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Inference-time computation methods enhance the performance of Large Language Models (LLMs) by leveraging additional computational resources to achieve superior results. Common techniques, such as Best-of-N sampling, Majority Voting, and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-27 Chia-Yu Hung , Navonil Majumder , Ambuj Mehrish , Soujanya Poria

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) aligns large language models (LLMs) by encouraging their generations to have high rewards, using a reward model trained on human preferences. To prevent the forgetting of pre-trained…

Diffusion large language models (dLLMs) have shown great potential in large-scale language modeling, and there is an increasing interest in further improving the capacity to solve complex problems by guiding the reasoning process step by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-01 Tianlang Chen , Minkai Xu , Jure Leskovec , Stefano Ermon

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has been crucial in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values. Traditionally, RLHF involves generating responses to a query and using a reward model to assign a reward to the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-04 Wenxuan Zhou , Shujian Zhang , Lingxiao Zhao , Tao Meng

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

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences through reinforcement learning (RLHF) can lead to reward hacking, where LLMs exploit failures in the reward model (RM) to achieve seemingly high rewards without meeting the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-23 Alexandre Ramé , Nino Vieillard , Léonard Hussenot , Robert Dadashi , Geoffrey Cideron , Olivier Bachem , Johan Ferret

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) integrates external knowledge with Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance factual correctness and mitigate hallucination. However, dense retrievers often become the bottleneck of RAG systems due to…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Yuan Li , Qi Luo , Xiaonan Li , Bufan Li , Qinyuan Cheng , Bo Wang , Yining Zheng , Yuxin Wang , Zhangyue Yin , Xipeng Qiu

Reinforcement learning (RL) in long horizon and sparse reward tasks is notoriously difficult and requires a lot of training steps. A standard solution to speed up the process is to leverage additional reward signals, shaping it to better…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2022-10-14 Thomas Carta , Pierre-Yves Oudeyer , Olivier Sigaud , Sylvain Lamprier

Reinforcement learning (RL) can align language models with non-differentiable reward signals, such as human preferences. However, a major challenge arises from the sparsity of these reward signals - typically, there is only a single reward…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-20 Meng Cao , Lei Shu , Lei Yu , Yun Zhu , Nevan Wichers , Yinxiao Liu , Lei Meng

Alignment via reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has become the dominant paradigm for controlling the quality of outputs from large language models (LLMs). However, existing theories do not provide strong justification for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Jihun Yun , Juno Kim , Jongho Park , Junhyuck Kim , Jongha Jon Ryu , Jaewoong Cho , Kwang-Sung Jun

Reward design plays a pivotal role in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values, serving as the bridge between feedback signals and model optimization. This survey provides a structured organization of reward modeling and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Miaomiao Ji , Yanqiu Wu , Zhibin Wu , Shoujin Wang , Jian Yang , Mark Dras , Usman Naseem

The inherent uncertainty in the environmental transition model of Reinforcement Learning (RL) necessitates a delicate balance between exploration and exploitation. This balance is crucial for optimizing computational resources to accurately…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-21 Yongxin Deng , Xihe Qiu , Jue Chen , Xiaoyu Tan

In aligning large language models (LLMs), reward models have played an important role, but are standardly trained as discriminative models and rely only on labeled human preference data. In this paper, we explore methods that train reward…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Chenglong Wang , Yang Gan , Yifu Huo , Yongyu Mu , Qiaozhi He , Murun Yang , Bei Li , Tong Xiao , Chunliang Zhang , Tongran Liu , Jingbo Zhu

Let $p$ denote a generative language model. Let $r$ denote a reward model that returns a scalar that captures the degree at which a draw from $p$ is preferred. The goal of language model alignment is to alter $p$ to a new distribution…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-03 Joy Qiping Yang , Salman Salamatian , Ziteng Sun , Ananda Theertha Suresh , Ahmad Beirami

Despite the strong abilities, large language models (LLMs) still suffer from hallucinations and reliance on outdated knowledge, raising concerns in knowledge-intensive tasks. Graph-based retrieval-augmented generation (GRAG) enriches LLMs…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Derong Xu , Pengyue Jia , Xiaopeng Li , Yingyi Zhang , Maolin Wang , Qidong Liu , Xiangyu Zhao , Yichao Wang , Huifeng Guo , Ruiming Tang , Enhong Chen , Tong Xu

Reward modeling is central to alignment pipelines such as RLHF, RLAIF, and PPO-based policy optimization, yet its reliability is constrained by limited and heterogeneous human preference data that are expensive to collect at scale. While…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Payel Bhattacharjee , Osvaldo Simeone , Ravi Tandon

Reward modeling (a.k.a., preference modeling) is instrumental for aligning large language models with human preferences, particularly within the context of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). While conventional reward models…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-13 Lei Li , Yekun Chai , Shuohuan Wang , Yu Sun , Hao Tian , Ningyu Zhang , Hua Wu

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback has become the standard paradigm for language model alignment, where reward models directly determine alignment effectiveness. In this work, we focus on how to evaluate the generalizability of…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Yangyang Zhou , Yi-Chen Li

RAG systems are increasingly deployed in high-stakes domains where users expect outputs to be consistent across semantically equivalent queries. However, existing systems often exhibit significant inconsistencies due to variability in both…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Faisal Hamman , Chenyang Zhu , Anoop Kumar , Xujun Peng , Sanghamitra Dutta , Daben Liu , Alfy Samuel

Recent advances in synergizing large reasoning models (LRMs) with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) have shown promising results, yet two critical challenges remain: (1) reasoning models typically operate from a single, unchallenged…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-12 Can Xu , Lingyong Yan , Jiayi Wu , Haosen Wang , Shuaiqiang Wang , Yuchen Li , Jizhou Huang , Dawei Yin , Xiang Li