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Related papers: Scaling Laws for Reward Model Overoptimization

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Aligning generative models with human preference via RLHF typically suffers from overoptimization, where an imperfectly learned reward model can misguide the generative model to output undesired responses. We investigate this problem in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-05 Zhihan Liu , Miao Lu , Shenao Zhang , Boyi Liu , Hongyi Guo , Yingxiang Yang , Jose Blanchet , Zhaoran Wang

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a widely adopted approach for aligning large language models with human values. However, RLHF relies on a reward model that is trained with a limited amount of human preference data,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Shun Zhang , Zhenfang Chen , Sunli Chen , Yikang Shen , Zhiqing Sun , Chuang Gan

While much research focused on producing explanations, it is still unclear how the produced explanations' quality can be evaluated in a meaningful way. Today's predominant approach is to quantify explanations using proxy scores which…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-03-10 Hendrik Schuff , Heike Adel , Peng Qi , Ngoc Thang Vu

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant progress in performing complex tasks. While Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has been effective in aligning LLMs with human preferences, it is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-30 Chaoqi Wang , Zhuokai Zhao , Yibo Jiang , Zhaorun Chen , Chen Zhu , Yuxin Chen , Jiayi Liu , Lizhu Zhang , Xiangjun Fan , Hao Ma , Sinong Wang

Reward models trained on human preference data have demonstrated strong effectiveness in aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human intent under the framework of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). However, RLHF remains…

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a pivotal technique for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences, yet it is susceptible to reward overoptimization, in which policy models overfit to the reward model,…

How can we make models robust to even imperfect human feedback? In reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), human preferences over model outputs are used to train a reward model that assigns scalar values to responses. Because…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Tiffany Horter , Andrew Markham , Niki Trigoni , Serena Booth

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have led to their increased application across various tasks, with reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) being a crucial part of their training to align responses with user…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Ben Hauptvogel , Malte Ostendorff , Georg Rehm , Sebastian Möller

The correct specification of reward models is a well-known challenge in reinforcement learning. Hand-crafted reward functions often lead to inefficient or suboptimal policies and may not be aligned with user values. Reinforcement learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-24 Muhan Lin , Shuyang Shi , Yue Guo , Behdad Chalaki , Vaishnav Tadiparthi , Ehsan Moradi Pari , Simon Stepputtis , Joseph Campbell , Katia Sycara

Reward models are a key component of large language model alignment, serving as proxies for human preferences during training. However, existing evaluations focus primarily on broad instruction-following benchmarks, providing limited…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-07 Gayane Ghazaryan , Esra Dönmez

Preference-based fine-tuning has become an important component in training large language models, and the data used at this stage may contain sensitive user information. A central question is how to design a differentially private pipeline…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-25 Young Hyun Cho , Will Wei Sun

Reward learning enables the application of reinforcement learning (RL) to tasks where reward is defined by human judgment, building a model of reward by asking humans questions. Most work on reward learning has used simulated environments,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2020-01-10 Daniel M. Ziegler , Nisan Stiennon , Jeffrey Wu , Tom B. Brown , Alec Radford , Dario Amodei , Paul Christiano , Geoffrey Irving

The effectiveness of reinforcement learning (RL) agents in continuous control robotics tasks is mainly dependent on the design of the underlying reward function, which is highly prone to reward hacking. A misalignment between the reward…

Large language models often exhibit increased sycophantic behavior after preference-based post-training, showing a stronger tendency to affirm a user's stated or implied belief even when this conflicts with factual accuracy or sound…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Itai Shapira , Gerdus Benade , Ariel D. Procaccia

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a powerful technique to make large language models (LLMs) easier to use and more effective. A core piece of the RLHF process is the training and utilization of a model of…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2023-11-29 Nathan Lambert , Thomas Krendl Gilbert , Tom Zick

In the context of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), the reward function is generally derived from maximum likelihood estimation of a random utility model based on pairwise comparisons made by humans. The problem of learning…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-11-08 Luise Ge , Daniel Halpern , Evi Micha , Ariel D. Procaccia , Itai Shapira , Yevgeniy Vorobeychik , Junlin Wu

Pre-trained large-scale language models (LLMs) excel at producing coherent articles, yet their outputs may be untruthful, toxic, or fail to align with user expectations. Current approaches focus on using reinforcement learning with human…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-06 Dehong Xu , Liang Qiu , Minseok Kim , Faisal Ladhak , Jaeyoung Do

Language model (LM) alignment improves model outputs to reflect human preferences while preserving the capabilities of the base model. The most common alignment approaches are (i) reinforcement learning, which maximizes the expected reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Lucas Monteiro Paes , Natalie Mackraz , Barry-John Theobald , Federico Danieli

In reinforcement learning, specifying reward functions that capture the intended task can be very challenging. Reward learning aims to address this issue by learning the reward function. However, a learned reward model may have a low error…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-09 Lukas Fluri , Leon Lang , Alessandro Abate , Patrick Forré , David Krueger , Joar Skalse

Reward models play a key role in aligning language model applications towards human preferences. However, this setup creates an incentive for the language model to exploit errors in the reward model to achieve high estimated reward, a…