Bridging the gap between LLMs and symbolic reasoning

Researchers have introduced a novel approach called natural language embedded programs (NLEPs) to improve the numerical and symbolic reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs). The technique involves prompting LLMs to generate and execute Python programs to solve user queries, then output solutions in natural language.

While LLMs like ChatGPT have demonstrated impressive performance on various tasks, they often struggle with problems requiring numerical or symbolic reasoning.

NLEPs follow a four-step problem-solving template: calling necessary packages, importing natural language representations of required knowledge, implementing a solution-calculating function, and outputting results as natural language with optional data visualisation.

This approach offers several advantages, including improved accuracy, transparency, and efficiency. Users can investigate generated programs and fix errors directly, avoiding the need to rerun entire models for troubleshooting. Additionally, a single NLEP can be reused for multiple tasks by replacing certain variables.

The researchers found that NLEPs enabled GPT-4 to achieve over 90% accuracy on various symbolic reasoning tasks, outperforming task-specific prompting methods by 30%

Beyond accuracy improvements, NLEPs could enhance data privacy by running programs locally, eliminating the need to send sensitive user data to external companies for processing. The technique may also boost the performance of smaller language models without costly retraining.

However, NLEPs rely on a model’s program generation capability and may not work as well with smaller models trained on limited datasets. Future research will explore methods to make smaller LLMs generate more effective NLEPs and investigate the impact of prompt variations on reasoning robustness.

The research, supported in part by the Center for Perceptual and Interactive Intelligence of Hong Kong, will be presented at the Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics later this month.

(Photo by Alex Azabache)

See also: Apple is reportedly getting free ChatGPT access

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Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, development, large language models, llm, natural language, nlep