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In order to be deployed safely, Large Language Models (LLMs) must be capable of dynamically adapting their behavior based on their level of knowledge and uncertainty associated with specific topics. This adaptive behavior, which we refer to…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-04 Alexandre Piché , Aristides Milios , Dzmitry Bahdanau , Chris Pal

When using LLMs to rank items based on given criteria, or evaluate answers, the order of candidate items can influence the model's final decision. This sensitivity to item positioning in a LLM's prompt is known as position bias. Prior…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-25 Ali Vardasbi , Gustavo Penha , Claudia Hauff , Hugues Bouchard

LLMs often exhibit Aha moments such as self-correction after tokens like "Wait," yet the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Standard LLMs collapse mainly through silent divergence, where trajectories drift from the correct answer yet…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Jeonghye Kim , Xufang Luo , Minbeom Kim , Sangmook Lee , Dongsheng Li , Yuqing Yang

Ranking systems influence decision-making in high-stakes domains like health, education, and employment, where they can have substantial economic and social impacts. This makes the integration of safety mechanisms essential. One such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-30 Antonio Ferrara , Andrea Pugnana , Francesco Bonchi , Salvatore Ruggieri

Large Reasoning Language Models (LRLMs) demonstrate impressive capabilities on complex tasks by utilizing long Chain-of-Thought reasoning. However, they are prone to overthinking, which generates redundant reasoning steps that degrade both…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Weixin Guan , Liang Li , Jiapeng Liu , Bing Li , Peng Fu , Chengyang Fang , Xiaoshuai Hao , Can Ma , Weiping Wang

Traditionally, Reinforcement Learning (RL) aims at deciding how to act optimally for an artificial agent. We argue that deciding when to act is equally important. As humans, we drift from default, instinctive or memorized behaviors to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-17 Alexis Jacq , Johan Ferret , Olivier Pietquin , Matthieu Geist

Despite remarkable progress made in natural language processing, even the state-of-the-art models often make incorrect predictions. Such predictions hamper the reliability of systems and limit their widespread adoption in real-world…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-04 Neeraj Varshney , Chitta Baral

Reasoning LLMs show improved performance with longer chains of thought. However, recent work has highlighted their tendency to overthink, continuing to revise answers even after reaching the correct solution. We quantitatively confirm this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-09 Xi Wang , James McInerney , Lequn Wang , Nathan Kallus

Being prompted to engage in reasoning has emerged as a core technique for using large language models (LLMs), deploying additional inference-time compute to improve task performance. However, as LLMs increase in both size and adoption,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-25 C. Nicolò De Sabbata , Theodore R. Sumers , Badr AlKhamissi , Antoine Bosselut , Thomas L. Griffiths

Aiming at efficient and dense chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning, latent reasoning methods fine-tune Large Language Models (LLMs) to substitute discrete language tokens with continuous latent tokens. These methods consume fewer tokens…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Zhi Zheng , Wee Sun Lee

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly enhanced their ability to perform complex reasoning tasks, transitioning from fast and intuitive thinking (System 1) to slow and deep reasoning (System 2). While System…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-04-01 Rui Wang , Hongru Wang , Boyang Xue , Jianhui Pang , Shudong Liu , Yi Chen , Jiahao Qiu , Derek Fai Wong , Heng Ji , Kam-Fai Wong

While reinforcement learning (RL) demonstrated remarkable success in enhancing the reasoning capabilities of language models, the training dynamics of RL in LLMs remain unclear. In this work, we provide an explanation of the RL training…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Xingwu Chen , Tianle Li , Difan Zou

We develop a principled procedure for determining when a large language model (LLM) should abstain from responding (e.g., by saying "I don't know") in a general domain, instead of resorting to possibly "hallucinating" a non-sensical or…

What happens when a language model thinks without words? Standard reasoning LLMs verbalize intermediate steps as chain-of-thought; latent reasoning transformers (LRTs) instead perform deliberation entirely in continuous hidden space. We…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Jasmine Cui , Charles Ye

Large Language Models (LLMs) often produce fluent but factually incorrect responses, a phenomenon known as hallucination. Abstention, where the model chooses not to answer and instead outputs phrases such as "I don't know", is a common…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-24 Vy Nguyen , Ziqi Xu , Jeffrey Chan , Estrid He , Feng Xia , Xiuzhen Zhang

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

We introduce a novel framework of ranking with abstention, where the learner can abstain from making prediction at some limited cost $c$. We present a extensive theoretical analysis of this framework including a series of $H$-consistency…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Anqi Mao , Mehryar Mohri , Yutao Zhong

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning has driven recent gains of large language models (LLMs) on reasoning-intensive tasks by externalizing intermediate steps. However, excessive or redundant reasoning -- so-called overthinking -- can increase…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Renliang Sun , Wei Cheng , Dawei Li , Haifeng Chen , Wei Wang

Reasoning LLMs (RLLMs) generate step-by-step chains of thought (CoTs) before giving an answer, which improves performance on complex tasks and makes reasoning more transparent. But how robust are these reasoning traces to disruptions that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Alexander von Recum , Leander Girrbach , Zeynep Akata

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced complex reasoning capabilities, particularly through extended chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning that incorporates mechanisms such as backtracking,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Baohao Liao , Xinyi Chen , Sara Rajaee , Yuhui Xu , Christian Herold , Anders Søgaard , Maarten de Rijke , Christof Monz