Can LLMs Introspect? A Reality Check
Can large language models detect and report their own internal states? A number of recent studies have argued that they can. Drawing on lessons from human metacognition research, we argue that this conclusion may be premature. We identify two conditions that a paradigm needs to meet in order to establish introspection. First, the test needs to require privileged access: it should not be solvable using cues available in the input. Second, it needs to require second-order computation: second-order, meta-representations of first-order, task-related representations. This condition cannot be satisfied by task performance alone: it requires designs under which second-order and first-order accou...
| Authors | Shashwat Singh, Tal Linzen, Shauli Ravfogel |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 25 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 21 August 2026 |
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