Bi-Chainer: Automated Large Language Models Reasoning with Bidirectional Chaining

Shuqi Liu, Bowei He, Linqi Song


Abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown human-like reasoning abilities but still face challenges in solving complex logical problems. Existing unidirectional chaining methods, such as forward chaining and backward chaining, suffer from issues like low prediction accuracy and efficiency. To address these, we propose a bidirectional chaining method, Bi-Chainer, which dynamically switches to depth-first reasoning in the opposite reasoning direction when it encounters multiple branching options within the current direction. Thus, the intermediate reasoning results can be utilized as guidance to facilitate the reasoning process. We show that Bi-Chainer achieves sizable accuracy boots over unidirectional chaining frameworks on four challenging logical reasoning datasets. Moreover, Bi-Chainer enhances the accuracy of intermediate proof steps and reduces the average number of inference calls, resulting in more efficient and accurate reasoning.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-acl.507
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024
Month:
August
Year:
2024
Address:
Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting
Editors:
Lun-Wei Ku, Andre Martins, Vivek Srikumar
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
8578–8598
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-acl.507
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2024.findings-acl.507
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Shuqi Liu, Bowei He, and Linqi Song. 2024. Bi-Chainer: Automated Large Language Models Reasoning with Bidirectional Chaining. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics ACL 2024, pages 8578–8598, Bangkok, Thailand and virtual meeting. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Bi-Chainer: Automated Large Language Models Reasoning with Bidirectional Chaining (Liu et al., Findings 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/nschneid-patch-5/2024.findings-acl.507.pdf