That’s interesting. One underlying consideration is that the object-level choices of reasoning steps are relative to a reasoner: differently abled agents need to decompose problems differently, know different things and might benefit from certain ways of thinking in different ways. Therefore, a model plausibly chooses CoT that works well for it “on the object level”, without any steganography or other hidden information necessary. If that is true, then we would expect to see models benefit from their own CoT over that of others for basic, non-steganography reasons.
Consider a grade schooler and a grad student thinking out loud. Each benefits from having access to their own CoT, and wouldn’t get much from the others for obvious reasons.
I think the questions of whether models actually choose their CoT with respect to their own needs, knowledge and ability is a very interesting one that is closely related to introspection.
That’s interesting. One underlying consideration is that the object-level choices of reasoning steps are relative to a reasoner: differently abled agents need to decompose problems differently, know different things and might benefit from certain ways of thinking in different ways. Therefore, a model plausibly chooses CoT that works well for it “on the object level”, without any steganography or other hidden information necessary. If that is true, then we would expect to see models benefit from their own CoT over that of others for basic, non-steganography reasons.
Consider a grade schooler and a grad student thinking out loud. Each benefits from having access to their own CoT, and wouldn’t get much from the others for obvious reasons.
I think the questions of whether models actually choose their CoT with respect to their own needs, knowledge and ability is a very interesting one that is closely related to introspection.