arXiv AI

Compliance vs. Sensibility: On the Reasoning Controllability in Large Language Models

arXiv AI
Oct 19

Reasoning Models Can Control Their Chains of Thought When They Tell Themselves To

The paper investigates chain-of-thought (CoT) controllability in reasoning models, noting that traditional evaluations show low controllability when constraints are given in user prompts. It introduces Self‑Instructed CoT Controllability, where constraints are embedded as self‑instructions within the model’s CoT, leading to markedly higher controllability. The study also shows that simple self‑instruction prompts can bootstrap effective control and that this capability can be exploited for monitor evasion, raising concerns about CoT monitorability.

By Uriel Dolev, Idan Schwartz, Yoav Goldberg
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

Reasoning Models Don't Just Think Longer, They Move Differently

arXiv:2605. 15454v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reasoning-trained language models often spend more tokens on harder problems, but longer chains of thought do not show whether a model is merely computing for more steps or following a different internal trajectory.

By Anders Gj{\o}lbye, Lars Kai Hansen, Sanmi Koyejo
arXiv AI
Aug 18

Rethinking Generalization in Reasoning SFT: A Conditional Analysis on Optimization, Data, and Model Capability

arXiv:2604. 06628v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A prevailing narrative in LLM post-training holds that supervised finetuning (SFT) memorizes while reinforcement learning (RL) generalizes.

By Qihan Ren, Peng Wang, Ruikun Cai, Shuai Shao, Dadi Guo, Yuejin Xie, Yafu Li, Quanshi Zhang, Xia Hu, Jing Shao, Dongrui Liu
arXiv AI
Jun 3

Bridging Auxiliary Constraints to Resolve Instruction Following in Large Reasoning Models

arXiv:2606. 03624v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in many tasks, yet they struggle with reliably following multiple instructions, either by failing to satisfy individual constraints or by struggling to balance competing constraints simultaneously.

By Zhengyi Zhao, Shubo Zhang, Huimin Wang, Zezhong Wang, Yutian Zhao, Yefeng Zheng, Binyang Li, Yulan He, Kam-Fai Wong, Xian Wu