A Survey of Chain of Thought Reasoning: Advances, Frontiers and Future

Chain-of-thought reasoning, a cognitive process fundamental to human intelligence, has garnered significant attention in the realm of artificial intelligence and natural language processing. However, there still remains a lack of a comprehensive survey for this arena. To this end, we take the first step and present a thorough survey of this research field carefully and widely. We use X-of-Thought to refer to Chain-of-Thought in a broad sense. In detail, we systematically organize the current research according to the taxonomies of methods, including XoT construction, XoT structure variants, and enhanced XoT. Additionally, we describe XoT with frontier applications, covering planning, tool use, and distillation. Furthermore, we address challenges and discuss some future directions, including faithfulness, multi-modal, and theory. We hope this survey serves as a valuable resource for researchers seeking to innovate within the domain of chain-of-thought reasoning.Comment: 26 pages. Resources are available at https://github.com/zchuz/CoT-Reasoning-Surve

Automatically Correcting Large Language Models: Surveying the landscape of diverse self-correction strategies

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance across a wide array of NLP tasks. However, their efficacy is undermined by undesired and inconsistent behaviors, including hallucination, unfaithful reasoning, and toxic content. A promising approach to rectify these flaws is self-correction, where the LLM itself is prompted or guided to fix problems in its own output. Techniques leveraging automated feedback -- either produced by the LLM itself or some external system -- are of particular interest as they are a promising way to make LLM-based solutions more practical and deployable with minimal human feedback. This paper presents a comprehensive review of this emerging class of techniques. We analyze and taxonomize a wide array of recent work utilizing these strategies, including training-time, generation-time, and post-hoc correction. We also summarize the major applications of this strategy and conclude by discussing future directions and challenges.Comment: Work in Progress. Version

Unleashing the potential of prompt engineering in Large Language Models: a comprehensive review

This paper delves into the pivotal role of prompt engineering in unleashing the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). Prompt engineering is the process of structuring input text for LLMs and is a technique integral to optimizing the efficacy of LLMs. This survey elucidates foundational principles of prompt engineering, such as role-prompting, one-shot, and few-shot prompting, as well as more advanced methodologies such as the chain-of-thought and tree-of-thoughts prompting. The paper sheds light on how external assistance in the form of plugins can assist in this task, and reduce machine hallucination by retrieving external knowledge. We subsequently delineate prospective directions in prompt engineering research, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of structures and the role of agents in Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC) tools. We discuss how to assess the efficacy of prompt methods from different perspectives and using different methods. Finally, we gather information about the application of prompt engineering in such fields as education and programming, showing its transformative potential. This comprehensive survey aims to serve as a friendly guide for anyone venturing through the big world of LLMs and prompt engineering

Does Thinking in Opposites in Order to Think Differently Improve Creativity?

In this paper, we focus on the link between thinking in opposites and creativity. Thinking in opposites requires an intuitive, productive strategy, which may enhance creativity. Given the importance of creativity for the well-being of individuals and society, finding new ways to enhance it represents a valuable goal in both professional and personal contexts. We discuss the body of evidence that exists concerning the importance of the first representation of the structure of a problem to be solved, which determines the baseline representation and sets limits on the area within which a problem solver will explore. We then review a variety of interventions described in the literature on creativity and insight problem solving that were designed to overcome fixedness and encourage people to move away from stereotypical solutions. Special attention is paid to the research carried out in the context of problem solving, which provides evidence that prompting people to "think in opposites" is beneficial. We suggest that an extended investigation of the effects of this strategy in various types of tasks related to creativity is an interesting line of research to follow. We discuss the rationale supporting this claim and identify specific questions, both theoretical and methodological, for future research to address

Current and Future Challenges in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning is a central, longstanding, and active area of Artificial Intelligence. Over the years it has evolved significantly; more recently it has been challenged and complemented by research in areas such as machine learning and reasoning under uncertainty. In July 2022 a Dagstuhl Perspectives workshop was held on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. The goal of the workshop was to describe the state of the art in the field, including its relation with other areas, its shortcomings and strengths, together with recommendations for future progress. We developed this manifesto based on the presentations, panels, working groups, and discussions that took place at the Dagstuhl Workshop. It is a declaration of our views on Knowledge Representation: its origins, goals, milestones, and current foci; its relation to other disciplines, especially to Artificial Intelligence; and on its challenges, along with key priorities for the next decade

Scalable software framework for real-time data processing in the railway environment

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Scalable software framework for real-time data processing in the railway environment

Background: Ticks are obligate haematophagous ectoparasites of vertebrates and frequently parasitize avian species that can carry them across continents during their long-distance migrations. Ticks may have detrimental effects on the health state of their avian hosts, which can be either directly caused by blood-draining or mediated by microbial pathogens transmitted during the blood meal. Indeed, ticks host complex microbial communities, including bacterial pathogens and symbionts. Midichloria bacteria (Rickettsiales) are widespread tick endosymbionts that can be transmitted to vertebrate hosts during the tick bite, inducing an antibody response. Their actual role as infectious/pathogenic agents is, however, unclear. Methods: We screened for Midichloria DNA African ticks and blood samples collected from trans-Saharan migratory songbirds at their arrival in Europe during spring migration. Results: Tick infestation rate was 5.7%, with most ticks belonging to the Hyalomma marginatum species complex. Over 90% of Hyalomma ticks harboured DNA of Midichloria bacteria belonging to the monophylum associated with ticks. Midichloria DNA was detected in 43% of blood samples of avian hosts. Tick-infested adult birds were significantly more likely to test positive to the presence of Midichloria DNA than non-infested adults and second-year individuals, suggesting a long-term persistence of these bacteria within avian hosts. Tick parasitism was associated with a significantly delayed timing of spring migration of avian hosts but had no significant effects on body condition, whereas blood Midichloria DNA presence negatively affected fat deposits of tick-infested avian hosts. Conclusions: Our results show that ticks effectively transfer Midichloria bacteria to avian hosts, supporting the hypothesis that they are infectious to vertebrates. Bird infection likely enhances the horizontal spread of these bacteria across haematophagous ectoparasite populations. Moreover, we showed that Midichloria and tick parasitism have detrimental non-independent effects on avian host health during migration, highlighting the complexity of interactions involving ticks, their vertebrate hosts, and tick-borne bacteria

Individual differences and strategies for human reasoning

Theories of human reasoning have tended to assume cognitive universality, i. e. that all individuals reason in basically the same way. However, some research (e. g. that of Ford. 1995) has found evidence of individual differences in the strategies people use for syllogistic reasoning. This thesis presents a series of experiments which aimed to identify individual differences in strategies for human reasoning and investigate their nature and aetiology. Experiment 1 successfully replicated and extended Ford (1995) and provided further evidence that most individuals prefer to reason with either verbal-propositional or visuo-spatial representations. Data from verbal and written protocols showed that verbal reasoners tended to use a method of substitution whereby they obtain a value for the common term from one premise and then simply substitute it in the other premise to obtain a conclusion. Spatial reasoners, on the other hand, presented protocols which resembled Euler circles and described the syllogistic premises in terms of sets and subsets. Experiment 2 provided some further qualitative evidence about the nature of such strategies, especially the verbal reasoners, showing that within strategy variations occurred. Experiment 3 extended this line of research, identifying a strong association between verbal and spatial strategies for syllogistic reasoning and abstract and concrete strategies for transitive inference (the latter having originally been identified by Egan and Grimes- Farrow, 1982). Experiments 1-3 also showed that inter-strategic differences in accuracy are generally not observed, hence, reasoners present an outward appearance of ubiquity despite underlying differences in reasoning processes. Experiments 5 and 6 investigated individual differences in cognitive factors which may underpin strategy preference. Whilst no apparent effects of verbal and spatial ability or cognitive style were found, reasoners did appear to draw differentially on the verbal and spatial components of working memory. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that whilst verbal reasoners draw primarily on the verbal memory resource, spatial reasoners draw both on this and on spatial resource. Overall, these findings have important implications for theories of human reasoning, which need to take into account possible individual differences in strategies if they are to present a truly comprehensive account of how people reason.Economic and Social Research Counci

Interactive Theorem Proving with Indexed Formulas

Since more than two decades research in interactive theorem proving (ITP) has attracted growing interest. The primary application domains for ITPs range from hard- and software verification tools to mathematical tutor systems. To support communication with the user in an adequate way these systems depend on calculi that allow for the construction of human understandable and readable proofs. However, most calculi that are used in current ITPs fall still short of supporting the user in an optimal way. The reason is that they enforce the user to construct proofs at a level that is far more detailed than the one that can be found in human constructed proofs. Autexier [Aut03] has recently proposed a new theorem proving framework that allows to model different logics and calculi in an uniform way. In CORE, a proof-state is always represented as a single formula that can be manipulated by the application of replacement rules that are generated from the logical context of the subformula under transformation. This approach also facilitates proof construction at the assertion level which is considered as more closely matching the level at which humans construct proofs (see for instance [Hua94]). Together with COREs window inference technique this makes CORE a potentially well suited basis for interactive theorem proving. This thesis tries to excerpt COREs potential for interactive theorem proving by mapping important concepts of the established proof system ΩMEGA to CORE. A task structure is developed to present the context of a subformula in an intuitive way to the user and to assist him in structuring proofs. The development of a method interpreter makes it possible to specify abstract inference steps declaratively and to encode proof strategies for the use in CORE. The adaptation of ΩMEGAS agent-based suggestion mechanism ΩANTS to CORE helps the user with the identification of applicable methods and replacement rules.Interaktives Theorembeweisen hat in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten zunehmend an Bedeutung gewonnen. Die Anwendungsbereiche von Systemen mit denen sich Beweise interaktiv führen lassen reichen von der Hard- und Software Verifikation bis zu mathematischen Tutor-Systemen. Die genannten Anwendungsgebiete machen es erforderlich das der Anwender bei der Beweisführung adequat untersützt wird. Um eine entsprechende Kommunikation mit dem Benutzer zu ermöglichen verwenden interaktive Beweissysteme Kalküle, in denen Beweise in einer für den Benutzer nachvollziehbaren Art und Weise, geführt werden können. Trotzdem kann man noch nicht davon sprechen, dass interaktive Beweiser den Benutzer optimal unterstützen. Der Hauptrgund hierfür ist, dass die eingesetzten Kalküle automatisch dazu führen, dass Beweise auf einer viel detailliertern Ebene geführt werden müssen, als man typischerweise in einem mathematischen Beweis finden würde. Autexier [Aut03]hat kürzlich eine neue logische Umgebung für die Beweissuche entwickelt, welche es ermöglicht verschiedene Logiken und Kalküle einheitlich zu modellieren. In CORE ist ein Beweiszustand immer als eine einzige Formel repräsentiert, welche durch das Anwenden von Ersetzungsregeln, die aus dem Kontext einer Teilformel abgeleitet werden, transformiert werden kann. Diese Herangehensweise erleichtert es auch, Beweise auf der sogenannten Assertion-Ebene (vgl. [Hua94]) zu führen, welche allgemein als eine natürlichere Ebene für die Beweisführung angesehen wird. Zusammen mit der Window-Inferenz Technik, die von CORE unterstützt, wird stellt CORE ein System dar das potentiell als eine verbesserte Grundlage für die interaktive Beweissuche angesehen werden kann. In dieser Arbeit geht es darum, das Potential von CORE im Hinblick auf die interaktive Beweiskonstruktion auszunutzen. Dieses geschieht zum einen dadurch, dass etablierte Konzepte im Bereich des interaktiven Beweisens, wie sie auch im Beweis-System ΩMEGA verwendet werden, auf das CORE-System abgebildet werden. Desweiteren wird eine Task-Srukture entwickelt, die es zum einen ermöglicht, den logischen Kontext einer Teilformel für den Benutzer verständlich aufzubereiten und darzustellen; zum anderen untersützt sie den Anwender auch darin, Beweise strukturiert zu führen. Der Entwurf eines Methoden-Interpreters ermöglicht es, abstrakte Beweisschritte zu kodieren und im System anzuwenden. Die Anpassung des Vorschlags-Mechanismus ΩANTS an CORE stellt eine weitere Unterstützung für den Benutzer bereit, indem sie automatisch Vorschläge über mögliche Fortsetzungen eines Beweises generiert