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Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) methods utilize binary feedback from the human in the loop (HiL) over queried trajectory pairs to learn a reward model in an attempt to approximate the human's underlying reward function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-20 Mudit Verma , Subbarao Kambhampati

Human-designed reward functions for reinforcement learning (RL) agents are frequently misaligned with the humans' true, unobservable objectives, and thus act only as proxies. Optimizing for a misspecified proxy reward function often induces…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Stephane Hatgis-Kessell , Logan Mondal Bhamidipaty , Emma Brunskill

In preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL), a reward function is learned from a type of human feedback called preference. To expedite preference collection, recent works have leveraged \emph{offline preferences}, which are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-18 Guoxi Zhang , Han Bao , Hisashi Kashima

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) aligns a robot behavior with human preferences via a reward function learned from binary feedback over agent behaviors. We show that dynamics-aware reward functions improve the sample…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Katherine Metcalf , Miguel Sarabia , Natalie Mackraz , Barry-John Theobald

We study human-in-the-loop reinforcement learning (RL) with trajectory preferences, where instead of receiving a numeric reward at each step, the agent only receives preferences over trajectory pairs from a human overseer. The goal of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-25 Xiaoyu Chen , Han Zhong , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Liwei Wang

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) can help avoid sophisticated reward designs and align better with human intentions, showing great promise in various real-world applications. However, obtaining human feedback for preferences…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Yiqin Yang , Hao Hu , Yihuan Mao , Jin Zhang , Chengjie Wu , Yuhua Jiang , Xu Yang , Runpeng Xie , Yi Fan , Bo Liu , Yang Gao , Bo Xu , Chongjie Zhang

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a powerful approach for aligning generative models, but its reliance on learned reward models makes it vulnerable to mis-specification and reward hacking. Preference-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Akhil Agnihotri , Rahul Jain , Deepak Ramachandran , Zheng Wen

Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) provides a way to learn high-performance policies in environments where the reward signal is hard to specify, avoiding heuristic and time-consuming reward design. However, PbRL can suffer from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-02 Chenyang Cao , Miguel Rogel-García , Mohamed Nabail , Xueqian Wang , Nicholas Rhinehart

We study reinforcement learning from human feedback in general Markov decision processes, where agents learn from trajectory-level preference comparisons. A central challenge in this setting is to design algorithms that select informative…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-05 Andreas Schlaginhaufen , Reda Ouhamma , Maryam Kamgarpour

We consider the problem of preference based reinforcement learning (PbRL), where, unlike traditional reinforcement learning, an agent receives feedback only in terms of a 1 bit (0/1) preference over a trajectory pair instead of absolute…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-07 Aldo Pacchiano , Aadirupa Saha , Jonathan Lee

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) promises to learn a complex reward function with binary human preference. However, such human-in-the-loop formulation requires considerable human effort to assign preference labels to segment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-20 Yachen Kang , Li He , Jinxin Liu , Zifeng Zhuang , Donglin Wang

Preference-based reinforcement learning (RL) provides a framework to train agents using human preferences between two behaviors. However, preference-based RL has been challenging to scale since it requires a large amount of human feedback…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-03 Changyeon Kim , Jongjin Park , Jinwoo Shin , Honglak Lee , Pieter Abbeel , Kimin Lee

To integrate into human-centered environments, autonomous agents must learn from and adapt to humans in their native settings. Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) can enable this by learning reward functions from human…

Reinforcement learning (RL) requires access to a reward function that incentivizes the right behavior, but these are notoriously hard to specify for complex tasks. Preference-based RL provides an alternative: learning policies using a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-05 Kimin Lee , Laura Smith , Anca Dragan , Pieter Abbeel

Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) circumvents the need for reward engineering by harnessing human preferences as the reward signal. However, current PbRL methods excessively depend on high-quality feedback from domain experts,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Jie Cheng , Gang Xiong , Xingyuan Dai , Qinghai Miao , Yisheng Lv , Fei-Yue Wang

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PBRL) in the offline setting has succeeded greatly in industrial applications such as chatbots. A two-step learning framework where one applies a reinforcement learning step after a reward modeling…

Specifying rewards for reinforcement learned (RL) agents is challenging. Preference-based RL (PbRL) mitigates these challenges by inferring a reward from feedback over sets of trajectories. However, the effectiveness of PbRL is limited by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-20 Mudit Verma , Katherine Metcalf

Offline preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) provides an effective way to overcome the challenges of designing reward and the high costs of online interaction. However, since labeling preference needs real-time human feedback,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Xiao-Yin Liu , Guotao Li , Xiao-Hu Zhou , Zeng-Guang Hou

Learning a reward function from human preferences is challenging as it typically requires having a high-fidelity simulator or using expensive and potentially unsafe actual physical rollouts in the environment. However, in many tasks the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-18 Daniel Shin , Daniel S. Brown , Anca D. Dragan

Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) shows promise in aligning robot behaviors with human preferences, but its success depends heavily on the accurate modeling of human preferences through reward models. Most methods adopt…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-12 Dezhong Zhao , Ruiqi Wang , Dayoon Suh , Taehyeon Kim , Ziqin Yuan , Byung-Cheol Min , Guohua Chen