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chain of thought

noun \ˈchān əv ˈthȯt\

also CoT

TopicPrompting & Context First known use2022 Senses1
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Definition of chain of thought

  1. : a series of intermediate reasoning steps a model writes out before its final answer, either because it was prompted to or because it was trained to

    • Asking for a chain of thought improved the math answers.
    • You can read the model's chain of thought to see where it went wrong.

Origin & history

first known use2022

Named in a 2022 research paper from Google showing that 'let's think step by step' style prompting improves reasoning.

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Related terms

reasoning model a language model trained to work through a problem step by step before giving its final… reasoning in AI, a model's ability to solve problems that need several steps, such as math, planning, or… test-time compute extra computing power spent while answering a question, for example by letting the model think… neuralese the internal numerical 'language' a model might use to think and communicate, which humans… opaque recurrence a technique in which a model reasons by looping information through its internal layers…

Cite this entry

"Chain of thought." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/chain-of-thought/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2026.

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