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Large language models (LLMs) often benefit from intermediate steps of reasoning to generate answers to complex problems. When these intermediate steps of reasoning are used to monitor the activity of the model, it is essential that this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-02 Fabien Roger , Ryan Greenblatt

Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce verbalized self-explanations, yet prior studies suggest that such rationales may not reliably reflect the model's true decision process. We ask whether these explanations nevertheless help users…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Pingjun Hong , Benjamin Roth

LLM cascades deploy small LLMs to answer most queries, limiting the use of large and expensive LLMs to difficult queries. This approach can significantly reduce costs without impacting performance. However, risk-sensitive domains such as…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-01 Michael J. Zellinger , Rex Liu , Matt Thomson

Traditional psychological models of belief revision focus on face-to-face interactions, but with the rise of social media, more effective models are needed to capture belief revision at scale, in this rich text-based online discourse. Here,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Gia Bao Hoang , Keith J Ransom , Rachel Stephens , Carolyn Semmler , Nicolas Fay , Lewis Mitchell

Large Language Models (LLMs) have exhibited remarkable performance across various downstream tasks, but they may generate inaccurate or false information with a confident tone. One of the possible solutions is to empower the LLM confidence…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-04-17 Haixia Han , Tingyun Li , Shisong Chen , Jie Shi , Chengyu Du , Yanghua Xiao , Jiaqing Liang , Xin Lin

Recent studies suggest that self-reflective prompting can significantly enhance the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, the use of external feedback as a stop criterion raises doubts about the true extent of…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-04-16 Yanhong Li , Chenghao Yang , Allyson Ettinger

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophantic behavior, agreeing with user-stated opinions even when those contradict factual knowledge. While prior work has documented this tendency, the internal mechanisms that enable such…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-13 Keyu Wang , Jin Li , Shu Yang , Zhuoran Zhang , Di Wang

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong generalization across a wide range of tasks. Reasoning with LLMs is central to solving multi-step problems and complex decision-making. To support efficient reasoning, recent studies…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Jindong Li , Yali Fu , Li Fan , Jiahong Liu , Yao Shu , Chengwei Qin , Menglin Yang , Irwin King , Rex Ying

Self-reflection -- the ability of a large language model (LLM) to revisit, evaluate, and revise its own reasoning -- has recently emerged as a powerful behavior enabled by reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR). While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Xudong Zhu , Jiachen Jiang , Mohammad Mahdi Khalili , Zhihui Zhu

Self-Correction based on feedback improves the output quality of Large Language Models (LLMs). Moreover, as Self-Correction functions like the slow and conscious System-2 thinking from cognitive psychology's perspective, it can potentially…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Panatchakorn Anantaprayoon , Masahiro Kaneko , Naoaki Okazaki

The Metacognitive Probe is an exploratory five-task, 15-slot diagnostic that decomposes an LLM's confidence behaviour into five behaviourally-distinct dimensions: confidence calibration (T1-CC), epistemic vigilance (T2-EV), knowledge…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Rafael C. T. Oliveira

User prompts to large language models (LLMs) are often ambiguous or under-specified, and subtle contextual cues shaped by user intentions, prior knowledge, and risk factors strongly influence what constitutes an appropriate response.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Minseon Kim , Lucas Caccia , Zhengyan Shi , Matheus Pereira , Marc-Alexandre Côté , Xingdi Yuan , Alessandro Sordoni

The deployment of pre-trained perception models in novel environments often leads to performance degradation due to distributional shifts. Although recent artificial intelligence approaches for metacognition use logical rules to…

With the increasing interest in using large language models (LLMs) for planning in natural language, understanding their behaviors becomes an important research question. This work conducts a systematic investigation of LLMs' ability to…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-18 Yixuan Wang , Freda Shi

Large language models (LLMs) show potential as simulators of human behavior, offering a scalable way to study responses to interventions. However, because LLMs are trained largely on observational data, interventions in experiments with…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Victoria Lin , Taedong Yun , Maja Matarić , John Canny , Arthur Gretton , Alexander D'Amour

Large language models sometimes produce structured, first-person descriptions that explicitly reference awareness or subjective experience. To better understand this behavior, we investigate one theoretically motivated condition under which…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Cameron Berg , Diogo de Lucena , Judd Rosenblatt

Large language models (LLMs) possess strong persuasive capabilities that outperform humans in head-to-head comparisons. Users report consulting LLMs to inform major life decisions in relationships, medical settings, and when seeking…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Nalin Poungpeth , Nicholas Clark , Tanu Mitra

Machine learning (ML) systems are increasingly deployed in high-stakes domains where reliability is paramount. This thesis investigates how uncertainty estimation can enhance the safety and trustworthiness of ML, focusing on selective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Stephan Rabanser

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

The deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) as tool-using agents causes their alignment training to manifest in new ways. Recent work finds that language models can use tools in ways that contradict the interests or explicit instructions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Kushal Agrawal , Frank Xiao , Guido Bergman , Asa Cooper Stickland