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Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences has become essential for safe and beneficial AI deployment. While Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) established the dominant paradigm, a proliferation of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Tarun Raheja , Nilay Pochhi

In this paper, we study the offline and online settings of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) with KL-regularization -- a widely used objective function in large language model alignment -- under the $\epsilon$ local…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Yulian Wu , Rushil Thareja , Praneeth Vepakomma , Francesco Orabona

Preference-based reinforcement learning (RL) is a key paradigm for aligning policies with human judgments, yet its theoretical behavior in distributed settings where preference data are fragmented across heterogeneous users remains poorly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Zhanhong Jiang

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated unprecedented generative capabilities, yet their alignment with human values remains critical for ensuring helpful and harmless deployments. While Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) from Human Preference-based feedback is a popular paradigm for fine-tuning generative models, which has produced impressive models such as GPT-4 and Claude3 Opus. This framework often consists of two steps:…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-17 Jonathan D. Chang , Wenhao Zhan , Owen Oertell , Kianté Brantley , Dipendra Misra , Jason D. Lee , Wen Sun

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

DPO is an effective preference optimization algorithm. However, the DPO-tuned models tend to overfit on the dispreferred samples, manifested as overly long generations lacking diversity. While recent regularization approaches have…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Chenxu Yang , Ruipeng Jia , Naibin Gu , Zheng Lin , Siyuan Chen , Chao Pang , Weichong Yin , Yu Sun , Hua Wu , Weiping Wang

The rapidly increasing capabilities of large language models (LLMs) raise an urgent need to align AI systems with diverse human preferences to simultaneously enhance their usefulness and safety, despite the often conflicting nature of these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-06 Zixuan Liu , Xiaolin Sun , Zizhan Zheng

Direct alignment methods typically train large language models (LLMs) by contrasting the likelihoods of preferred and dispreferred responses. While effective at capturing relative preferences, these methods are widely observed to suppress…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Kaiyang Guo , Yinchuan Li , Zhitang Chen

We present Anchored Direct Preference Optimization (ADPO), a policy alignment method derived from first principles of KL-regularized reinforcement learning. Unlike standard approaches that treat the reference policy merely as a regularizer,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Wang Zixian

This work tackles the problem of overoptimization in reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), a prevalent technique for aligning models with human preferences. RLHF relies on reward or preference models trained on \emph{fixed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Dhawal Gupta , Adam Fisch , Christoph Dann , Alekh Agarwal

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has advanced alignment capabilities significantly but remains hindered by two core challenges: \textbf{reward hacking} and \textbf{stable optimization}. Current solutions independently…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Li He , Qiang Qu , He Zhao , Stephen Wan , Dadong Wang , Lina Yao , Tongliang Liu

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

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and direct preference optimization (DPO) are important techniques to align large language models (LLM) with human preference. However, the quality of RLHF and DPO training is seriously…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-10 Ziyi Chen , Junyi Li , Peiran Yu , Heng Huang

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values and intentions is crucial for their utility, honesty, and safety. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is a popular approach to achieve this alignment, but it faces…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Junkang Wu , Xue Wang , Zhengyi Yang , Jiancan Wu , Jinyang Gao , Bolin Ding , Xiang Wang , Xiangnan He

Aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) to human preferences in content, style, and presentation is challenging, in part because preferences are varied, context-dependent, and sometimes inherently ambiguous. While successful, Reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Sam Houliston , Alizée Pace , Alexander Immer , Gunnar Rätsch

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a lightweight and effective alternative to Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and Reinforcement Learning with AI Feedback (RLAIF) for aligning large language and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Zihui Zhao , Zechang Li

Direct Alignment Algorithms (DAAs), such as Direct Preference Optimisation (DPO) and Identity Preference Optimisation (IPO), have emerged as alternatives to online Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) algorithms such as…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-21 Zhengyan Shi , Sander Land , Acyr Locatelli , Matthieu Geist , Max Bartolo

Large Language Models (LLMs) have become increasingly popular due to their ability to process and generate natural language. However, as they are trained on massive datasets of text, LLMs can inherit harmful biases and produce outputs that…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Qi Gou , Cam-Tu Nguyen

The alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human preferences is commonly achieved through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) simplified this paradigm by establishing a direct…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Yuandong Tan