Can LLMs Introspect? A Reality Check 文章

ArXiv CS.AI2026-05-27NEWSen作者: Shashwat Singh, Tal Linzen, Shauli Ravfogel

摘要

arXiv:2605.26242v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Can large language models detect and report their own internal states? A number of studies have argued that the answer to this question is yes. We argue, based on lessons from human metacognition research, that this conclusion may be premature: to be convinced of this conclusion we need to distinguish genuine introspection from pattern matching based on surface-level cues. Furthermore, we argue that behavioral evidence alone is inherently insufficient to establish strong introspective claims. We re-examine two recently introduced evaluation paradigms in light of this consideration. In the first paradigm, models are expected to detect whether their internal states have been tampered with.