This is a Plain English Papers summary of a research paper called Chain of Thoughtlessness: An Analysis of CoT in Planning. If you like these kinds of analysis, you should subscribe to the AImodels.fyi newsletter or follow me on Twitter.

Overview

• Large language models (LLMs) often struggle to generalize their reasoning abilities beyond the specific examples they are trained on.
• Previous research has suggested that this issue can be mitigated by including "chains of thought" in the prompts - demonstrations of the step-by-step solution process.
• This paper examines the effectiveness of chain of thought prompts for solving problems in the Blocksworld domain, a classical planning problem.

Plain English Explanation

Large language models (LLMs) are powerful AI systems that can understand and generate human-like text. However, researchers have found that these models often struggle to apply their reasoning skills to problems that are different from the ones they were trained on.

The authors of this paper wondered if they could improve the generalization of LLMs by giving them examples of how to solve problems step-by-step. The idea is that by teaching the model an algorithm for solving a certain type of problem, it would be able to apply that same approach to other, similar problems.

To test this, the researchers looked at how two state-of-the-art LLMs performed on problems from the Blocksworld domain, a classic planning problem. They varied the level of generality in the examples provided to the models, as well as the complexity of the problems being solved.

Technical Explanation

The researchers conducted a case study on the performance of two leading LLMs on problems from the Blocksworld domain, a classical planning problem. They examined the models' performance across two key axes:

1. Generality of examples given in the prompt: The researchers provided the LLMs with prompts that included examples ranging from very specific to more general.

2. Complexity of problems queried: The researchers tested the models on Blocksworld problems of varying complexity, as measured by the size of the stack being manipulated.

The researchers found that the chain of thought prompts only led to meaningful performance improvements when the examples were extremely specific to the problem class. However, these improvements quickly deteriorated as the complexity of the problems increased, even if they were still within the scope of the example problems.

These results suggest that the benefits of chain of thought prompting do not stem from the model learning general algorithmic procedures through the demonstrations. Instead, the improvements seem to depend on carefully engineering highly problem-specific prompts.

Critical Analysis

The findings of this paper challenge previous claims in the literature about the ability of chain of thought prompts to help LLMs learn general problem-solving algorithms. The researchers show that the performance gains are quite limited and heavily dependent on the specificity of the examples provided.

This raises important questions about the scalability and generalizability of the chain of thought approach. As the authors point out, there is a sharp tradeoff between the potential performance improvements and the significant human effort required to generate high-quality, problem-specific examples with correct reasoning traces.

Additionally, the paper only examines a relatively simple domain (Blocksworld), so it would be valuable to see if the conclusions hold true for more complex, real-world problems. Further research is needed to fully understand the strengths and limitations of chain of thought prompting for large language models.

Conclusion

This paper provides a cautionary tale about the limitations of using chain of thought prompts to improve the reasoning capabilities of large language models. While the approach may lead to performance gains in some cases, the benefits appear to be highly dependent on the specificity of the examples provided and the complexity of the problems being solved.

The authors' findings suggest that the widely-held belief that chain of thought can teach LLMs general problem-solving algorithms may be an oversimplification. Instead, the technique seems to rely on carefully engineered, problem-specific prompts, which raises concerns about its scalability and broader applicability.

As the field of AI continues to grapple with the challenge of endowing language models with robust, generalizable reasoning abilities, this paper highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of the strengths and limitations of different prompting strategies, including chain of thought, pattern-aware chain of thought, and general-purpose verification. Only through careful empirical investigation and critical analysis can we develop effective techniques to empower transformers to solve inherently complex reasoning problems.

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