Efficient Reasoning with Hidden Thinking

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Shen, Xuan, Wang, Yizhou, Zhou, Yufa, Shi, Xiangxi, Zhao, Pu, Wang, Yanzhi, Gu, Jiuxiang
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Shen, Xuan
Wang, Yizhou
Zhou, Yufa
Shi, Xiangxi
Zhao, Pu
Wang, Yanzhi
Gu, Jiuxiang
author_facet Shen, Xuan
Wang, Yizhou
Zhou, Yufa
Shi, Xiangxi
Zhao, Pu
Wang, Yanzhi
Gu, Jiuxiang
contents Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning has become a powerful framework for improving complex problem-solving capabilities in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs). However, the verbose nature of textual reasoning introduces significant inefficiencies. In this work, we propose Heima (as hidden llama), an effective CoT compression framework that condenses lengthy CoTs into a small set of abstract thinking tokens, preserving essential reasoning while removing redundancy. We then conduct a theoretical analysis from an information-theoretic perspective, quantifying the information gap induced by compression, showing that reasoning capability is preserved when non-trivial mutual information is retained. To further explore and quantify this information gap, we design the adaptive interpreter that maps thinking tokens back to variable-length textual sequences, thereby reconstructing the reasoning process. Experiments across diverse reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that Heima improves reasoning efficiency, while maintaining or even achieving better zero-shot accuracy. Moreover, the interpreter reconstructs coherent reasoning progresses from compressed thinking tokens, revealing that the information gap is minimal and validating the effectiveness of the proposed framework. This work paves the way for scalable latent reasoning models and advances our understanding of efficient reasoning processes in large models. Code: https://github.com/shawnricecake/Heima
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_19201
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Efficient Reasoning with Hidden Thinking
Shen, Xuan
Wang, Yizhou
Zhou, Yufa
Shi, Xiangxi
Zhao, Pu
Wang, Yanzhi
Gu, Jiuxiang
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning has become a powerful framework for improving complex problem-solving capabilities in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs). However, the verbose nature of textual reasoning introduces significant inefficiencies. In this work, we propose Heima (as hidden llama), an effective CoT compression framework that condenses lengthy CoTs into a small set of abstract thinking tokens, preserving essential reasoning while removing redundancy. We then conduct a theoretical analysis from an information-theoretic perspective, quantifying the information gap induced by compression, showing that reasoning capability is preserved when non-trivial mutual information is retained. To further explore and quantify this information gap, we design the adaptive interpreter that maps thinking tokens back to variable-length textual sequences, thereby reconstructing the reasoning process. Experiments across diverse reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that Heima improves reasoning efficiency, while maintaining or even achieving better zero-shot accuracy. Moreover, the interpreter reconstructs coherent reasoning progresses from compressed thinking tokens, revealing that the information gap is minimal and validating the effectiveness of the proposed framework. This work paves the way for scalable latent reasoning models and advances our understanding of efficient reasoning processes in large models. Code: https://github.com/shawnricecake/Heima
title Efficient Reasoning with Hidden Thinking
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.19201