Can Post-Training Transform LLMs into Causal Reasoners?
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866912883889143808 |
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| author | Chen, Junqi Chen, Sirui Lu, Chaochao |
| author_facet | Chen, Junqi Chen, Sirui Lu, Chaochao |
| contents | Causal inference is essential for decision-making but remains challenging for non-experts. While large language models (LLMs) show promise in this domain, their precise causal estimation capabilities are still limited, and the impact of post-training on these abilities is insufficiently explored. This paper examines the extent to which post-training can enhance LLMs' capacity for causal inference. We introduce CauGym, a comprehensive dataset comprising seven core causal tasks for training and five diverse test sets. Using this dataset, we systematically evaluate five post-training approaches: SFT, DPO, KTO, PPO, and GRPO. Across five in-domain and four existing benchmarks, our experiments demonstrate that appropriate post-training enables smaller LLMs to perform causal inference competitively, often surpassing much larger models. Our 14B parameter model achieves 93.5% accuracy on the CaLM benchmark, compared to 55.4% by OpenAI o3. Furthermore, the post-trained LLMs exhibit strong generalization and robustness under real-world conditions such as distribution shifts and noisy data. Collectively, these findings provide the first systematic evidence that targeted post-training can produce reliable and robust LLM-based causal reasoners. Our data and GRPO-model are available at https://github.com/OpenCausaLab/CauGym. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_06337 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Can Post-Training Transform LLMs into Causal Reasoners? Chen, Junqi Chen, Sirui Lu, Chaochao Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Causal inference is essential for decision-making but remains challenging for non-experts. While large language models (LLMs) show promise in this domain, their precise causal estimation capabilities are still limited, and the impact of post-training on these abilities is insufficiently explored. This paper examines the extent to which post-training can enhance LLMs' capacity for causal inference. We introduce CauGym, a comprehensive dataset comprising seven core causal tasks for training and five diverse test sets. Using this dataset, we systematically evaluate five post-training approaches: SFT, DPO, KTO, PPO, and GRPO. Across five in-domain and four existing benchmarks, our experiments demonstrate that appropriate post-training enables smaller LLMs to perform causal inference competitively, often surpassing much larger models. Our 14B parameter model achieves 93.5% accuracy on the CaLM benchmark, compared to 55.4% by OpenAI o3. Furthermore, the post-trained LLMs exhibit strong generalization and robustness under real-world conditions such as distribution shifts and noisy data. Collectively, these findings provide the first systematic evidence that targeted post-training can produce reliable and robust LLM-based causal reasoners. Our data and GRPO-model are available at https://github.com/OpenCausaLab/CauGym. |
| title | Can Post-Training Transform LLMs into Causal Reasoners? |
| topic | Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06337 |