Research Hotspots and Reviews
LIAO Niuyu, TIAN Yun, LI Yansong, XUE Haifeng, DU Changkun, ZHANG Guohua
In recent years, Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT, LLaMA, Qwen, and DeepSeek, have achieved significant breakthroughs in natural language processing, computer vision, multimodal learning, and other fields. However, constrained by factors such as their reasoning mechanisms, parameter scales, and the inherent knowledge contained within their training data, these models often suffer from issues like ″hallucinations″—characterized by inaccurate answers and even factual deviations—when handling complex tasks, addressing questions from professional domains, or generating time-sensitive content. These limitations severely hinder their application in high-reliability scenarios. The ″tool learning″ paradigm is attracting increasing attention as a promising solution to these capability bottlenecks. Its primary objective is to enable LLMs to understand and utilize external tools to complete specific tasks. By invoking external tools, such as databases, search engines, and mathematical tools, LLMs can transcend their parameterized knowledge; enhance their reasoning, decision-making, and execution capabilities; and mitigate hallucination problems. This paper systematically reviews the development context and technical advancements in LLM tool learning, analyzes the expansion of LLM capabilities through tools, summarizes tool invocation mechanisms ranging from in-context learning to fine-tuning training, and discusses key issues including performance optimization and adaptive tool generation. The paper also analyzes evaluation methods for LLM tool invocation, summarizes the current challenges in tool learning, and outlines future research directions.