Latent reasoning could replace token-by-token chains of thought with hidden states
TheTuringPost · x · 2026-07-28
This long piece explains latent reasoning as a shift from token-by-token chain-of-thought into continuous hidden states.
The article argues that this could make reasoning faster, more flexible, and cheaper at inference time, because models would no longer need to emit long visible thought traces. But it also warns about the trade-off: once reasoning moves into hidden states, humans lose one of the few parts of the process they can inspect.
It frames the field as an attempt to move beyond the current pattern of making models “write essays nobody will read,” while still preserving the gains that chain-of-thought brought for math, coding, and planning.
Related event: Latent Reasoning Emerges as Alternative to Token-level CoT(2 posts)→
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