai Lin , Zhihang Fu , Kai Liu , Liang Xie , Binbin Lin , Wenxiao Wang , Deng Cai , Yue Wu , Jieping Ye

The reversal curse describes a failure of autoregressive language models to retrieve a fact in reverse order (e.g., training on ``$A > B$'' but failing on ``$B < A$''). Recent work shows that objectives with bidirectional supervision (e.g.,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-08 Julian Coda-Forno , Jane X. Wang , Arslan Chaudhry

Large language models (LLMs) have a surprising failure: when trained on "A has a feature B", they do not generalize to "B is a feature of A", which is termed the Reversal Curse. Even when training with trillions of tokens this issue still…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-05-09 Olga Golovneva , Zeyuan Allen-Zhu , Jason Weston , Sainbayar Sukhbaatar

Auto-regressive large language models (LLMs) show impressive capacities to solve many complex reasoning tasks while struggling with some simple logical reasoning tasks such as inverse search: when trained on '$A \to B$' (e.g., 'Tom is the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Hanlin Zhu , Baihe Huang , Shaolun Zhang , Michael Jordan , Jiantao Jiao , Yuandong Tian , Stuart Russell

Autoregressive large language models (LLMs) have achieved remarkable success in many complex tasks, yet they can still fail in very simple logical reasoning such as the "reversal curse" -- when trained on forward knowledge data of the form…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Xutao Ma , Yixiao Huang , Hanlin Zhu , Somayeh Sojoudi

The term "Reversal Curse" refers to the scenario where auto-regressive decoder large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, trained on "A is B" fail to learn "B is A," assuming that B and A are distinct and can be uniquely identified from…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Da Wu , Jingye Yang , Kai Wang

While large language models (LLMs) have achieved impressive performance across diverse tasks, recent studies showcase that causal LLMs suffer from the "reversal curse". It is a typical example that the model knows "A's father is B", but is…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-03-21 Qingyan Guo , Rui Wang , Junliang Guo , Xu Tan , Jiang Bian , Yujiu Yang

Today's best language models still struggle with hallucinations: factually incorrect generations, which impede their ability to reliably retrieve information seen during training. The reversal curse, where models cannot recall information…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-11 Ouail Kitouni , Niklas Nolte , Diane Bouchacourt , Adina Williams , Mike Rabbat , Mark Ibrahim

We expose a surprising failure of generalization in auto-regressive large language models (LLMs). If a model is trained on a sentence of the form "A is B", it will not automatically generalize to the reverse direction "B is A". This is the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-05-28 Lukas Berglund , Meg Tong , Max Kaufmann , Mikita Balesni , Asa Cooper Stickland , Tomasz Korbak , Owain Evans

Recent research observed a noteworthy phenomenon in large language models (LLMs), referred to as the ``reversal curse.'' The reversal curse is that when dealing with two entities, denoted as $a$ and $b$, connected by their relation $R$ and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Ang Lv , Kaiyi Zhang , Shufang Xie , Quan Tu , Yuhan Chen , Ji-Rong Wen , Rui Yan

The reversal curse--a language model's inability to infer an unseen fact "B is A" from a learned fact "A is B"--is widely considered a fundamental limitation. We show that this is not an inherent failure but an artifact of how models encode…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Dong-Kyum Kim , Minsung Kim , Jea Kwon , Nakyeong Yang , Meeyoung Cha

The "reversal curse" refers to the phenomenon where large language models (LLMs) exhibit predominantly unidirectional behavior when processing logically bidirectional relationships. Prior work attributed this to autoregressive training --…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Shaokai He , Kaiwen Wei , Xinyi Zeng , Xiang Chen , Xue Yang , Zhenyang Li , Jiang Zhong , Yu Tian

Autoregressive language models (ARMs) suffer from the reversal curse: after learning ''$A$ is $B$,'' they often fail on the reverse query ''$B$ is $A$.'' Masked diffusion language models (MDMs) exhibit this failure in a much weaker form,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Moongyu Jeon , Sangwoo Shin , BumJun Kim , Kyelim Lee , Albert No

This paper investigates the ability of transformer-based models to learn structural recursion from examples. Recursion is a universal concept in both natural and formal languages. Structural recursion is central to the programming language…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-01-24 Dylan Zhang , Curt Tigges , Zory Zhang , Stella Biderman , Maxim Raginsky , Talia Ringer

We introduce the concept of the self-referencing causal cycle (abbreviated RECALL) - a mechanism that enables large language models (LLMs) to bypass the limitations of unidirectional causality, which underlies a phenomenon known as the…

Recent studies have demonstrated that large language models (LLMs) store massive factual knowledge within their parameters. But existing LLMs are prone to hallucinate unintended text due to false or outdated knowledge. Since retraining LLMs…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-15 Jun-Yu Ma , Jia-Chen Gu , Zhen-Hua Ling , Quan Liu , Cong Liu

Knowledge is fundamental to the overall capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). The knowledge paradigm of a model, which dictates how it encodes and utilizes knowledge, significantly affects its performance. Despite the continuous…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-04-10 Xiaotian Ye , Mengqi Zhang , Shu Wu

Language Models (LMs) exhibit two distinct mechanisms for knowledge acquisition: in-weights learning (i.e., encoding information within the model weights) and in-context learning (ICL). Although these two modes offer complementary…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Arslan Chaudhry , Sridhar Thiagarajan , Andrew Lampinen

Length generalization is a key property of a learning algorithm that enables it to make correct predictions on inputs of any length, given finite training data. To provide such a guarantee, one needs to be able to compute a length…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Andy Yang , Pascal Bergsträßer , Georg Zetzsche , David Chiang , Anthony W. Lin

Modern large language model (LLM) alignment techniques rely on human feedback, but it is unclear whether these techniques fundamentally limit the capabilities of aligned LLMs. In particular, it is unknown if it is possible to align…

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