ReConcile: Round-Table Conference Improves Reasoning via Consensus among Diverse LLMs

Chih Yao Chen, Swarnadeep Saha, Mohit Bansal

Primary Area: representation learning for computer vision, audio, language, and other modalities

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Keywords: Large Language Models, Multi-Step Reasoning, Explanations, Multi-Agent System, Multi-Round Discussion

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TL;DR: Improving reasoning by learning to convince other agents in a multi-round discussion among divers LLMs.

Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) still struggle with complex reasoning tasks. Motivated by the society of minds (Minsky, 1988), we propose ReConcile, a multi-model multi-agent framework designed as a round table conference among diverse LLM agents to foster diverse thoughts and discussion for improved consensus. ReConcile enhances the reasoning capabilities of LLMs by holding multiple rounds of discussion, learning to convince other agents to improve their answers, and employing a confidence-weighted voting mechanism. In each round, ReConcile initiates discussion between agents via a 'discussion prompt' that consists of (a) grouped answers and explanations generated by each agent in the previous round, (b) their uncertainties, and (c) demonstrations of answer-rectifying human explanations, used for convincing other agents. This discussion prompt enables each agent to revise their responses in light of insights from other agents. Once a consensus is reached and the discussion ends, ReConcile determines the final team answer by leveraging the confidence of each agent in a weighted voting scheme. We implement ReConcile with ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude2 as the three agents. Experimental results on various benchmarks demonstrate that ReConcile significantly improves the reasoning performance of the agents (both individually and as a team), surpassing prior single-agent and multi-agent baselines by 7.7% and also outperforming GPT-4 on some of these datasets. We also experiment with GPT-4 itself as one of the agents in ReConcile and demonstrate that its initial performance also improves by absolute 10.0% through discussion and feedback from other agents. Finally, we analyze the accuracy after every round and observe that ReConcile achieves better and faster consensus between agents, compared to a multi-agent debate baseline.

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Submission Number: 6257