SWITCH:可切换潜在推理框架
阅读原文· arxiv.orgSWITCH利用一对显式边界token(<swi>入口和</swi>出口)将隐藏状态递归块与标准同策略RL(GRPO)兼容。模型通过可见到潜在的课程学习和Switch-GRPO目标训练,在类似规模下一致优于先前隐藏状态递归潜在推理方法。机制分析通过边界token揭示三个发现:入口token是学习到的局部切换策略而非风格化伪影;打开的潜在步骤执行问题特定且因果重要的计算;该计算集中在进入时的单个隐藏状态转换上。表明隐藏状态递归潜在推理既可同策略RL训练也可进行直接机制分析。
Latent chain-of-thought compresses reasoning by replacing visible reasoning traces with continuous hidden-state recurrence, but existing formulations are difficult to optimize with standard on-policy reinforcement learning (RL) and hard to interpret causally. Our key insight is that a single pair of explicit boundary tokens can address both issues at once: discrete entry and exit anchors make the latent block compatible with standard on-policy RL, and the same anchors offer a natural foothold for mechanistic analysis. Motivated by this, we propose SWITCH, a switchable latent reasoning framework. The model emits to enter latent mode and to exit. Because the boundaries are ordinary discrete tokens, the GRPO policy ratio is well-defined at every decision point. The same anchors also expose the latent steps to direct probing and causal intervention. We train the model with a visible-to-latent curriculum and a Switch-GRPO objective that propagates gradients through recurrent latent computation. SWITCH consistently outperforms prior hidden-state-recurrence latent reasoning approaches at similar scale. Mechanistic analysis through the boundary tokens further reveals three findings: (i) is a sharply localised, learned switching policy rather than a stylistic artefact; (ii) the latent step it opens performs problem-specific, causally important computation rather than acting as an inert placeholder; and (iii) that computation is concentrated at a single hidden-state transition on entry. Together, these results show that hidden-state-recurrence latent reasoning is both RL-trainable and open to direct mechanistic analysis, including of how on-policy RL itself improves the model from the inside.