---
title: "AI Models Overthink Problems—and It’s a Security Risk"
slug: "reasoning-modelle-koennen-in-teure-denkschleifen-geraten"
date: 2026-07-08
category: tech-pub
tags: [reasoning]
language: en
sources_count: 1
featured: false
publisher: AInauten News
url: https://news.ainauten.com/en/story/reasoning-modelle-koennen-in-teure-denkschleifen-geraten
---

# AI Models Overthink Problems—and It’s a Security Risk

**Published**: 2026-07-08 | **Category**: tech-pub | **Sources**: 1

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## TL;DR

- Researchers from Zhejiang University and Alibaba presented work at ICML 2026 showing that reasoning models can be pushed into excessive overthinking with logically inconsistent prompts.

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## Summary

- Researchers from Zhejiang University and Alibaba presented work at ICML 2026 showing that reasoning models can be pushed into excessive overthinking with logically inconsistent prompts.
- Their evolutionary prompt attack mutates premises and questions from math tasks until models produce long, mostly useless reasoning loops.
- The tests covered DeepSeek-R1, Qwen3-Thinking, OpenAI GPT-o3 and Gemini 2.5 Flash; in one case, outputs grew up to 26.1 times longer than normal.
- This is not shown as a cheap plug-and-play attack, but it is a plausible DoS risk because longer outputs raise cost, consume server capacity and slow legitimate users.

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## Why it matters

Researchers from Zhejiang University and Alibaba presented work at ICML 2026 showing that reasoning models can be pushed into excessive overthinking with logically inconsistent prompts.

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## Key Points

- Researchers from Zhejiang University and Alibaba presented work at ICML 2026 showing that reasoning models can be pushed into excessive overthinking with logically inconsistent prompts.
- Their evolutionary prompt attack mutates premises and questions from math tasks until models produce long, mostly useless reasoning loops.
- The tests covered DeepSeek-R1, Qwen3-Thinking, OpenAI GPT-o3 and Gemini 2.5 Flash; in one case, outputs grew up to 26.1 times longer than normal.
- This is not shown as a cheap plug-and-play attack, but it is a plausible DoS risk because longer outputs raise cost, consume server capacity and slow legitimate users.

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## Nauti's Take

If you run reasoning models in production, test output caps, stop rules, and cost alerts first, especially around open-ended user prompts. Practical exploitability is still unclear and the sourcing is thin, but the operational risk is real enough: long answers can burn budget, slow queues, and degrade UX.

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## FAQ

**Q:** What is AI Models Overthink Problems—and It’s a Security Risk about?

**A:** - Researchers from Zhejiang University and Alibaba presented work at ICML 2026 showing that reasoning models can be pushed into excessive overthinking with logically inconsistent prompts.

**Q:** Why does it matter?

**A:** Researchers from Zhejiang University and Alibaba presented work at ICML 2026 showing that reasoning models can be pushed into excessive overthinking with logically inconsistent prompts.

**Q:** What are the key takeaways?

**A:** Researchers from Zhejiang University and Alibaba presented work at ICML 2026 showing that reasoning models can be pushed into excessive overthinking with logically inconsistent prompts.. Their evolutionary prompt attack mutates premises and questions from math tasks until models produce long, mostly useless reasoning loops.. The tests covered DeepSeek-R1, Qwen3-Thinking, OpenAI GPT-o3 and Gemini 2.5 Flash; in one case, outputs grew up to 26.1 times longer than normal.

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## Related Topics

- [reasoning](https://news.ainauten.com/en/tag/reasoning)

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## Sources

- [AI Models Overthink Problems—and It’s a Security Risk](https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-reasoning-models-security-risk) - IEEE Spectrum AI

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## About This Article

This article is a synthesis of 1 sources, curated and summarized by AInauten News. We aggregate AI news from trusted sources and provide bilingual (German/English) coverage.

**Publisher**: [AInauten](https://www.ainauten.com) | **Site**: [news.ainauten.com](https://news.ainauten.com)

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*Last Updated: 2026-07-13*