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Bootstrapping large language models (LLMs) through preference-based policy optimization offers a promising direction for aligning model behavior with human preferences without relying on extensive manual annotations. In this work, we…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-25 Chen Jia

Multi-objective preference alignment of large language models (LLMs) is critical for developing AI systems that are more configurable, personalizable, helpful, and safe. However, optimizing model outputs to satisfy diverse objectives with…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Raghav Gupta , Ryan Sullivan , Yunxuan Li , Samrat Phatale , Abhinav Rastogi

While astonishingly capable, large Language Models (LLM) can sometimes produce outputs that deviate from human expectations. Such deviations necessitate an alignment phase to prevent disseminating untruthful, toxic, or biased information.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Long Tan Le , Han Shu , Tung-Anh Nguyen , Choong Seon Hong , Nguyen H. Tran

This thesis develops theoretical frameworks and algorithms that advance constrained reinforcement learning (RL) across control, preference learning, and alignment of large language models. The first contribution addresses constrained Markov…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-12 Akhil Agnihotri

Aligning language models to human expectations, e.g., being helpful and harmless, has become a pressing challenge for large language models. A typical alignment procedure consists of supervised fine-tuning and preference learning. Most…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-27 Tianchi Cai , Xierui Song , Jiyan Jiang , Fei Teng , Jinjie Gu , Guannan Zhang

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as the standard paradigm for aligning large language models with human preferences. However, reward-based methods grounded in the Bradley-Terry assumption struggle to capture the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-08 Fang Wu , Xu Huang , Weihao Xuan , Zhiwei Zhang , Yijia Xiao , Guancheng Wan , Xiaomin Li , Bing Hu , Peng Xia , Jure Leskovec , Yejin Choi

Large language models (LLMs) have shown promising abilities as cost-effective and reference-free evaluators for assessing language generation quality. In particular, pairwise LLM evaluators, which compare two generated texts and determine…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-15 Han Zhou , Xingchen Wan , Yinhong Liu , Nigel Collier , Ivan Vulić , Anna Korhonen

Efficient preference optimization algorithms such as Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) have become a popular approach in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. These algorithms implicitly treat the LLM as a reward…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Tong Liu , Xiao Yu , Wenxuan Zhou , Jindong Gu , Volker Tresp

As the era of large language models (LLMs) unfolds, Preference Optimization (PO) methods have become a central approach to aligning LLMs with human preferences and improving performance. We propose Maximum a Posteriori Preference…

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a powerful technique for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. However, effectively aligning LLMs with diverse human preferences remains a significant…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-03 Chengao Li , Hanyu Zhang , Yunkun Xu , Hongyan Xue , Xiang Ao , Qing He

Aligning language models (LMs) with curated human feedback is critical to control their behaviors in real-world applications. Several recent policy optimization methods, such as DPO and SLiC, serve as promising alternatives to the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-01-28 Tianqi Liu , Zhen Qin , Junru Wu , Jiaming Shen , Misha Khalman , Rishabh Joshi , Yao Zhao , Mohammad Saleh , Simon Baumgartner , Jialu Liu , Peter J. Liu , Xuanhui Wang

Aligning the output of Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences (e.g., by means of reinforcement learning with human feedback, or RLHF) is essential for ensuring their effectiveness in real-world scenarios. Despite significant…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Pietro Bernardelle , Gianluca Demartini

Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit remarkably powerful capabilities. One of the crucial factors to achieve success is aligning the LLM's output with human preferences. This alignment process often requires only a small amount of data to…

Aligning large language models (LLMs) is a central objective of post-training, often achieved through reward modeling and reinforcement learning methods. Among these, direct preference optimization (DPO) has emerged as a widely adopted…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Aladin Djuhera , Farhan Ahmed , Swanand Ravindra Kadhe , Syed Zawad , Heiko Ludwig , Holger Boche

User intentions are typically formalized as evaluation rewards to be maximized when fine-tuning language models (LMs). Existing alignment methods, such as Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), are mainly tailored for pairwise preference…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Huayu Chen , Guande He , Lifan Yuan , Ganqu Cui , Hang Su , Jun Zhu

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) and its variants have become the de facto standards for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences or specific goals. However, DPO requires high-quality preference data and suffers from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-12 Zhuotong Chen , Fang Liu , Jennifer Zhu , Wanyu Du , Yanjun Qi

Large language models (LLMs) are still struggling in aligning with human preference in complex tasks and scenarios. They are prone to overfit into the unexpected patterns or superficial styles in the training data. We conduct an empirical…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Zhipeng Chen , Kun Zhou , Wayne Xin Zhao , Jingyuan Wang , Ji-Rong Wen

The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) has facilitated their transformation into conversational chatbots that can grasp contextual nuances and generate pertinent sentences, closely mirroring human values through advanced…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-19 Janghwan Lee , Seongmin Park , Sukjin Hong , Minsoo Kim , Du-Seong Chang , Jungwook Choi

Preference optimization has made significant progress recently, with numerous methods developed to align language models with human preferences. This paper introduces $f$-divergence Preference Optimization ($f$-PO), a novel framework that…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-18 Jiaqi Han , Mingjian Jiang , Yuxuan Song , Stefano Ermon , Minkai Xu

Group-Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) is a key technique for training large reasoning models, yet it suffers from a critical vulnerability: the \emph{Think-Answer Mismatch}, where noisy reward signals corrupt the learning process. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-11 Si Shen , Peijun Shen , Wenhua Zhao , Danhao Zhu