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We study whether self-learning can scale LLM-based agents without relying on human-curated datasets or predefined rule-based rewards. Through controlled experiments in a search-agent setting, we identify two key determinants of scalable…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Wangtao Sun , Xiang Cheng , Jialin Fan , Yao Xu , Xing Yu , Shizhu He , Jun Zhao , Kang Liu

Reward models (RMs) have become essential for aligning large language models (LLMs), serving as scalable proxies for human evaluation in both training and inference. However, existing RMs struggle on knowledge-intensive and long-form tasks,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-30 Ziyou Hu , Zhengliang Shi , Minghang Zhu , Haitao Li , Teng Sun , Pengjie Ren , Suzan Verberne , Zhaochun Ren

The success of deep networks is crucially attributed to their ability to capture latent features within a representation space. In this work, we investigate whether the underlying learned features of a model can be efficiently retrieved…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-30 Akash Kumar

Large language models (LLMs) have achieved strong performance in language-centric tasks. However, in agentic settings, LLMs often struggle to anticipate action consequences and adapt to environment dynamics, highlighting the need for…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Xiao Yu , Baolin Peng , Ruize Xu , Yelong Shen , Pengcheng He , Suman Nath , Nikhil Singh , Jiangfeng Gao , Zhou Yu

Search agents powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant potential in tackling knowledge-intensive tasks. Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful paradigm for training these agents to perform…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Shiyu Li , Yang Tang , Yifan Wang , Peiming Li , Xi Chen

Distilling large language models (LLMs) typically involves transferring the teacher model's responses through supervised fine-tuning (SFT). However, this approach neglects the potential to distill both data (output content) and reward…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-28 Yudi Zhang , Lu Wang , Meng Fang , Yali Du , Chenghua Huang , Jun Wang , Qingwei Lin , Mykola Pechenizkiy , Dongmei Zhang , Saravan Rajmohan , Qi Zhang

Sparse reward environments in reinforcement learning (RL) pose significant challenges for exploration, often leading to inefficient or incomplete learning processes. To tackle this issue, this work proposes a teacher-student RL framework…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-14 Unai Ruiz-Gonzalez , Alain Andres , Pedro G. Bascoy , Javier Del Ser

Large Language Model (LLM)-based web agents excel at knowledge-intensive tasks but face a fundamental conflict between the need for extensive exploration and the constraints of limited context windows. Current solutions typically rely on…

Large Language Model (LLM) Agents, often trained with Reinforcement Learning (RL), are constrained by a dependency on human-curated data, limiting scalability and tethering AI to human knowledge. Existing self-evolution frameworks offer an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-21 Peng Xia , Kaide Zeng , Jiaqi Liu , Can Qin , Fang Wu , Yiyang Zhou , Caiming Xiong , Huaxiu Yao

Large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced in various fields and intelligent agent applications. However, current LLMs that learn from human or external model supervision are costly and may face performance ceilings as task…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Zhengwei Tao , Ting-En Lin , Xiancai Chen , Hangyu Li , Yuchuan Wu , Yongbin Li , Zhi Jin , Fei Huang , Dacheng Tao , Jingren Zhou

Pre-trained large-scale language models (LLMs) excel at producing coherent articles, yet their outputs may be untruthful, toxic, or fail to align with user expectations. Current approaches focus on using reinforcement learning with human…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-06 Dehong Xu , Liang Qiu , Minseok Kim , Faisal Ladhak , Jaeyoung Do

Aligning the behavior of Large language models (LLMs) with human intentions and values remains a critical challenge. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) aligns LLMs by training a reward model (RM) on human preferences and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-25 Jiayi Zhou , Jiaming Ji , Juntao Dai , Dong Li , Yaodong Yang

Large Language Models have demonstrated outstanding performance across various downstream tasks and have been widely applied in multiple scenarios. Human-annotated preference data is used for training to further improve LLMs' performance,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-06 Shimao Zhang , Xiao Liu , Xin Zhang , Junxiao Liu , Zheheng Luo , Shujian Huang , Yeyun Gong

Sparse rewards are a major bottleneck in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), where simultaneous learning induces non-stationarity and makes reward design especially delicate. Reward shaping can accelerate learning, but in the…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Elie Abboud , Oren Gal

Traditionally, offline datasets have been used to evaluate task-oriented dialogue (TOD) models. These datasets lack context awareness, making them suboptimal benchmarks for conversational systems. In contrast, user-agents, which are…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-18 Taaha Kazi , Ruiliang Lyu , Sizhe Zhou , Dilek Hakkani-Tur , Gokhan Tur

The alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs) for multi-turn conversations typically relies on reward signals derived from the content of the text. This approach, however, overlooks a rich, complementary source of signal: the dynamics of…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Sian Gooding , Edward Grefenstette

LLM alignment has progressed in single-agent settings through paradigms such as RL with human feedback (RLHF), while recent work explores scalable alternatives such as RL with AI feedback (RLAIF) and dynamic alignment objectives. However,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Panatchakorn Anantaprayoon , Nataliia Babina , Nima Asgharbeygi , Jad Tarifi

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as multi-step decision-making agents, where effective reward design is essential for guiding learning. Although recent work explores various forms of reward shaping and step-level…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Dengjia Zhang , Xiaoou Liu , Lu Cheng , Yaqing Wang , Kenton Murray , Hua Wei

Developing Large Language Models (LLMs) to cooperate and compete effectively within multi-agent systems (MASs) is a critical step towards more advanced intelligence. While reinforcement learning (RL) has proven effective for enhancing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Huining Yuan , Zelai Xu , Zheyue Tan , Xiangmin Yi , Mo Guang , Kaiwen Long , Haojia Hui , Boxun Li , Xinlei Chen , Bo Zhao , Xiao-Ping Zhang , Chao Yu , Yu Wang

Personalizing large language models (LLMs) to accommodate diverse user preferences is essential for enhancing alignment and user satisfaction. Traditional reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) approaches often rely on monolithic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Avinandan Bose , Zhihan Xiong , Yuejie Chi , Simon Shaolei Du , Lin Xiao , Maryam Fazel