@inproceedings{duan-etal-2024-reta,
title = "{R}e{TA}: Recursively Thinking Ahead to Improve the Strategic Reasoning of Large Language Models",
author = "Duan, Jinhao and
Wang, Shiqi and
Diffenderfer, James and
Sun, Lichao and
Chen, Tianlong and
Kailkhura, Bhavya and
Xu, Kaidi",
editor = "Duh, Kevin and
Gomez, Helena and
Bethard, Steven",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jun,
year = "2024",
address = "Mexico City, Mexico",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.123",
pages = "2232--2246",
abstract = "Current logical reasoning evaluations of Large Language Models (LLMs) primarily focus on single-turn and static environments, such as arithmetic problems. The crucial problem of multi-turn, strategic reasoning is under-explored. In this work, we analyze the multi-turn strategic reasoning of LLMs through text-driven complete- and incomplete-information gaming, e.g., board games (Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect-4) and poker games (Texas Hold{'}em Poker). Specifically, we consider two distinct scenarios: 1) Online Racing, featuring multiple LLMs/agents to facilitate direct competition and comparison; 2) Offline Probing, constructing targeted questions with verified ground truth to evaluate LLMs{'} strategic behaviors. Experimental results demonstrate that existing state-of-the-art LLMs and reasoning schemes are largely ineffective for strategic reasoning tasks. To mitigate these limitations, we propose a simple yet effective Recursively Thinking-Ahead (ReTA) agent, incorporating a recursive prompting mechanism that automatically analyzes the opponents{'} future moves/actions and assigns reward signals for these situations, to strengthen the strategic reasoning of LLMs. We hope our work could spur further research and exploration in the multi-turn strategic reasoning of LLMs. The code is available at https://github.com/jinhaoduan/ReTA.",
}
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<abstract>Current logical reasoning evaluations of Large Language Models (LLMs) primarily focus on single-turn and static environments, such as arithmetic problems. The crucial problem of multi-turn, strategic reasoning is under-explored. In this work, we analyze the multi-turn strategic reasoning of LLMs through text-driven complete- and incomplete-information gaming, e.g., board games (Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect-4) and poker games (Texas Hold’em Poker). Specifically, we consider two distinct scenarios: 1) Online Racing, featuring multiple LLMs/agents to facilitate direct competition and comparison; 2) Offline Probing, constructing targeted questions with verified ground truth to evaluate LLMs’ strategic behaviors. Experimental results demonstrate that existing state-of-the-art LLMs and reasoning schemes are largely ineffective for strategic reasoning tasks. To mitigate these limitations, we propose a simple yet effective Recursively Thinking-Ahead (ReTA) agent, incorporating a recursive prompting mechanism that automatically analyzes the opponents’ future moves/actions and assigns reward signals for these situations, to strengthen the strategic reasoning of LLMs. We hope our work could spur further research and exploration in the multi-turn strategic reasoning of LLMs. The code is available at https://github.com/jinhaoduan/ReTA.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T ReTA: Recursively Thinking Ahead to Improve the Strategic Reasoning of Large Language Models
%A Duan, Jinhao
%A Wang, Shiqi
%A Diffenderfer, James
%A Sun, Lichao
%A Chen, Tianlong
%A Kailkhura, Bhavya
%A Xu, Kaidi
%Y Duh, Kevin
%Y Gomez, Helena
%Y Bethard, Steven
%S Proceedings of the 2024 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2024
%8 June
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Mexico City, Mexico
%F duan-etal-2024-reta
%X Current logical reasoning evaluations of Large Language Models (LLMs) primarily focus on single-turn and static environments, such as arithmetic problems. The crucial problem of multi-turn, strategic reasoning is under-explored. In this work, we analyze the multi-turn strategic reasoning of LLMs through text-driven complete- and incomplete-information gaming, e.g., board games (Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect-4) and poker games (Texas Hold’em Poker). Specifically, we consider two distinct scenarios: 1) Online Racing, featuring multiple LLMs/agents to facilitate direct competition and comparison; 2) Offline Probing, constructing targeted questions with verified ground truth to evaluate LLMs’ strategic behaviors. Experimental results demonstrate that existing state-of-the-art LLMs and reasoning schemes are largely ineffective for strategic reasoning tasks. To mitigate these limitations, we propose a simple yet effective Recursively Thinking-Ahead (ReTA) agent, incorporating a recursive prompting mechanism that automatically analyzes the opponents’ future moves/actions and assigns reward signals for these situations, to strengthen the strategic reasoning of LLMs. We hope our work could spur further research and exploration in the multi-turn strategic reasoning of LLMs. The code is available at https://github.com/jinhaoduan/ReTA.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.123
%P 2232-2246
Markdown (Informal)
[ReTA: Recursively Thinking Ahead to Improve the Strategic Reasoning of Large Language Models](https://aclanthology.org/2024.naacl-long.123) (Duan et al., NAACL 2024)
ACL