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Preference optimization is a standard approach to fine-tuning large language models to align with human preferences. The quantity, diversity, and representativeness of the preference dataset are critical to the effectiveness of preference…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-18 Yuu Jinnai , Ukyo Honda

Preference based alignment objectives implicitly assume that all human preferences are expressed with equal strength. In practice, however, preference strength varies across individuals and contexts -- a phenomenon established in behavioral…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Saki Imai , Pedram Heydari , Anthony Sicilia , Asteria Kaeberlein , Katherine Atwell , Malihe Alikhani

Aligning language models with human preferences through reinforcement learning from human feedback is crucial for their safe and effective deployment. The human preference is typically represented through comparison where one response is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Hoang Anh Just , Ming Jin , Anit Sahu , Huy Phan , Ruoxi Jia

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as an important approach for learning from human preferences in aligning large language models (LLMs). However, collecting human preference data is costly and inefficient, motivating methods…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Jiacheng Guo , Zihao Li , Jiahao Qiu , Yue Wu , Mengdi Wang

Normative theories allow one to elicit key parts of a ML algorithm from first principles, which is crucial at a time of championed scrutiny for ML work. Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) cleverly bypasses reward modeling by making an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Wenxuan Zhou , Shujian Zhang , Brice Magdalou , John Lambert , Ehsan Amid , Richard Nock , Andrew Hard

Direct Alignment Algorithms (DAAs), such as Direct Preference Optimisation (DPO) and Identity Preference Optimisation (IPO), have emerged as alternatives to online Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) algorithms such as…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-21 Zhengyan Shi , Sander Land , Acyr Locatelli , Matthieu Geist , Max Bartolo

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has become a widely used training method for the instruction fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs). In this work, we explore an under-investigated aspect of DPO - its dependency on the reference…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-08-23 Yixin Liu , Pengfei Liu , Arman Cohan

Direct preference optimization (DPO), a widely adopted offline preference optimization algorithm, aims to align large language models (LLMs) with human-desired behaviors using pairwise preference data. However, the generation of the winning…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Yuxin Jiang , Bo Huang , Yufei Wang , Xingshan Zeng , Liangyou Li , Yasheng Wang , Xin Jiang , Lifeng Shang , Ruiming Tang , Wei Wang

Direct preference optimization (DPO) is a successful fine-tuning strategy for aligning large language models with human preferences without the need to train a reward model or employ reinforcement learning. DPO, as originally formulated,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-07 Afra Amini , Tim Vieira , Ryan Cotterell

In classic reinforcement learning (RL) and decision making problems, policies are evaluated with respect to a scalar reward function, and all optimal policies are the same with regards to their expected return. However, many real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-02 Han Shao , Lee Cohen , Avrim Blum , Yishay Mansour , Aadirupa Saha , Matthew R. Walter

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is broadly utilized for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human values because of its flexibility. Despite its effectiveness, it has been observed that the capability of DPO to generate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Wenqiao Zhu , Ji Liu , Lulu Wang , Jun Wu , Yulun Zhang

Multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) aims to find a set of high-performing and diverse policies that address trade-offs between multiple conflicting objectives. However, in practice, decision makers (DMs) often deploy only one or a…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2024-01-05 Ke Li , Han Guo

Preference learning algorithms (e.g., RLHF and DPO) are frequently used to steer LLMs to produce generations that are more preferred by humans, but our understanding of their inner workings is still limited. In this work, we study the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-01 Angelica Chen , Sadhika Malladi , Lily H. Zhang , Xinyi Chen , Qiuyi Zhang , Rajesh Ranganath , Kyunghyun Cho

The rapid development of large language model (LLM) alignment algorithms has resulted in a complex and fragmented landscape, with limited clarity on the effectiveness of different methods and their inter-connections. This paper introduces…

The generated responses of large language models (LLMs) are often fine-tuned to human preferences through a process called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). As RLHF relies on a challenging training sequence, whereby a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Xiangkun Hu , Lemin Kong , Tong He , David Wipf

Evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO) has made significant strides over the past two decades. However, as problem scales and complexities increase, traditional EMO algorithms face substantial performance limitations due to…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2025-07-11 Zhenyu Liang , Hao Li , Naiwei Yu , Kebin Sun , Ran Cheng

Multi-objective optimization (MOO) is a prevalent challenge for Deep Learning, however, there exists no scalable MOO solution for truly deep neural networks. Prior work either demand optimizing a new network for every point on the Pareto…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-15 Michael Ruchte , Josif Grabocka

Aligning intelligent agents with human preferences and values is important. This paper examines two popular alignment methods: Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) and Reward-Model-Based Policy Optimization (RMB-PO). A variant of RMB-PO,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-27 Ziniu Li , Tian Xu , Yang Yu

In the evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO) community, it is usually assumed that the final population is presented to the decision maker as the result of the execution of an EMO algorithm. Recently, an unbounded external archive…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2020-07-28 Lie Meng Pang , Hisao Ishibuchi , Ke Shang

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) trains a language model using human preference data, bypassing the explicit reward modeling phase of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). By iterating over sentence pairs in a preference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Jae Hyeon Cho , Minkyung Park , Byung-Jun Lee