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Yao: Pairing reasoning with tool use is essential for unfamiliar tools

Shunyu Yao · Language Agents: From Reasoning to Acting — with Shunyu Yao of OpenAI, Harrison Chase of LangGraph · Sep 27, 2024 · at 11:38

Shunyu Yao, researcher and lead author of the ReAct paper, explains why inner monologue reasoning remains necessary alongside standard function calling.

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“And I think the second contribution is this idea of what people call like inner monologue or thinking or reasoning or whatever to be paired with tool use. I think that's still not trivial because if you look at the default function calling or whatever, like there's no inner monologue and in practice that actually is important, especially if The tool that you use is pretty different from the Chinese distribution of the language model.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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