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Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is an effective framework for aligning large language models with human preferences, but it struggles with complex reasoning tasks. DPO optimizes for the likelihood of generating preferred over…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Darsh Kachroo , Adriana Caraeni , Arjun Prasaath Anbazhagan , Brennan Lagasse , Kevin Zhu

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is the mainstream paradigm used to align large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. Yet existing RLHF heavily relies on accurate and informative reward models, which are vulnerable…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-03-15 Wei Shen , Xiaoying Zhang , Yuanshun Yao , Rui Zheng , Hongyi Guo , Yang Liu

Online and offline RLHF methods, such as PPO and DPO, have been highly successful in aligning AI with human preferences. Despite their success, however, these methods suffer from fundamental limitations: (a) Models trained with RLHF can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Eugene Choi , Arash Ahmadian , Matthieu Geist , Oilvier Pietquin , Mohammad Gheshlaghi Azar

Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) and its variants have made huge strides toward the effective alignment of large language models (LLMs) to follow instructions and reflect human values. More recently, Direct Alignment…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-02 Aman Gupta , Shao Tang , Qingquan Song , Sirou Zhu , Jiwoo Hong , Ankan Saha , Viral Gupta , Noah Lee , Eunki Kim , Siyu Zhu , Parag Agrawal , Natesh Pillai , S. Sathiya Keerthi

Iterative data generation and model retraining are widely used to align large language models (LLMs). It typically involves a policy model to generate on-policy responses and a reward model to guide training data selection. Direct…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-01 Yao Xiao , Hai Ye , Linyao Chen , Hwee Tou Ng , Lidong Bing , Xiaoli Li , Roy Ka-wei Lee

Reinforcement learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) learns from preference signals, while standard Reinforcement Learning (RL) directly learns from reward signals. Preferences arguably contain less information than rewards, which makes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Yuanhao Wang , Qinghua Liu , Chi Jin

The alignment of large language models with human values presents a critical challenge, particularly when balancing conflicting objectives like helpfulness and harmlessness. Existing approaches, such as Reinforcement Learning from Human…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Yuxuan Liu

Recent advancements in reinforcement learning from human feedback have shown that utilizing fine-grained token-level reward models can substantially enhance the performance of Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) in aligning large language…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-18 Mingkang Zhu , Xi Chen , Zhongdao Wang , Bei Yu , Hengshuang Zhao , Jiaya Jia

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a central tool for language model alignment. We consider online exploration in RLHF, which exploits interactive access to human or AI feedback by deliberately encouraging the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-03 Tengyang Xie , Dylan J. Foster , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Corby Rosset , Ahmed Awadallah , Alexander Rakhlin

Preference-based feedback is important for many applications in machine learning where evaluation of a reward function is not feasible. Notable recent examples arise in preference alignment for large language models, including in…

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) effectively promotes preference alignment of text-to-image (T2I) diffusion models. To improve computational efficiency, direct preference optimization (DPO), which avoids explicit reward…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Zhikai Li , Yue Zhao , Edward Zhongwei Zhang , Xuewen Liu , Jing Zhang , Qingyi Gu , Zhen Dong

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has been successfully used to align large language models (LLMs) according to human preferences, and more recently it has also been applied to improving the quality of text-to-image diffusion models.…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Shivanshu Shekhar , Shreyas Singh , Tong Zhang

Efficient preference optimization algorithms such as Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) have become a popular approach in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. These algorithms implicitly treat the LLM as a reward…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Tong Liu , Xiao Yu , Wenxuan Zhou , Jindong Gu , Volker Tresp

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) have emerged as a popular method for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences. While DPO effectively preserves the relative ordering between chosen and rejected responses through…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-05 Lin Sun , Chuang Liu , Peng Liu , Bingyang Li , Weijia Lu , Ning Wu

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is a widely used offline preference optimization algorithm that reparameterizes reward functions in reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) to enhance simplicity and training stability. In this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Yu Meng , Mengzhou Xia , Danqi Chen

The widespread application of large language models (LLMs) raises increasing demands on ensuring safety or imposing constraints, such as reducing harmful content and adhering to predefined rules. While there have been several works studying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Yihan Du , Seo Taek Kong , R. Srikant

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has been proposed as an effective and efficient alternative to reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). However, neither RLHF nor DPO take into account the fact that learning certain…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2026-02-16 Florinel-Alin Croitoru , Vlad Hondru , Radu Tudor Ionescu , Nicu Sebe , Mubarak Shah

For aligning large language models (LLMs), prior work has leveraged reinforcement learning via human feedback (RLHF) or variations of direct preference optimization (DPO). While DPO offers a simpler framework based on maximum likelihood…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Anirudhan Badrinath , Prabhat Agarwal , Jiajing Xu

Standard human preference-based alignment methods, such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), are a cornerstone for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values. However, these methods typically assume that…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Xiaoyang Cao , Zelai Xu , Mo Guang , Kaiwen Long , Michiel A. Bakker , Yu Wang , Chao Yu

Ensuring AI models align with human values is essential for their safety and functionality. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) leverages human preferences to achieve this alignment. However, when preferences are sourced from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Ryan Bahlous-Boldi , Li Ding , Lee Spector , Scott Niekum