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We study estimation and statistical inference for reward models used in aligning large language models (LLMs). A key component of LLM alignment is reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), where humans compare pairs of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-04 Pangpang Liu , Junwei Lu , Will Wei Sun

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

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has become a crucial technology for aligning language models with human values and intentions, enabling models to produce more helpful and harmless responses. Reward models are trained as…

Preference learning algorithms (e.g., RLHF and DPO) are frequently used to steer LLMs to produce generations that are more preferred by humans, but our understanding of their inner workings is still limited. In this work, we study the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-01 Angelica Chen , Sadhika Malladi , Lily H. Zhang , Xinyi Chen , Qiuyi Zhang , Rajesh Ranganath , Kyunghyun Cho

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human intentions has become a critical task for safely deploying models in real-world systems. While existing alignment approaches have seen empirical success, theoretically understanding how these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-08 Shawn Im , Yixuan Li

The success of AI assistants based on Language Models (LLMs) hinges on Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) to comprehend and align with user intentions. However, traditional alignment algorithms, such as PPO, are hampered by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Songyang Gao , Qiming Ge , Wei Shen , Shihan Dou , Junjie Ye , Xiao Wang , Rui Zheng , Yicheng Zou , Zhi Chen , Hang Yan , Qi Zhang , Dahua Lin

Large Language Models (LLMs) acquire extensive knowledge and remarkable abilities from extensive text corpora, making them powerful tools for various applications. To make LLMs more usable, aligning them with human preferences is essential.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-21 Mozhi Zhang , Pengyu Wang , Chenkun Tan , Mianqiu Huang , Dong Zhang , Yaqian Zhou , Xipeng Qiu

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a key method for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. However, current offline alignment approaches like DPO, IPO, and SLiC rely heavily on fixed preference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Mucong Ding , Souradip Chakraborty , Vibhu Agrawal , Zora Che , Alec Koppel , Mengdi Wang , Amrit Bedi , Furong Huang

The alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human values is critical as these models become increasingly integrated into various societal and decision-making processes. Traditional methods, such as reinforcement learning from human…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-08 Prashant Trivedi , Souradip Chakraborty , Avinash Reddy , Vaneet Aggarwal , Amrit Singh Bedi , George K. Atia

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a powerful technique to make large language models (LLMs) easier to use and more effective. A core piece of the RLHF process is the training and utilization of a model of…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2023-11-29 Nathan Lambert , Thomas Krendl Gilbert , Tom Zick

Direct preference optimization methods have emerged as a computationally efficient alternative to Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs). Latest approaches have streamlined the alignment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Maksim Afanasyev , Illarion Iov

Collecting high-quality preference datasets for reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is resource-intensive and challenging. As a result, researchers often train reward models on extensive offline datasets which aggregate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-17 Shambhavi Krishna , Aishwarya Sahoo

To improve human-preference alignment training, current research has developed numerous preference datasets consisting of preference pairs labeled as "preferred" or "dispreferred". These preference pairs are typically used to encode human…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Chenglong Wang , Yang Gan , Yifu Huo , Yongyu Mu , Qiaozhi He , Murun Yang , Tong Xiao , Chunliang Zhang , Tongran Liu , Jingbo Zhu

Accurately aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences is crucial for informing fair, economically sound, and statistically efficient decision-making processes. However, we argue that the predominant approach for aligning…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-26 Jiancong Xiao , Ziniu Li , Xingyu Xie , Emily Getzen , Cong Fang , Qi Long , Weijie J. Su

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) aligns language models to human preferences by employing a singular reward model derived from preference data. However, such an approach overlooks the rich diversity of human preferences…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-30 Souradip Chakraborty , Jiahao Qiu , Hui Yuan , Alec Koppel , Furong Huang , Dinesh Manocha , Amrit Singh Bedi , Mengdi Wang

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a central framework for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. Despite its practical success, RLHF raises fundamental statistical questions because it…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-06 Pangpang Liu , Chengchun Shi , Will Wei Sun

Aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences is crucial, but standard methods like Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) are often complex and unstable. In this work, we propose a new, simpler approach that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Saeed Najafi , Alona Fyshe

Aligning human preference and value is an important requirement for building contemporary foundation models and embodied AI. However, popular approaches such as reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) break down the task into…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-03 Chenliang Li , Siliang Zeng , Zeyi Liao , Jiaxiang Li , Dongyeop Kang , Alfredo Garcia , Mingyi Hong

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) based on human preferences, commonly achieved through reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), has been effective in improving their performance. However, maintaining LLM safety throughout…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-18 Yingshui Tan , Yilei Jiang , Yanshi Li , Jiaheng Liu , Xingyuan Bu , Wenbo Su , Xiangyu Yue , Xiaoyong Zhu , Bo Zheng

A common and effective strategy for humans to improve an unsatisfactory outcome in daily life is to find a cause of this outcome and correct the cause. In this paper, we investigate whether this human improvement strategy can be applied to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-17 Shicheng Liu , Siyuan Xu , Wenjie Qiu , Hangfan Zhang , Minghui Zhu