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Related papers: RLHF and IIA: Perverse Incentives

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We provide a theoretical framework for Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF). Our analysis shows that when the true reward function is linear, the widely used maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) converges under both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-09 Banghua Zhu , Jiantao Jiao , Michael I. Jordan

Conveying complex objectives to reinforcement learning (RL) agents often requires meticulous reward engineering. Preference-based RL methods are able to learn a more flexible reward model based on human preferences by actively incorporating…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-26 Xinran Liang , Katherine Shu , Kimin Lee , Pieter Abbeel

The success of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) in language model alignment is strongly dependent on the quality of the underlying reward model. In this paper, we present a novel approach to improve reward model quality by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-28 Alizée Pace , Jonathan Mallinson , Eric Malmi , Sebastian Krause , Aliaksei Severyn

Traditional Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) often relies on reward models, frequently assuming preference structures like the Bradley--Terry model, which may not accurately capture the complexities of real human…

Large Language Models (LLMs) often produce plausible but poorly-calibrated answers, limiting their reliability on reasoning-intensive tasks. We present Reinforcement Learning from Self-Feedback (RLSF), a post-training stage that uses the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-30 Carel van Niekerk , Renato Vukovic , Benjamin Matthias Ruppik , Hsien-chin Lin , Milica Gašić

Designing an effective reward function has long been a challenge in reinforcement learning, particularly for complex tasks in unstructured environments. To address this, various learning paradigms have emerged that leverage different forms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-29 Muhammad Qasim Elahi , Somtochukwu Oguchienti , Maheed H. Ahmed , Mahsa Ghasemi

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a widely used approach to align large-scale AI systems with human values. However, RLHF typically assumes a single, universal reward, which overlooks diverse preferences and limits…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Gihoon Kim , Euntai Kim

While reinforcement learning (RL) has become a more popular approach for robotics, designing sufficiently informative reward functions for complex tasks has proven to be extremely difficult due their inability to capture human intent and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-12-08 Joey Hejna , Dorsa Sadigh

Recent work on the limitations of using reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) to incorporate human preferences into model behavior often raises social choice theory as a reference point. Social choice theory's analysis of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-04-22 Jessica Dai , Eve Fleisig

The aim of Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) is to infer a reward function $R$ from a policy $\pi$. To do this, we need a model of how $\pi$ relates to $R$. In the current literature, the most common models are optimality, Boltzmann…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-27 Joar Skalse , Alessandro Abate

We model human decision-making behaviors in a risk-taking task using inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) for the purposes of understanding real human decision making under risk. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work applying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-14 Quanying Liu , Haiyan Wu , Anqi Liu

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a crucial technique for aligning language models with human preferences, playing a pivotal role in the success of conversational models like GPT-4, ChatGPT, and Llama 2. A core challenge…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-04 Chenghua Huang , Zhizhen Fan , Lu Wang , Fangkai Yang , Pu Zhao , Zeqi Lin , Qingwei Lin , Dongmei Zhang , Saravan Rajmohan , Qi Zhang

An important goal in artificial intelligence is to create agents that can both interact naturally with humans and learn from their feedback. Here we demonstrate how to use reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) to improve upon…

Reward inference (learning a reward model from human preferences) is a critical intermediate step in the Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) pipeline for fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs). In practice, RLHF faces…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Qining Zhang , Lei Ying

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

Recently, tremendous strides have been made to align the generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) with human values to mitigate toxic or unhelpful content. Leveraging Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) proves effective and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-05 Mingye Zhu , Yi Liu , Lei Zhang , Junbo Guo , Zhendong Mao

This study explores the scaling properties of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) in Large Language Models (LLMs). Although RLHF is considered an important step in post-training of LLMs, its scaling potential is still largely…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-10 Zhenyu Hou , Pengfan Du , Yilin Niu , Zhengxiao Du , Aohan Zeng , Xiao Liu , Minlie Huang , Hongning Wang , Jie Tang , Yuxiao Dong

Implicit feedback (e.g., clicks, dwell times, etc.) is an abundant source of data in human-interactive systems. While implicit feedback has many advantages (e.g., it is inexpensive to collect, user centric, and timely), its inherent biases…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2016-08-17 Thorsten Joachims , Adith Swaminathan , Tobias Schnabel

Standard practice within Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) involves optimizing against a Reward Model (RM), which itself is trained to reflect human preferences for desirable generations. A notable subject that is…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-09-29 Lingfeng Shen , Sihao Chen , Linfeng Song , Lifeng Jin , Baolin Peng , Haitao Mi , Daniel Khashabi , Dong Yu

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences is crucial for enhancing their utility in terms of helpfulness, truthfulness, safety, harmlessness, and interestingness. Existing methods for achieving this alignment often…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-04 Wenhao Liu , Xiaohua Wang , Muling Wu , Tianlong Li , Changze Lv , Zixuan Ling , Jianhao Zhu , Cenyuan Zhang , Xiaoqing Zheng , Xuanjing Huang