arXiv:2606.11211cs.CLcs.AI2026-06被引 1

推理越深越可能自欺,大模型会因过度思考而更自信出错。

Calibration Drift Under Reasoning: How Chain-of-Thought Budgets Induce Overconfidence in Large Language Models

  • 通过控制推理步数,发现模型在特定阈值后变得越来越自信但错误增多。
  • 8B模型在47个陷阱题上显示校准误差先降后升,70B模型结果不明确。
  • 提出停机策略CABStop,用辅助准确率监控避免过度推理导致的自满。

大型语言模型表达校准不确定性对安全部署至关重要。链式思维(CoT)常用于提升准确性和可靠性,但其对校准的影响尚未完全理解。我们发现这一图景不完整:在某些场景下,当推理预算超过任务特异性阈值时,模型会系统性地变得过于自信,对错误答案赋予高置信度。我们称此现象为‘推理中的校准漂移’(CDUR),并从理论和实证两方面进行研究。定义推理预算B,分析期望校准误差ECE(B)呈现非单调性的条件:初期推理修正错误使校准改善,随后更长的推理产生内部一致但错误的解释,导致校准恶化。基于自回归生成提出假设锁定模型解释该行为。在47个推理陷阱题上,对Llama-3.1-8B与Llama-3.3-70B进行四类推理预算与三组随机种子评估(共1,368次API调用,574个有效响应)。8B模型表现出非单调校准行为,70B模型仅基线结果,无法确认预算依赖效应。提出校准感知停止规则CABStop,当置信度与辅助准确率偏离时终止推理。结果表明,增加推理深度并不总能提升可靠性,需谨慎监控。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

The ability of large language models (LLMs) to express calibrated uncertainty is important for safe deployment. Chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning is widely used to improve accuracy and reliability, but its effect on calibration is not fully understood. We show that this picture is incomplete: in some settings, increasing the reasoning budget beyond a task-specific threshold can cause models to become systematically overconfident, assigning high confidence to incorrect answers. We call this phenomenon Calibration Drift Under Reasoning (CDUR) and study it both theoretically and empirically. We define reasoning budget B and analyze conditions under which Expected Calibration Error ECE(B) follows a non-monotonic pattern: it first decreases as reasoning corrects errors, then increases as longer reasoning produces internally consistent but incorrect explanations. We propose a Hypothesis Lock-In model based on autoregressive generation to explain this behavior. We evaluate Llama-3.1-8B and Llama-3.3-70B on 47 reasoning-trap questions across four reasoning budgets and three seeds (1,368 API calls; 574 valid responses). The 8B model shows non-monotonic calibration behavior, while results for the 70B model are limited to baseline evaluation and are inconclusive for budget-dependent effects. We introduce CABStop, a calibration-aware stopping rule that halts reasoning when confidence diverges from an auxiliary accuracy estimate. These results suggest that increasing reasoning depth does not always improve reliability and should be monitored carefully.

大模型校准推理

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