Gemma’s step‑awareness blinds it to resource limits, causing CTF failures
A study found that when Gemma is told how many reasoning steps remain, it almost always fails the CTF task, even though overall solve rates barely change. The model acknowledges the step limit late (median step 28/30) and then pursues dead‑end hypotheses instead of adjusting strategy. This reveals a subtle failure mode where explicit resource awareness hampers effective reasoning.