Bayesian teaching enables probabilistic reasoning in large language models

Authors: L Qiu, F Sha, K Allen, Y Kim, T Linzen, S van Steenkiste

Published: 2026

Publication: Nature …, 2026 - nature.com

This paper sits at the intersection of machine learning and computational cognitive science, showing that large language models can acquire generalized probabilistic reasoning by being trained to imitate Bayesian belief updating rather than relying on prompting or heuristics.

Institution: Meta, Google DeepMind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google Research, Google

Research Area: Probabilistic reasoning, Bayesian cognition, Neural language models, Reasoning, AI Evaluations

Discipline: Machine learning, Artificial intelligence

Citations: 8