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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

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

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) is a variant of RL where the policy is learned from a previously collected dataset of trajectories and rewards. In our work, we propose a practical approach to offline RL with large language models…

Reward models trained on human preference data have been proven to effectively align Large Language Models (LLMs) with human intent within the framework of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). However, current reward models…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-24 Rui Yang , Ruomeng Ding , Yong Lin , Huan Zhang , Tong Zhang

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

In practice, preference learning from human feedback depends on incomplete data with hidden context. Hidden context refers to data that affects the feedback received, but which is not represented in the data used to train a preference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-18 Anand Siththaranjan , Cassidy Laidlaw , Dylan Hadfield-Menell

Despite the success of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) in aligning language models with human values, reward hacking, also termed reward overoptimization, remains a critical challenge. This issue primarily arises from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-04 Yuchun Miao , Sen Zhang , Liang Ding , Rong Bao , Lefei Zhang , Dacheng Tao

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has become a key factor in aligning model behavior with users' goals. However, while humans integrate multiple strategies when making decisions, current RLHF approaches often simplify this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Mingkang Wu , Devin White , Evelyn Rose , Vernon Lawhern , Nicholas R Waytowich , Yongcan Cao

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (\textbf{RLHF}) has emerged as a dominant approach for aligning LLM outputs with human preferences. Inspired by the success of RLHF, we study the performance of multiple algorithms that learn from…

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) relies on preference modeling to align machine learning systems with human values, yet the popular approach of random pair sampling with Bradley-Terry modeling is statistically limited and…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Andreas Chouliaras , Dimitris Chatzopoulos

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has achieved considerable success in aligning large language models (LLMs) by modeling human preferences with a learnable reward model and employing a reinforcement learning algorithm to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Jianfeng Cai , Jinhua Zhu , Ruopei Sun , Yue Wang , Li Li , Wengang Zhou , Houqiang Li

In Reinforcement Learning (RL), designing precise reward functions remains to be a challenge, particularly when aligning with human intent. Preference-based RL (PbRL) was introduced to address this problem by learning reward models from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-09 Heewoong Choi , Sangwon Jung , Hongjoon Ahn , Taesup Moon

Reinforcement learning (RL) often struggles with reward misalignment, where agents optimize given rewards but fail to exhibit the desired behaviors. This arises when the reward function incentivizes proxy behaviors misaligned with the true…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-19 Mohammad Saif Nazir , Chayan Banerjee

The potential of reinforcement learning (RL) to deliver aligned and performant agents is partially bottlenecked by the reward engineering problem. One alternative to heuristic trial-and-error is preference-based RL (PbRL), where a reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-22 Tom Bewley , Freddy Lecue

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

Because it is difficult to precisely specify complex objectives, reinforcement learning policies are often optimized using proxy reward functions that only approximate the true goal. However, optimizing proxy rewards frequently leads to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-14 Cassidy Laidlaw , Shivam Singhal , Anca Dragan

The success of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) critically depends on the quality of the reward model. However, while this quality is primarily evaluated through accuracy, it remains unclear whether accuracy fully captures…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Noam Razin , Zixuan Wang , Hubert Strauss , Stanley Wei , Jason D. Lee , Sanjeev Arora

In this paper, we take a step towards a deeper understanding of learning from human preferences by systematically comparing the paradigm of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) with the recently proposed paradigm of direct…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-06 Andi Nika , Debmalya Mandal , Parameswaran Kamalaruban , Georgios Tzannetos , Goran Radanović , Adish Singla

We propose a new online learning model for learning with preference feedback. The model is especially suited for applications like web search and recommender systems, where preference data is readily available from implicit user feedback…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-11-04 Pannagadatta K. Shivaswamy , Thorsten Joachims

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and, at its core, reward modeling have become a crucial part of training powerful large language models (LLMs). One commonly overlooked factor in training high-quality reward models (RMs) is…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-19 Kian Ahrabian , Pegah Jandaghi , Negar Mokhberian , Sai Praneeth Karimireddy , Jay Pujara