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arXiv Computation and Language By Nathani\"el de Leeuw, Marceau Nahon, Mathis Reymond, Raja Chatila, Mehdi Khamassi

Semantic Deception: When Reasoning Models Can't Compute an Addition

Read the original on arXiv Computation and Language →

The paper introduces the concept of semantic deception, where unfamiliar symbols are used to mislead large language models (LLMs) during simple arithmetic tasks. By redefining digits and operators with novel symbols, the authors test whether LLMs can abstract and manipulate arbitrary symbol systems or fall back on learned semantic associations. Experiments with four LLMs show that misleading semantic cues significantly degrade performance, revealing a reliance on surface-level semantics that can undermine symbolic reasoning.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv Computation and Language.

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