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Related papers: Self-Improving Robust Preference Optimization

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Preference-based alignment objectives have been widely adopted, from RLHF-style pairwise learning in large language models to emerging applications in recommender systems. Yet, existing work rarely examines how Direct Preference…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Hejin Huang , Jusheng Zhang , Kaitong Cai , Jian Wang , Rong Pan

Traditional language model alignment methods, such as Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), are limited by their dependence on static, pre-collected paired preference data, which hampers their adaptability and practical applicability. To…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-03 Yueqin Yin , Zhendong Wang , Yujia Xie , Weizhu Chen , Mingyuan Zhou

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has become essential for improving language model capabilities, but traditional approaches rely on the assumption that human preferences follow a transitive Bradley-Terry model. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-10 Runlong Zhou , Maryam Fazel , Simon S. Du

Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) has been the dominant approach for improving the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). Recently, Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has simplified this…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-10 Yining Wang , Jinman Zhao , Chuangxin Zhao , Shuhao Guan , Gerald Penn , Shinan Liu

The goal of robust constrained reinforcement learning (RL) is to optimize an agent's performance under the worst-case model uncertainty while satisfying safety or resource constraints. In this paper, we demonstrate that strong duality does…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Shaocong Ma , Ziyi Chen , Yi Zhou , Heng Huang

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has been commonly used to align the behaviors of Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences. Recently, a popular alternative is Direct Policy Optimization (DPO), which replaces an…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-03 Runsheng Yu , Yong Wang , Xiaoqi Jiao , Youzhi Zhang , James T. Kwok

Fine-tuning is integral for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. Multiple-Reference Preference Optimization (MRPO) builds on Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) by fine-tuning LLMs on preference datasets while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-12 Skyler Wu , Aymen Echarghaoui

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has become a popular method for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) due to its stability and simplicity. However, it is also known to be sensitive to noise in the data and prone to overfitting.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Cheol Woo Kim , Shresth Verma , Mauricio Tec , Milind Tambe

Decision-making under distribution shift is a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), where training and deployment environments differ. We study this problem through the lens of robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-17 Jingwen Gu , Yiting He , Zhishuai Liu , Pan Xu

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is an essential technique for ensuring that large language models (LLMs) are aligned with human values and preferences during the post-training phase. As an effective RLHF approach, group…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-18 Zonglin Yang , Zhexuan Gu , Houduo Qi , Yancheng Yuan

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is a method for enhancing model performance by directly optimizing for the preferences or rankings of outcomes, instead of traditional loss functions. This approach has proven effective in aligning Large…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-18 Ruoyu Wang , Jiachen Sun , Shaowei Hua , Quan Fang

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a powerful technique for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. However, effectively aligning LLMs with diverse human preferences remains a significant…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-03 Chengao Li , Hanyu Zhang , Yunkun Xu , Hongyan Xue , Xiang Ao , Qing He

Reinforcement learning with human feedback~(RLHF) is critical for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preference. Compared to the widely studied offline version of RLHF, \emph{e.g.} direct preference optimization (DPO), recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Lichang Chen , Jiuhai Chen , Chenxi Liu , John Kirchenbauer , Davit Soselia , Chen Zhu , Tom Goldstein , Tianyi Zhou , Heng Huang

We present Self-Play Preference Optimization (SPO), an algorithm for reinforcement learning from human feedback. Our approach is minimalist in that it does not require training a reward model nor unstable adversarial training and is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-14 Gokul Swamy , Christoph Dann , Rahul Kidambi , Zhiwei Steven Wu , Alekh Agarwal

Single-trajectory reinforcement learning (RL) methods aim to optimize policies from datasets consisting of (prompt, response, reward) triplets, where scalar rewards are directly available. This supervision format is highly practical, as it…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Bilal Faye , Hanane Azzag , Mustapha Lebbah

Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms have seen remarkable progress, but key challenges remain. Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) is known for ensuring monotonic policy improvement through conservative updates within a trust…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Zhengpeng Xie , Qiang Zhang , Fan Yang , Marco Hutter , Renjing Xu

Recent developments in Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) allow large language models (LLMs) to function as implicit ranking models by maximizing the margin between preferred and non-preferred responses. In practice, user feedback on such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Junda Wu , Rohan Surana , Zhouhang Xie , Yiran Shen , Yu Xia , Tong Yu , Ryan A. Rossi , Prithviraj Ammanabrolu , Julian McAuley

Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) has been positioned by recent literature as the canonical method for the RL part of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). PPO performs well empirically but has a heuristic motivation and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Dipan Maity

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) has emerged as a de-facto approach for aligning language models with human preferences. Recent work has shown DPO's effectiveness relies on training data quality. In particular, clear quality differences…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-28 Nirav Diwan , Tolga Ergen , Dongsub Shim , Honglak Lee