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Recent studies have discovered that Chain-of-Thought prompting (CoT) can dramatically improve the performance of Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly when dealing with complex tasks involving mathematics or reasoning. Despite the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-27 Guhao Feng , Bohang Zhang , Yuntian Gu , Haotian Ye , Di He , Liwei Wang

Generating intermediate steps, or Chain of Thought (CoT), is an effective way to significantly improve language models' (LM) multi-step reasoning capability. However, the CoT lengths can grow rapidly with the problem complexity, easily…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Soochan Lee , Gunhee Kim

Recently, Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have been widely integrated into diffusion frameworks primarily as text encoders to tackle complex tasks such as spatial reasoning. However, this paradigm suffers from two critical…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-03-26 Xuanlang Dai , Yujie Zhou , Long Xing , Jiazi Bu , Xilin Wei , Yuhong Liu , Beichen Zhang , Kai Chen , Yuhang Zang

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) is widely applied to enhance the LLM capability in math, coding and reasoning tasks. However, its performance is limited for open-domain tasks, when there are no clearly defined reasoning steps or logical transitions.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Qingqing Gu , Dan Wang , Yue Zhao , Xiaoyu Wang , Zhonglin Jiang , Yong Chen , Hongyan Li , Luo Ji

Modern large reasoning models (LRMs) exhibit impressive multi-step problem-solving via chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning. However, this iterative thinking mechanism introduces a new vulnerability surface. We present the Deadlock Attack, a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Mohan Zhang , Yihua Zhang , Jinghan Jia , Zhangyang Wang , Sijia Liu , Tianlong Chen

Large Language Models (LLMs) using Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting excel at complex reasoning but generate verbose thought processes with considerable redundancy, leading to increased inference costs and reduced efficiency. We introduce a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Zeju Li , Jianyuan Zhong , Ziyang Zheng , Xiangyu Wen , Zhijian Xu , Yingying Cheng , Fan Zhang , Qiang Xu

Language Models (LMs) emit Chains-of-Thought (CoTs) that drive much of their capability. However, the same sequence that carries useful reasoning can also covertly convey messages: a misaligned model may embed covert information in its CoT…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Zhejian Zhou , Jonathan May

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning typically utilizes the discrete language space for thinking, which is inherently inefficient, as many generated tokens only enforce linguistic rules that are not required for reasoning. To bypass this,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Enes Özeren , Matthias Aßenmacher

Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning enables large language models (LLMs) to move beyond fast System-1 responses and engage in deliberative System-2 reasoning. However, this comes at the cost of significant inefficiency due to verbose…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Xiaoqiang Wang , Suyuchen Wang , Yun Zhu , Bang Liu

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning has emerged as a key technique for eliciting complex reasoning in Large Language Models (LLMs). Although interpretable, its dependence on natural language limits the model's expressive bandwidth. Continuous…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Sharan Ramjee

Latent tokens are gaining attention for enhancing reasoning in large language models (LLMs), yet their internal mechanisms remain unclear. This paper examines the problem from a reliability perspective, uncovering fundamental weaknesses:…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-29 Yuyi Zhang , Boyu Tang , Tianjie Ju , Sufeng Duan , Gongshen Liu

Chain of thought (CoT) fine-tuning aims to endow large language models (LLMs) with reasoning capabilities by training them on curated reasoning traces. It leverages both supervised and reinforced fine-tuning to cultivate human-like…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Xiaoshu Chen , Sihang Zhou , Ke Liang , Duanyang Yuan , Haoyuan Chen , Xiaoyu Sun , Lingyuan Meng , Xinwang Liu

Alignment techniques often inadvertently induce sycophancy in LLMs. While prior studies studied this behaviour in direct-answer settings, the role of Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning remains under-explored: does it serve as a logical…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-18 Zhaoxin Feng , Zheng Chen , Jianfei Ma , Yip Tin Po , Emmanuele Chersoni , Bo Li

Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning provides a significant performance uplift to LLMs by enabling planning, exploration, and deliberation of their actions. CoT is also a powerful tool for monitoring the behaviours of these agents: when…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Nathaniel Mitrani Hadida , Sassan Bhanji , Cameron Tice , Puria Radmard

Long chain-of-thought reasoning (Long CoT) is now fundamental to state-of-the-art LLMs, especially in mathematical reasoning. However, LLM generation is highly sequential, and long CoTs lead to a high latency. We propose to train…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Arvind Mahankali , Kaiyue Wen , Tengyu Ma

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as a transformative force in artificial intelligence, demonstrating exceptional proficiency across various tasks. However, their deployment in resource-constrained environments and concerns over…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-11 Tao Fan , Weijing Chen , Yan Kang , Guoqiang Ma , Hanlin Gu , Yuanfeng Song , Lixin Fan , Qiang Yang

Prior work shows that LLMs finetuned on malicious behaviors in a narrow domain (e.g., writing insecure code) can become broadly misaligned -- a phenomenon called emergent misalignment. We investigate whether this extends from conventional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-11 James Chua , Jan Betley , Mia Taylor , Owain Evans

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has been used to enhance the reasoning capability of LLMs. However, its reliability in security-sensitive analytical tasks remains insufficiently examined, particularly under structured human evaluation.…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Jiling Zhou , Aisvarya Adeseye , Seppo Virtanen , Antti Hakkala , Jouni Isoaho

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive reasoning capabilities, especially when guided by explicit chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning that verbalizes intermediate steps. While CoT improves both interpretability and accuracy,…

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting has improved the reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs), but it remains unclear why it works and whether it is the unique mechanism for triggering reasoning in large language models. In this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Zhenghao He , Guangzhi Xiong , Bohan Liu , Sanchit Sinha , Aidong Zhang