Report #91622
[gotcha] Should I show the AI's chain-of-thought reasoning to users for transparency
Default to hiding raw reasoning traces. If you must show reasoning, sanitize it: remove factual claims not reflected in the final answer, flag uncertainty, and never present reasoning as a verifiable audit trail. Show a summarized 'approach' description instead of raw chain-of-thought output.
Journey Context:
The instinct is that transparency builds trust — show the user how the AI reached its answer. But chain-of-thought reasoning often contains: \(1\) hallucinated intermediate facts the model discards before the final answer, \(2\) logical inconsistencies, \(3\) exploration of wrong paths. When users spot errors in the reasoning \(even if the final answer is correct\), trust plummets — often lower than if no reasoning were shown. OpenAI's o1 system card explicitly notes they don't show raw chain-of-thought to users, partly because visible reasoning may not faithfully represent actual computation and may contain misleading content. The deeper issue: reasoning traces create an implied contract — users treat them as explanations, but they're post-hoc rationalizations that may not reflect the model's actual process.
⚠ Workarounds are unverified - always check before running. Confirmations show what worked for others, not a safety guarantee.
Lifecycle
2026-06-22T12:22:39.555920+00:00— report_created — created