mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Genius: A Generalizable and Purely Unsupervised Self-Training Framework For Advanced Reasoning

arXiv 2504.08672 ↗First posted 11 Apr 2025cs.CL cs.AI cs.LGcited by 24

On the map: LLM reasoning → Test-time compute and efficient thinking

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Advancing LLM reasoning skills has captivated wide interest. However, current post-training techniques rely heavily on supervisory signals, such as outcome supervision or auxiliary reward models, which face the problem of scalability and high annotation costs. This motivates us to enhance LLM reasoning without the need for external supervision. We introduce a generalizable and purely unsupervised self-training framework, named Genius. Without external auxiliary, Genius requires to seek the optimal response sequence in a stepwise manner and optimize the LLM. To explore the potential steps and exploit the optimal ones, Genius introduces a stepwise foresight re-sampling strategy to sample and estimate the step value by simulating future outcomes. Further, we recognize that the unsupervised setting inevitably induces the intrinsic noise and uncertainty. To provide a robust optimization, we propose an advantage-calibrated optimization (ACO) loss function to mitigate estimation inconsistencies. Combining these techniques together, Genius provides an advanced initial step towards self-improve LLM reasoning with general queries and without supervision, revolutionizing reasoning scaling laws given the vast availability of general queries. The code will be released at https://github.com/xufangzhi/Genius.

Key facts. Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Test-time compute and efficient thinking, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 45 of its 62 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2025.

Builds on

45 of 62 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025φ-Decoding: Adaptive Foresight Sampling for Balanced Inference-Time Exploration and Exploitation17 Mar
  2. 2025Critique Fine-Tuning: Learning to Critique is More Effective than Learning to Imitate29 Jan
  3. 2024B-STaR: Monitoring and Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Self-Taught Reasoners23 Dec
  4. 2024ReFT: Reasoning with Reinforced Fine-Tuning17 Jan

Other references · 41

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  2. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,715
  3. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
  4. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  5. 2020Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understandingcited by 7,963
  6. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
  7. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,371
  8. 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,942
  9. 2018Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challengecited by 4,886
  10. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,789
  11. 2021Program Synthesis with Large Language Modelscited by 3,637
  12. 2023GPQA: A Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A Benchmarkcited by 2,879
29 more
  1. 2024LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Codecited by 2,004
  2. 2024MMLU-Pro: A More Robust and Challenging Multi-Task Language Understanding Benchmarkcited by 1,848
  3. 2016Concrete Problems in AI Safetycited by 1,642
  4. 2023Gemini: A Family of Highly Capable Multimodal Modelscited by 872
  5. 2024Self-Rewarding Language Modelscited by 681
  6. 2024Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language Modelscited by 557
  7. 2025Process Reinforcement through Implicit Rewardscited by 504
  8. 2024From Crowdsourced Data to High-Quality Benchmarks: Arena-Hard and BenchBuilder Pipelinecited by 500
  9. 2023MAmmoTH: Building Math Generalist Models through Hybrid Instruction Tuningcited by 487
  10. 2024Magpie: Alignment Data Synthesis from Scratch by Prompting Aligned LLMs with Nothingcited by 346
  11. 2025From System 1 to System 2: A Survey of Reasoning Large Language Modelscited by 320
  12. 2017Beam Search Strategies for Neural Machine Translationcited by 232
  13. 2024WildBench: Benchmarking LLMs with Challenging Tasks from Real Users in the Wildcited by 218
  14. 2020ReClor: A Reading Comprehension Dataset Requiring Logical Reasoningcited by 217
  15. 2024OS-Genesis: Automating GUI Agent Trajectory Construction via Reverse Task Synthesiscited by 163
  16. 2023Chain of Hindsight Aligns Language Models with Feedbackcited by 148
  17. 2024OpenMathInstruct-1: A 1.8 Million Math Instruction Tuning Datasetcited by 143
  18. 2024Chain of Preference Optimization: Improving Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in LLMscited by 96
  19. 2024Vision-Language Models Can Self-Improve Reasoning via Reflectioncited by 69
  20. 2025RedStar: Does Scaling Long-CoT Data Unlock Better Slow-Reasoning Systems?cited by 60
  21. 2024Self-Consistency Preference Optimizationcited by 50
  22. 2024Learning Planning-based Reasoning by Trajectories Collection and Process Reward Synthesizingcited by 49
  23. 2024CompassJudger-1: All-in-one Judge Model Helps Model Evaluation and Evolutioncited by 42
  24. 2023InstructCoder: Instruction Tuning Large Language Models for Code Editingcited by 29
  25. 2024Non-myopic Generation of Language Models for Reasoning and Planningcited by 26
  26. 2024Geometric-Averaged Preference Optimization for Soft Preference Labelscited by 18
  27. 2024ROPO: Robust Preference Optimization for Large Language Modelscited by 16
  28. 2024Interactive Evolution: A Neural-Symbolic Self-Training Framework For Large Language Modelscited by 14
  29. 2024A Survey of Neural Code Intelligence: Paradigms, Advances and Beyondcited by 12

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 11; 2026: 13.

24 papers.

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  1. 2025TTRL: Test-Time Reinforcement Learningcited by 275
  2. 2025Learning to Reason without External Rewardscited by 210
  3. 2025SPIRAL: Self-Play on Zero-Sum Games Incentivizes Reasoning via Multi-Agent Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 100
  4. 2025SPICE: Self-Play In Corpus Environments Improves Reasoningcited by 83
  5. 2025VisPlay: Self-Evolving Vision-Language Models from Imagescited by 47
  6. 2025Seek in the Dark: Reasoning via Test-Time Instance-Level Policy Gradient in Latent Spacecited by 43
  7. 2026Tool-R0: Self-Evolving LLM Agents for Tool-Learning from Zero Datacited by 34
  8. 2025OS-Sentinel: Towards Safety-Enhanced Mobile GUI Agents via Hybrid Validation in Realistic Workflowscited by 19
  9. 2025Direct Reasoning Optimization: Token-Level Reasoning Reflectivity Meets Rubric Gates for Unverifiable Taskscited by 18
  10. 2025MUR: Momentum Uncertainty guided Reasoning for Large Language Modelscited by 17
  11. 2026On-Policy Self-Distillation without Any Supervisioncited by 17
  12. 2026Skill Self-Play: Pushing the Frontier of LLM Capability with Co-Evolving Skillscited by 10
12 more
  1. 2026SketchVL: Policy Optimization via Fine-Grained Credit Assignment for Chart Understanding and Morecited by 7
  2. 2025Wisdom of the Crowd: Reinforcement Learning from Coevolutionary Collective Feedbackcited by 6
  3. 2026OdysseyArena: Benchmarking Large Language Models For Long-Horizon, Active and Inductive Interactionscited by 6
  4. 2025CodeEvo: Interaction-Driven Synthesis of Code-centric Data through Hybrid and Iterative Feedbackcited by 5
  5. 2026Audio-Zero: Label-Free Self-Evolution for Fine-Grained Audio Reasoningcited by 3
  6. 2026Improving Text-to-Image Generation with Intrinsic Self-Confidence Rewardscited by 2
  7. 2026TTSR: Test-Time Self-Evolving via Reflectioncited by 2
  8. 2026MAXS: Meta-Adaptive Exploration with LLM Agentscited by 1
  9. 2026Soft-SVeRL: Self-Verified Reinforcement Learning with Soft Rewardscited by 1
  10. 2026Continual Self-Improvement with Lightweight Experiential Latent Memoriescited by 1
  11. 2026CoRE: Consensus Rewards via Equilibrium for Test-Time Reinforcement Learningcited by 0
  12. 2026Unsupervised Post-Training of Foundation Models: A Surveycited by 0

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  3. 2025A Model Can Help Itself: Reward-Free Self-Training for LLM Reasoning
  4. 2025Right Question is Already Half the Answer: Fully Unsupervised LLM Reasoning Incentivization
  5. 2026Grad2Reward: From Sparse Judgment to Dense Rewards for Improving Open-Ended LLM Reasoning
  6. 2025On the Emergence of Thinking in LLMs I: Searching for the Right Intuition
  7. 2026Understanding Evolution Strategies for LLM Reasoning: Broader Reasoning Coverage than GRPO
  8. 2026Step-by-Step Optimization-like Reasoning in LLMs over Expanding Search Spaces