arXiv:2509.17995cs.CLcs.AI2025-09被引 15

研究大模型验证过程,发现验证效果受问题难易和生成器能力影响。

Variation in Verification: Understanding Verification Dynamics in Large Language Models

  • 用链式思维生成验证结果,判断解法对错
  • 弱生成器的错误更易被检测到,难题验证效果差
  • 验证能力与自身解题能力相关,但难易度影响显著

近期进展表明,扩大测试时计算量可使大语言模型(LLMs)在多个领域解决更复杂的问题。一种有效的测试时扩展(TTS)策略是:由语言模型生成多个解法候选,再由另一语言模型验证其正确性,无需参考答案。本文研究生成式验证器,即通过生成思维链(CoT)推理并给出二元判断来完成验证。我们在12个基准上系统分析了三个维度的验证动态:问题难度、生成器能力与验证器生成能力,涵盖数学推理、知识类及自然语言推理任务,使用14个开源模型(2B至72B参数范围)和GPT-4o进行实证研究。实验揭示三项关键发现:(1)简单问题下验证器更可靠地识别正确答案;(2)弱生成器产生的错误比强生成器的错误更容易被检测;(3)验证能力总体与验证器自身解题能力正相关,但该关系随问题难度变化而异。这些发现为优化TTS中的基础验证策略提供机会。首先,在相同验证器下,某些弱生成器经验证后性能接近更强者(如Gemma2-9B到Gemma2-27B性能差距缩小75.7%);其次,我们识别出强验证器对弱验证器并无显著优势的场景,二者均无法带来有效验证增益,表明仅靠验证器规模提升难以克服根本性验证挑战。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Recent advances have shown that scaling test-time computation enables large language models (LLMs) to solve increasingly complex problems across diverse domains. One effective paradigm for test-time scaling (TTS) involves LLM generators producing multiple solution candidates, with LLM verifiers assessing the correctness of these candidates without reference answers. In this paper, we study generative verifiers, which perform verification by generating chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning followed by a binary verdict. We systematically analyze verification dynamics across three dimensions - problem difficulty, generator capability, and verifier generation capability - with empirical studies on 12 benchmarks across mathematical reasoning, knowledge, and natural language reasoning tasks using 14 open-source models (2B to 72B parameter range) and GPT-4o. Our experiments reveal three key findings about verification effectiveness: (1) Easy problems allow verifiers to more reliably certify correct responses; (2) Weak generators produce errors that are easier to detect than strong generators; (3) Verification ability is generally correlated with the verifier's own problem-solving capability, but this relationship varies with problem difficulty. These findings reveal opportunities to optimize basic verification strategies in TTS applications. First, given the same verifier, some weak generators can nearly match stronger ones in post-verification TTS performance (e.g., the Gemma2-9B to Gemma2-27B performance gap shrinks by 75.7%). Second, we identify cases where strong verifiers offer limited advantage over weak ones, as both fail to provide meaningful verification gains, suggesting that verifier scaling alone cannot overcome fundamental verification challenges.

大模型验证测试时扩展链式思维

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