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Related papers: Causal Reflection with Language Models

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Inducing causal relationships from observations is a classic problem in machine learning. Most work in causality starts from the premise that the causal variables themselves are observed. However, for AI agents such as robots trying to make…

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful technique for training intelligent agents, but understanding why these agents make specific decisions can be quite challenging. This lack of transparency in RL models has been a long-standing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Wenhao Lu , Xufeng Zhao , Thilo Fryen , Jae Hee Lee , Mengdi Li , Sven Magg , Stefan Wermter

Large Language Models (LLMs) trained with reinforcement learning and verifiable rewards have achieved strong results on complex reasoning tasks. Recent work extends this paradigm to a multi-agent setting, where a meta-thinking agent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-05 Zhiwei Zhang , Xiaomin Li , Yudi Lin , Hui Liu , Ramraj Chandradevan , Linlin Wu , Minhua Lin , Fali Wang , Xianfeng Tang , Qi He , Suhang Wang

As language models (LMs) deliver increasing performance on a range of NLP tasks, probing classifiers have become an indispensable technique in the effort to better understand their inner workings. A typical setup involves (1) defining an…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-08-01 Charles Jin , Martin Rinard

Causal world models are systems that can answer counterfactual questions about an environment of interest, i.e. predict how it would have evolved if an arbitrary subset of events had been realized differently. It requires understanding the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-21 Gaël Gendron , Jože M. Rožanec , Michael Witbrock , Gillian Dobbie

This paper proposes a formal framework for modeling the interaction of causal and (qualitative) epistemic reasoning. To this purpose, we extend the notion of a causal model with a representation of the epistemic state of an agent. On the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-11-02 Fausto Barbero , Katrin Schulz , Sonja Smets , Fernando R. Velázquez-Quesada , Kaibo Xie

Language is not only a tool for communication but also a medium for human cognition and reasoning. If, as linguistic relativity suggests, the structure of language shapes cognitive patterns, then large language models (LLMs) trained on…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Chenxi Wang , Yixuan Zhang , Lang Gao , Zixiang Xu , Zirui Song , Yanbo Wang , Xiuying Chen

Reinforcement learning (RL) and causal modelling naturally complement each other. The goal of causal modelling is to predict the effects of interventions in an environment, while the goal of reinforcement learning is to select interventions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-12 Oliver Schulte , Pascal Poupart

The ability to understand causality significantly impacts the competence of large language models (LLMs) in output explanation and counterfactual reasoning, as causality reveals the underlying data distribution. However, the lack of a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-30 Yu Zhou , Xingyu Wu , Beicheng Huang , Jibin Wu , Liang Feng , Kay Chen Tan

Understanding predictions made by deep neural networks is notoriously difficult, but also crucial to their dissemination. As all machine learning based methods, they are as good as their training data, and can also capture unwanted biases.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2022-11-15 Amir Feder , Nadav Oved , Uri Shalit , Roi Reichart

Large language models (LLMs) have been increasingly used to interact with external environments (e.g., games, compilers, APIs) as goal-driven agents. However, it remains challenging for these language agents to quickly and efficiently learn…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-10-11 Noah Shinn , Federico Cassano , Edward Berman , Ashwin Gopinath , Karthik Narasimhan , Shunyu Yao

As a pivotal component to attaining generalizable solutions in human intelligence, reasoning provides great potential for reinforcement learning (RL) agents' generalization towards varied goals by summarizing part-to-whole arguments and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-18 Wenhao Ding , Haohong Lin , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

Scaling laws have allowed Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) into the field of causal reasoning. Causal reasoning of PLM relies solely on text-based descriptions, in contrast to causal discovery which aims to determine the causal…

LLMs suffer from critical reasoning issues such as unfaithfulness, bias, and inconsistency, since they lack robust causal underpinnings and may rely on superficial correlations rather than genuine understanding. Successive LRMs have emerged…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Zhizhang FU , Guangsheng Bao , Hongbo Zhang , Chenkai Hu , Yue Zhang

While self-reflection can enhance language model reliability, its underlying mechanisms remain opaque, with existing analyses often yielding correlation-based insights that fail to generalize. To address this, we introduce…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-09 Tianqiang Yan , Sihan Shang , Yuheng Li , Song Qiu , Hao Peng , Wenjian Luo , Jue Xie , Lizhen Qu , Yuan Gao

Humans do not just find mistakes after the fact -- we often catch them mid-stream because 'reflection' is tied to the goal and its constraints. Today's large language models produce reasoning tokens and 'reflective' text, but is it…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Sion Weatherhead , Flora Salim , Aaron Belbasis

Causality is vital for understanding true cause-and-effect relationships between variables within predictive models, rather than relying on mere correlations, making it highly relevant in the field of Explainable AI. In an automated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-28 Arturo Fredes , Jordi Vitria

Despite impressive performance on language modelling and complex reasoning tasks, Large Language Models (LLMs) fall short on the same tasks in uncommon settings or with distribution shifts, exhibiting a lack of generalisation ability. By…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-09-11 Gaël Gendron , Bao Trung Nguyen , Alex Yuxuan Peng , Michael Witbrock , Gillian Dobbie

Large language models (LLMs) exhibit emergent behaviors suggestive of human-like reasoning. While recent work has identified structured conceptual representations within these models, it remains unclear whether they functionally rely on…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Ningyu Xu , Qi Zhang , Xipeng Qiu , Xuanjing Huang

Recent advances in LLM agents have largely built on reasoning backbones like ReAct, which interleave thought and action in complex environments. However, ReAct often produces ungrounded or incoherent reasoning steps, leading to misalignment…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Jeonghye Kim , Sojeong Rhee , Minbeom Kim , Dohyung Kim , Sangmook Lee , Youngchul Sung , Kyomin Jung