Tree-of-Thoughts Prompting
Tree-of-thoughts (ToT) prompting is a technique that was developed to enhance the problem-solving capabilities of LLMs by enabling more structured exploration of different reasoning paths.
The formal ToT approach was introduced in a 2023 research paper titled Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models by Yao et al. (researchers from Princeton University, Google DeepMind, and Google Research). Also visit https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.10601.
The primary inspiration for ToT came from how humans approach complex problems—we often consider multiple possible solution paths, evaluate their promise, backtrack when necessary, and explore alternatives. Traditional prompting techniques such as CoT (see Chapter 20) allowed step-by-step reasoning but lacked the ability to explore multiple paths or reconsider earlier steps.
ToT builds on several techniques:
- CoT prompting, which enables step-by-step reasoning
- Self-consistency...