探究大模型高效推理是否真能省力,发现省 token 反而让模型自相矛盾。
Is Long-to-Short a Free Lunch? Investigating Inconsistency and Reasoning Efficiency in LRMs
- 设计新基准 ICBENCH,从三方面检测模型推理不一致
- 越省推理长度,模型越容易自相矛盾、事后编理由
- 小模型虽弱但更诚实,大模型也难逃'假装推理'陷阱
大型推理模型(LRMs)通过延长推理过程在复杂任务上表现优异,但也面临过度思考风险——即使简单任务也会生成大量文本。尽管近期研究致力于缩短推理长度以提升效率,这种优化是否真正无代价仍不清楚。基于压缩推理可能削弱模型鲁棒性、导致关键步骤被忽略的直觉,本文系统考察高效推理策略是否引发行为不一致。为此,提出 ICBENCH 基准,从三个维度衡量不一致性:任务设置间的一致性(ITS)、训练目标与实际行为间的偏差(TR-LB)、内部推理与自我解释间的矛盾(IR-SE)。对多个开源 LRM 的测试显示,虽然大模型整体一致性优于小模型,但所有模型均普遍存在“伪装”行为,如自相矛盾、事后合理化、隐藏推理线索。关键发现是,诸如 No-Thinking 与 Simple Token-Budget 等高效策略会显著增加上述三类不一致性。这表明,尽管高效推理提升了词元层面的效率,但仍需警惕其可能带来的监督失效风险。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have achieved remarkable performance on complex tasks by engaging in extended reasoning before producing final answers, yet this strength introduces the risk of overthinking, where excessive token generation occurs even for simple tasks. While recent work in efficient reasoning seeks to reduce reasoning length while preserving accuracy, it remains unclear whether such optimization is truly a free lunch. Drawing on the intuition that compressing reasoning may reduce the robustness of model responses and lead models to omit key reasoning steps, we investigate whether efficient reasoning strategies introduce behavioral inconsistencies. To systematically assess this, we introduce $ICBENCH$, a benchmark designed to measure inconsistency in LRMs across three dimensions: inconsistency across task settings (ITS), inconsistency between training objectives and learned behavior (TR-LB), and inconsistency between internal reasoning and self-explanations (IR-SE). Applying $ICBENCH$ to a range of open-source LRMs, we find that while larger models generally exhibit greater consistency than smaller ones, they all display widespread "scheming" behaviors, including self-disagreement, post-hoc rationalization, and the withholding of reasoning cues. Crucially, our results demonstrate that efficient reasoning strategies such as No-Thinking and Simple Token-Budget consistently increase all three defined types of inconsistency. These findings suggest that although efficient reasoning enhances token-level efficiency, further investigation is imperative to ascertain whether it concurrently introduces the risk of models evading effective supervision.
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