Controlling Reasoning Effort in LLMs
Ahead of AI Sebastian Raschka, PhD
OpenAI released the GPT-5.6 model family with multiple reasoning-effort settings, following the trend of reasoning models popularized by o1 and DeepSeek-R1. GPT-5.6 comes in three sizes, each with approximately five or six reasoning-effort levels. The development of models with controllable reasoning modes allows users to toggle between verbose reasoning outputs and standard responses, achieved through supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning stages that teach models to condition their behavior on explicit flags.
Why it matters
How LLMs Learn Low-, Medium-, and High-Effort Reasoning Modes