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Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in open-ended text generation tasks. However, the inherent open-ended nature of these tasks implies that there is always room for improvement in the quality of model…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-09-16 Ziqi Wang , Le Hou , Tianjian Lu , Yuexin Wu , Yunxuan Li , Hongkun Yu , Heng Ji

Instruction-tuning language models has become a crucial step in aligning them for general use. Typically, this process involves extensive training on large datasets, incurring high training costs. In this paper, we introduce a novel…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-19 Dheeraj Mekala , Alex Nguyen , Jingbo Shang

We propose a large margin criterion for training neural language models. Conventionally, neural language models are trained by minimizing perplexity (PPL) on grammatical sentences. However, we demonstrate that PPL may not be the best metric…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2018-08-29 Jiaji Huang , Yi Li , Wei Ping , Liang Huang

Large Language Models (LLMs), when used in educational settings without pedagogical fine-tuning, often provide immediate answers rather than guiding students through the problem-solving process. This approach falls short of pedagogically…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Shashank Sonkar , Kangqi Ni , Sapana Chaudhary , Richard G. Baraniuk

Enhancing the conformity of large language models (LLMs) to human preferences remains an ongoing research challenge. Recently, offline approaches such as Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) have gained prominence as attractive options due…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Kaihui Chen , Hao Yi , Qingyang Li , Tianyu Qi , Yulan Hu , Fuzheng Zhang , Yong Liu

Alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human preferences typically relies on supervised reward models or external judges that demand abundant annotations. However, in fields that rely on professional knowledge, such as medicine and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Yiyang Zhao , Huiyu Bai , Xuejiao Zhao

Inference-time alignment enables large language models (LLMs) to generate outputs aligned with end-user preferences without further training. Recent post-training methods achieve this by using small guidance models to modify token…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-14 Sarat Chandra Bobbili , Ujwal Dinesha , Dheeraj Narasimha , Srinivas Shakkottai

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities, yet their transition to real-world applications reveals a critical limitation: the inability to adapt to individual preferences while maintaining alignment with…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Jian Guan , Junfei Wu , Jia-Nan Li , Chuanqi Cheng , Wei Wu

Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate impressive performance but lack the flexibility to adapt to human preferences quickly without retraining. In this work, we introduce Test-time Preference Optimization (TPO), a framework that aligns…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Yafu Li , Xuyang Hu , Xiaoye Qu , Linjie Li , Yu Cheng

Alignment with human preferences is an important evaluation aspect of LLMs, requiring them to be helpful, honest, safe, and to precisely follow human instructions. Evaluating large language models' (LLMs) alignment typically involves…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Yixin Liu , Pengfei Liu , Arman Cohan

Deep Reinforcement Learning is widely used for aligning Large Language Models (LLM) with human preference. However, the conventional reward modelling is predominantly dependent on human annotations provided by a select cohort of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-05-31 Dexun Li , Cong Zhang , Kuicai Dong , Derrick Goh Xin Deik , Ruiming Tang , Yong Liu

Despite the significant progress made by existing retrieval augmented language models (RALMs) in providing trustworthy responses and grounding in reliable sources, they often overlook effective alignment with human preferences. In the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-19 Zhuoran Jin , Hongbang Yuan , Tianyi Men , Pengfei Cao , Yubo Chen , Kang Liu , Jun Zhao

Preference-based feedback is important for many applications in machine learning where evaluation of a reward function is not feasible. Notable recent examples arise in preference alignment for large language models, including in…

Applying large language models (LLMs) to assist in psycho-counseling is an emerging and meaningful approach, driven by the significant gap between patient needs and the availability of mental health support. However, current LLMs struggle…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Mian Zhang , Shaun M. Eack , Zhiyu Zoey Chen

The reward model (RM) plays a crucial role in aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences through Reinforcement Learning, where the Bradley-Terry (BT) objective has been recognized as simple yet powerful, specifically for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Zhuo Li , Yuege Feng , Dandan Guo , Jinpeng Hu , Anningzhe Gao , Xiang Wan

Large language models are first pre-trained on trillions of tokens and then instruction-tuned or aligned to specific preferences. While pre-training remains out of reach for most researchers due to the compute required, fine-tuning has…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Megh Thakkar , Quentin Fournier , Matthew D Riemer , Pin-Yu Chen , Amal Zouaq , Payel Das , Sarath Chandar

Although Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit advanced reasoning ability, conventional alignment remains largely dominated by outcome reward models (ORMs) that judge only final answers. Process Reward Models(PRMs) address this gap by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Congmin Zheng , Jiachen Zhu , Zhuoying Ou , Yuxiang Chen , Kangning Zhang , Rong Shan , Zeyu Zheng , Mengyue Yang , Jianghao Lin , Yong Yu , Weinan Zhang

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

Preference learning is a widely adopted post-training technique that aligns large language models (LLMs) to human preferences and improves specific downstream task capabilities. In this work we systematically investigate how specific…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-23 Joongwon Kim , Anirudh Goyal , Aston Zhang , Bo Xiong , Rui Hou , Melanie Kambadur , Dhruv Mahajan , Hannaneh Hajishirzi , Liang Tan

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