arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 8

The Long Road to the Same Answer: Cognitive Bias Under Escalating Reasoning Budgets in Large Language Models

The study investigates whether large language models (LLMs) that allocate extra computation during inference—termed reasoning models—reduce classic decision biases compared to their non‑reasoning counterparts. Using 30 vignettes covering six cognitive biases and varying token budgets up to 8,192 tokens, the authors find that reasoning models are not less biased, and increased deliberation does not reliably diminish bias magnitude. Only anchoring showed a bias in the human direction, while other biases either remained unchanged or moved further from human patterns, suggesting that test‑time reasoning does not guarantee rationality.

By Obada Kraishan
arXiv AI
Oct 16

Human Interventions as Labels: Localizing, Steering, and (Sometimes) Editing the Computations Behind LLM Agent Failures

The paper treats human interventions during LLM agent failures as labels that pinpoint the internal computation that went wrong, rather than merely training data. In a controlled environment, the authors analyze one failure type—over‑asking a clarifying question when the request is already clear—using rule‑based overseer labels validated by blind human judgment. They find that the decision to ask versus act can be causally localized across several models, that over‑asking exhibits distinct mechanistic signatures, and that steering or weight consolidation can mitigate the issue, though outcomes vary by model family.

By Cesare Zavattari, Alessandro Tommasi, Giuseppe Prencipe
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Sequential knowledge editing breaks a model's ability to tell good evidence from bad, without costing it accuracy

The paper investigates how sequential knowledge editing can degrade a language model’s ability to discern reliable evidence from unreliable evidence without affecting overall accuracy. Using a conservatively tuned LoRA on Qwen2.5‑7B‑Instruct, the authors show that after 1,000 edits the model’s arbitration score for untouched facts drops by 36%, leading to higher error rates on its most confident decisions, while MMLU accuracy remains unchanged. The study also finds that in some model‑method combinations, sequential edits can reduce MMLU to chance levels even though edit success and locality remain perfect.

By Atul Anand