English
Related papers

Related papers: Implicit Patterns in LLM-Based Binary Analysis

200 papers

Current large language models (LLMs) excel in verifiable domains where outputs can be checked before action but prove less reliable for high-stakes strategic decisions with uncertain outcomes. This gap, driven by mutually reinforcing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Alejandro R. Jadad

As reasoning LLMs increasingly trade tokens for accuracy through deliberation, search, and self-correction, a single accuracy score can no longer tell whether those tokens buy useful reasoning, recovery from hard instances, or unnecessary…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Daniel Kaiser , Arnoldo Frigessi , Ali Ramezani-Kebrya , Benjamin Ricaud

Currently, many large language models (LLMs) are utilized for software engineering tasks such as code generation. The emergence of more advanced models known as large reasoning models (LRMs), such as OpenAI's o3, DeepSeek R1, and Qwen3.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Kevin Halim , Sin G. Teo , Ruitao Feng , Zhenpeng Chen , Yang Gu , Chong Wang , Yang Liu

We show that large language models (LLMs) exhibit an $\textit{internal chain-of-thought}$: they sequentially decompose and execute composite tasks layer-by-layer. Two claims ground our study: (i) distinct subtasks are learned at different…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Zhipeng Yang , Junzhuo Li , Siyu Xia , Xuming Hu

The reasoning pattern of Large language models (LLMs) remains opaque, and Reinforcement learning (RL) typically applies uniform credit across an entire generation, blurring the distinction between pivotal and routine steps. This work…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Yang Li , Zhichen Dong , Yuhan Sun , Weixun Wang , Shaopan Xiong , Yijia Luo , Jiashun Liu , Han Lu , Jiamang Wang , Wenbo Su , Bo Zheng , Junchi Yan

Understanding how Large Language Models (LLMs) perform logical reasoning internally remains a fundamental challenge. While prior mechanistic studies focus on identifying taskspecific circuits, they leave open the question of what…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-09 Danchun Chen , Qiyao Yan , Liangming Pan

Large language models (LLMs), especially reasoning models, generate extended chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning that often contains explicit deliberation over future outcomes. Yet whether this deliberation constitutes genuine planning, how it…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Sixing Chen , Ji-An Li , Saner Cakir , Sinan Akcali , Kayla Lee , Marcelo G. Mattar

Recently, techniques such as explicit structured reasoning have demonstrated strong test-time scaling behavior by enforcing a separation between the model's internal "thinking" process and the final response. A key factor influencing answer…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Roy Eisenstadt , Itamar Zimerman , Lior Wolf

Large language models (LLMs) possess strong semantic understanding, driving significant progress in data mining applications. This is further enhanced by large reasoning models (LRMs), which provide explicit multi-step reasoning traces. On…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Aobo Chen , Chenxu Zhao , Chenglin Miao , Mengdi Huai

How does a cause lead to an effect, and which intermediate causal steps explain their connection? This work scrutinizes the mechanistic causal reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) to answer these questions through the task…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Liesbeth Allein , Nataly Pineda-Castañeda , Andrea Rocci , Marie-Francine Moens

Thinking LLMs produce reasoning traces before answering. Prior activation steering work mainly targets on shaping these traces. It remains less understood how answer tokens actually read and integrate the reasoning to produce reliable…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Haoyang Chen , Yi Liu , Jianzhi Shao , Tao Zhang , Chengfu Huo , Wei Hu

Large language models (LLMs) have shown an impressive ability to perform tasks believed to require thought processes. When the model does not document an explicit thought process, it becomes difficult to understand the processes occurring…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-21 Yuval Shalev , Amir Feder , Ariel Goldstein

Recent work suggests that large language models (LLMs) can perform multi-hop reasoning implicitly -- producing correct answers without explicitly verbalizing intermediate steps -- but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-07 Jiaran Ye , Zijun Yao , Zhidian Huang , Liangming Pan , Jinxin Liu , Yushi Bai , Amy Xin , Weichuan Liu , Xiaoyin Che , Lei Hou , Juanzi Li

Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from critical reasoning gaps, including a tendency to hallucinate and poor accuracy in classifying logical fallacies. This limitation stems from their default System 1 processing, which is fast and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Olivia Peiyu Wang , Tashvi Bansal , Ryan Bai , Emily M. Chui , Leilani H. Gilpin

Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities across diverse coding tasks. However, their adoption requires a true understanding of program execution rather than relying on surface-level patterns. Existing benchmarks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Eshgin Hasanov , Md Mahadi Hassan Sibat , Santu Karmaker , Aashish Yadavally

While Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate impressive reasoning capabilities, growing evidence suggests much of their success stems from memorized answer-reasoning patterns rather than genuine inference. In this work, we investigate a…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-24 Yang Wu , Yifan Zhang , Yiwei Wang , Yujun Cai , Yurong Wu , Yuran Wang , Ning Xu , Jian Cheng

Strategic planning is critical for multi-step reasoning, yet compact Large Language Models (LLMs) often lack the capacity to formulate global strategies, leading to error propagation in long-horizon tasks. Our analysis reveals that LLMs…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Haoyu Zheng , Yun Zhu , Yuqian Yuan , Bo Yuan , Wenqiao Zhang , Siliang Tang , Jun Xiao

Implicit biases refer to automatic mental processes that shape perceptions, judgments, and behaviors. Previous research on "implicit bias" in LLMs focused primarily on outputs rather than the processes underlying the outputs. We present the…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Messi H. J. Lee , Calvin K. Lai

Recent generations of language models have introduced Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) that generate detailed thinking processes before providing answers. While these models demonstrate improved performance on reasoning benchmarks, their…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-21 Parshin Shojaee , Iman Mirzadeh , Keivan Alizadeh , Maxwell Horton , Samy Bengio , Mehrdad Farajtabar

Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle with complex reasoning due to limited diversity and inefficient search. We propose Soft Reasoning, an embedding-based search framework that optimises the embedding of the first token to guide…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-16 Qinglin Zhu , Runcong Zhao , Hanqi Yan , Yulan He , Yudong Chen , Lin Gui