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Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has evolved to be one of the main methods for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs). However, existing RLHF methods are non-robust, and their performance deteriorates if the downstream…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Debmalya Mandal , Paulius Sasnauskas , Goran Radanovic

Existing alignment methods share a common topology of information flow, where reward information is collected from humans, modeled with preference learning, and used to tune language models. However, this shared topology has not been…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-29 Tianyi Qiu , Fanzhi Zeng , Jiaming Ji , Dong Yan , Kaile Wang , Jiayi Zhou , Yang Han , Josef Dai , Xuehai Pan , Yaodong Yang

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has shown remarkable success in aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences. Traditional RLHF methods rely on a fixed dataset, which often suffers from limited coverage. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Long-Fei Li , Yu-Yang Qian , Peng Zhao , Zhi-Hua Zhou

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) aligns Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences, yet the underlying reward signals they internalize remain hidden, posing a critical challenge for interpretability and safety.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Nyal Patel , Matthieu Bou , Arjun Jagota , Satyapriya Krishna , Sonali Parbhoo

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is the standard method to align Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences. In this work, we introduce alignment tampering, a potential vulnerability where the LLM undergoing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Dongyoon Hahm , Dylan Hadfield-Menell , Kimin Lee

This paper studies reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) for aligning large language models with human preferences. While RLHF has demonstrated promising results, many algorithms are highly sensitive to misspecifications in the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-30 Erhan Xu , Kai Ye , Hongyi Zhou , Luhan Zhu , Francesco Quinzan , Chengchun Shi

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) is a standard approach for fine-tuning large language models to follow instructions. As part of this process, learned reward models are used to approximately model human preferences.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Thomas Coste , Usman Anwar , Robert Kirk , David Krueger

The reward model for Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has proven effective in fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs). Notably, collecting human feedback for RLHF can be resource-intensive and lead to scalability issues…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-07-09 Jinghan Zhang , Xiting Wang , Yiqiao Jin , Changyu Chen , Xinhao Zhang , Kunpeng Liu

We introduce Adversarial Policy Optimization (AdvPO), a novel solution to the pervasive issue of reward over-optimization in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) for Large Language Models (LLMs). Over-optimization occurs when a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-10 Xiaoying Zhang , Jean-Francois Ton , Wei Shen , Hongning Wang , Yang Liu

A centerpiece of the ever-popular reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) approach to fine-tuning autoregressive language models is the explicit training of a reward model to emulate human feedback, distinct from the language…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-05-22 Wanqiao Xu , Shi Dong , Dilip Arumugam , Benjamin Van Roy

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is a prevalent approach to align AI systems with human values by learning rewards from human preference data. Due to various reasons, however, such data typically takes the form of rankings…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-06 Ilgee Hong , Zichong Li , Alexander Bukharin , Yixiao Li , Haoming Jiang , Tianbao Yang , Tuo Zhao

Re-inforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has been effective in the task of AI alignment. However, one of the key assumptions of RLHF is that the annotators (referred to as workers from here on out) have a homogeneous response…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-01-29 Sarvesh Shashidhar , Abhishek Mishra , Madhav Kotecha

Rewards serve as proxies for human preferences and play a crucial role in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). However, if these rewards are inherently imperfect, exhibiting various biases, they can adversely affect the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Sheng Ouyang , Yulan Hu , Ge Chen , Qingyang Li , Fuzheng Zhang , Yong Liu

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as the main paradigm for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. Typically, RLHF involves the initial step of learning a reward model from human feedback,…

We investigate Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) in the context of a general preference oracle. In particular, we do not assume the existence of a reward function and an oracle preference signal drawn from the Bradley-Terry…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-13 Chenlu Ye , Wei Xiong , Yuheng Zhang , Hanze Dong , Nan Jiang , Tong Zhang

While recent advances have boosted LM proficiency in linguistic benchmarks, LMs consistently struggle to reason correctly on complex tasks like mathematics. We turn to Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) as a method with which…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-11-13 Sarah Pan , Vladislav Lialin , Sherin Muckatira , Anna Rumshisky

Large language models (LLMs) trained with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities, but their underlying reward functions and decision-making processes remain opaque. This paper introduces…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Jared Joselowitz , Ritam Majumdar , Arjun Jagota , Matthieu Bou , Nyal Patel , Satyapriya Krishna , Sonali Parbhoo

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) provides a principled framework for aligning AI systems with human preference data. For various reasons, e.g., personal bias, context ambiguity, lack of training, etc, human annotators may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-10 Alexander Bukharin , Ilgee Hong , Haoming Jiang , Zichong Li , Qingru Zhang , Zixuan Zhang , Tuo Zhao

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