C2P: Featuring Large Language Models with Causal Reasoning

Causal reasoning is the primary bottleneck that Large Language Models (LLMs) must overcome to attain human-level intelligence. To address this, we introduce the Causal Chain of Prompting (C2P) as the first reasoning framework that equips current LLMs with causal reasoning capabilities. C2P operates autonomously, avoiding reliance on external tools or modules during both the causal learning and reasoning phases, and can be seamlessly implemented during the training or fine-tuning of LLMs. Experimental results across various benchmark datasets demonstrate a significant improvement in causal learning and subsequent reasoning accuracy of LLMs. We illustrate how C2P enhances LLMs' ability to causally reason in real-world scenarios, addressing complex problems in fields such as healthcare, medicine, economics, education, social sciences, environmental science, and marketing. With few-shot learning, GPT-4 Turbo using C2P with as few as six examples achieves significant performance improvements, boasting over a 33% increase in reasoning accuracy over the most state-of-the-art LLMs, which perform nearly randomly in similar circumstances. This demonstrates the transformative potential of integrating C2P into LLM training or fine-tuning processes, thereby empowering these models with advanced causal reasoning capabilities.