探究大模型推理过程能否被可靠监控,发现其存在可信度与检测力双重挑战。
Investigating CoT Monitorability in Large Reasoning Models
- 分析大模型推理过程是否真实反映决策依据,揭示其表述可能失真。
- 验证基于推理链的监控系统存在误报或漏报问题,易被复杂推理误导。
- 提出新框架MoME,让模型通过推理链互相监督并提供证据支持判断。
大型推理模型(LRMs)在复杂任务中通过生成长序列推理过程来提升表现。这些推理轨迹不仅增强能力,也为人工智能安全提供了新途径——链式思维可监测性(CoT Monitorability),即通过分析推理过程识别模型可能的不当行为,如捷径依赖或讨好倾向。然而,构建有效监控面临两大根本挑战:一是已有研究指出,模型生成的推理未必真实反映其内部决策机制;二是监控系统自身可能过于敏感或不够敏感,易被冗长、复杂的推理误导。本文首次系统性地探究了链式思维可监测性的挑战与潜力。围绕‘表述真实性’和‘监控可靠性’两个核心视角展开研究,通过数学、科学与伦理领域的实证数据与相关性分析,评估推理质量、监控有效性与模型性能之间的关系。进一步考察多种旨在提升推理效率或表现的干预方法对监控效果的影响。最后提出MoME框架,使大模型能通过其他模型的推理链识别其不当行为,并给出结构化判断与支撑证据。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance on complex tasks by engaging in extended reasoning before producing final answers. Beyond improving abilities, these detailed reasoning traces also create a new opportunity for AI safety, CoT Monitorability: monitoring potential model misbehavior, such as the use of shortcuts or sycophancy, through their chain-of-thought (CoT) during decision-making. However, two key fundamental challenges arise when attempting to build more effective monitors through CoT analysis. First, as prior research on CoT faithfulness has pointed out, models do not always truthfully represent their internal decision-making in the generated reasoning. Second, monitors themselves may be either overly sensitive or insufficiently sensitive, and can potentially be deceived by models' long, elaborate reasoning traces. In this paper, we present the first systematic investigation of the challenges and potential of CoT monitorability. Motivated by two fundamental challenges we mentioned before, we structure our study around two central perspectives: (i) verbalization: to what extent do LRMs faithfully verbalize the true factors guiding their decisions in the CoT, and (ii) monitor reliability: to what extent can misbehavior be reliably detected by a CoT-based monitor? Specifically, we provide empirical evidence and correlation analyses between verbalization quality, monitor reliability, and LLM performance across mathematical, scientific, and ethical domains. Then we further investigate how different CoT intervention methods, designed to improve reasoning efficiency or performance, will affect monitoring effectiveness. Finally, we propose MoME, a new paradigm in which LLMs monitor other models' misbehavior through their CoT and provide structured judgments along with supporting evidence.
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