cs.AIMay 19, 2026

Generative Recursive Reasoning

Authors: Junyeob BaekMingyu JoMinsu KimMengye RenYoshua BengioSungjin Ahn

Organizations: KAIST · Mila – Québec AI Institute · New York University · Université de Montréal

Abstract

How should future neural reasoning systems implement extended computation? Recursive Reasoning Models (RRMs) offer a promising alternative to autoregressive sequence extension by performing iterative latent-state refinement with shared transition functions. Yet existing RRMs are largely deterministic, following a single latent trajectory and converging to a single prediction. We introduce Generative Recursive reAsoning Models (GRAM), a framework that turns recursive latent reasoning into probabilistic multi-trajectory computation. GRAM models reasoning as a stochastic latent trajectory, enabling multiple hypotheses, alternative solution strategies, and inference-time scaling through both recursive depth and parallel trajectory sampling. This yields a latent-variable generative model supporting conditional reasoning via pθ(yx)p_θ(y \mid x) and, with fixed or absent inputs, unconditional generation via pθ(x)p_θ(x). Trained with amortized variational inference, GRAM improves over deterministic recurrent and recursive baselines on structured reasoning and multi-solution constraint satisfaction tasks, while demonstrating an unconditional generation capability. https://ahn-ml.github.io/gram-website

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