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Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as an important approach for learning from human preferences in aligning large language models (LLMs). However, collecting human preference data is costly and inefficient, motivating methods…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Jiacheng Guo , Zihao Li , Jiahao Qiu , Yue Wu , Mengdi Wang

Large language models are typically aligned with human preferences by optimizing $\textit{reward models}$ (RMs) fitted to human feedback. However, human preferences are multi-faceted, and it is increasingly common to derive reward from a…

The effectiveness of reinforcement learning (RL) agents in continuous control robotics tasks is mainly dependent on the design of the underlying reward function, which is highly prone to reward hacking. A misalignment between the reward…

Reward models (RMs) play a crucial role in reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), aligning model behavior with human preferences. However, existing benchmarks for reward models show a weak correlation with the performance of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Sunghwan Kim , Dongjin Kang , Taeyoon Kwon , Hyungjoo Chae , Dongha Lee , Jinyoung Yeo

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is an effective approach for aligning language models to human preferences. Central to RLHF is learning a reward function for scoring human preferences. Two main approaches for learning a…

In classic reinforcement learning (RL) and decision making problems, policies are evaluated with respect to a scalar reward function, and all optimal policies are the same with regards to their expected return. However, many real-world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-02 Han Shao , Lee Cohen , Avrim Blum , Yishay Mansour , Aadirupa Saha , Matthew R. Walter

Modern large language models (LLMs) are optimized for human-aligned responses using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). However, existing RLHF approaches assume a universal preference model and fail to account for individual…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-11 Idan Shenfeld , Felix Faltings , Pulkit Agrawal , Aldo Pacchiano

Recent language models achieve impressive results in tasks involving complex multistep reasoning, but scaling these capabilities further traditionally requires expensive collection of more annotated data. In this work, we explore the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-25 Marek Kadlčík , Michal Štefánik

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful tool for neural combinatorial optimization, enabling models to learn heuristics that solve complex problems without requiring expert knowledge. Despite significant progress, existing RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-14 Mingjun Pan , Guanquan Lin , You-Wei Luo , Bin Zhu , Zhien Dai , Lijun Sun , Chun Yuan

The success of AI assistants based on language models (LLMs) hinges crucially on Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which enables the generation of responses more aligned with human preferences. As universal AI assistants,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-27 Rui Zheng , Wei Shen , Yuan Hua , Wenbin Lai , Shihan Dou , Yuhao Zhou , Zhiheng Xi , Xiao Wang , Haoran Huang , Tao Gui , Qi Zhang , Xuanjing Huang

Direct preference optimization (DPO) is a form of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) where the policy is learned directly from preferential feedback. Although many models of human preferences exist, the critical task of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Branislav Kveton , Xintong Li , Julian McAuley , Ryan Rossi , Jingbo Shang , Junda Wu , Tong Yu

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) provides a powerful paradigm to avoid meticulous reward engineering by learning rewards based on human preferences. However, real-time human feedback is hard to obtain in online tasks. Most…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Songjun Tu , Jingbo Sun , Qichao Zhang , Xiangyuan Lan , Dongbin Zhao

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has become a cornerstone of the training and alignment pipeline for large language models (LLMs). Recent advances, such as direct preference optimization (DPO), have simplified the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-03-31 Syrine Belakaria , Joshua Kazdan , Charles Marx , Chris Cundy , Willie Neiswanger , Sanmi Koyejo , Barbara E. Engelhardt , Stefano Ermon

As large language models (LLMs) advance their capabilities, aligning these models with human preferences has become crucial. Preference optimization, which trains models to distinguish between preferred and non-preferred responses based on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Shawn Im , Sharon Li

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) facilitates the alignment of large language models with human preferences, significantly enhancing the quality of interactions between humans and models. InstructGPT implements RLHF through…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-10-10 Zheng Yuan , Hongyi Yuan , Chuanqi Tan , Wei Wang , Songfang Huang , Fei Huang

Spurious correlations in a reward model's training data can prevent Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) from identifying the desired goal and induce unwanted behaviors. This paper shows that offline RLHF is susceptible to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Xin Chen , Sam Toyer , Florian Shkurti

Training reinforcement learning agents with human feedback is crucial when task objectives are difficult to specify through dense reward functions. While prior methods rely on offline trajectory comparisons to elicit human preferences, such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-08 Zhengran Ji , Boyuan Chen

For a real-world decision-making problem, the reward function often needs to be engineered or learned. A popular approach is to utilize human feedback to learn a reward function for training. The most straightforward way to do so is to ask…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Xiang Ji , Huazheng Wang , Minshuo Chen , Tuo Zhao , Mengdi Wang

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) relies on preference modeling to align machine learning systems with human values, yet the popular approach of random pair sampling with Bradley-Terry modeling is statistically limited and…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Andreas Chouliaras , Dimitris Chatzopoulos

Recent work on the limitations of using reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) to incorporate human preferences into model behavior often raises social choice theory as a reference point. Social choice theory's analysis of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-04-22 Jessica Dai , Eve Fleisig