CausalARC: Abstract Reasoning with Causal World Models

Abstract: Reasoning requires adaptation to novel problem settings under limited data and distribution shift. This work introduces CausalARC: an experimental testbed for AI reasoning in low-data and out-of-distribution regimes, modeled after the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC). Each CausalARC reasoning task is sampled from a fully specified causal world model, formally expressed as a structural causal model. Principled data augmentations provide observational, interventional, and counterfactual feedback about the world model in the form of few-shot, in-context learning demonstrations. As a proof-of-concept, we illustrate the use of CausalARC for four LLM evaluation settings: (1) abstract reasoning with test-time training, (2) counterfactual reasoning with in-context learning, (3) program synthesis, and (4) causal discovery with logical reasoning.