让大模型学会根据任务难易动态调整推理强度,避免冗余计算。
From Efficiency to Adaptivity: A Deeper Look at Adaptive Reasoning in Large Language Models
- 提出适应性推理框架,按输入复杂度分配计算资源。
- 区分训练型与免训练方法,系统归类现有技术路径。
- 适合研究智能推理、高效部署的大模型方向的读者。
大语言模型的推理能力正成为评估其智能水平的核心指标。现有研究多关注效率,如缩短推理链或降低计算量,却忽视了根本问题:当前模型对所有任务采用统一推理策略,简单问题产生冗长推理链,复杂任务又无法深入思考。本文从适应性视角重构推理概念,即根据输入难度和不确定性动态调节推理投入。我们提出三项贡献:首先,将演绎、归纳与溯因推理形式化为大模型中的算法实现;其次,将自适应推理建模为控制增强的策略优化问题,区分学习所得策略与推理时的控制机制;第三,构建系统性分类体系,将现有方法分为基于训练的方法(强化学习、监督微调、学习控制器)与免训练方法(提示条件化、反馈驱动终止、模块组合)。该框架厘清了不同机制如何实现自适应推理,并支持跨策略比较。最后指出自评估、元推理与人类对齐控制等开放挑战。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have made reasoning a central benchmark for evaluating intelligence. While prior surveys focus on efficiency by examining how to shorten reasoning chains or reduce computation, this view overlooks a fundamental challenge: current LLMs apply uniform reasoning strategies regardless of task complexity, generating long traces for trivial problems while failing to extend reasoning for difficult tasks. This survey reframes reasoning through the lens of {adaptivity}: the capability to allocate reasoning effort based on input characteristics such as difficulty and uncertainty. We make three contributions. First, we formalize deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning within the LLM context, connecting these classical cognitive paradigms with their algorithmic realizations. Second, we formalize adaptive reasoning as a control-augmented policy optimization problem balancing task performance with computational cost, distinguishing learned policies from inference-time control mechanisms. Third, we propose a systematic taxonomy organizing existing methods into training-based approaches that internalize adaptivity through reinforcement learning, supervised fine-tuning, and learned controllers, and training-free approaches that achieve adaptivity through prompt conditioning, feedback-driven halting, and modular composition. This framework clarifies how different mechanisms realize adaptive reasoning in practice and enables systematic comparison across diverse strategies. We conclude by identifying open challenges in self-evaluation, meta-reasoning, and human-aligned reasoning control.
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