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Recent studies show that Large Language Models (LLMs) achieve strong reasoning capabilities through supervised fine-tuning or reinforcement learning. However, a key approach, the Process Reward Model (PRM), suffers from reward hacking,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Teng Wang , Zhangyi Jiang , Zhenqi He , Shenyang Tong , Wenhan Yang , Yanan Zheng , Zeyu Li , Zifan He , Hailei Gong , Zewen Ye , Shengjie Ma , Jianping Zhang

Reward models (RMs) play a crucial role in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences and enhancing reasoning quality. Traditionally, RMs are trained to rank candidate outputs based on their correctness and coherence.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-21 Yuhui Xu , Hanze Dong , Lei Wang , Caiming Xiong , Junnan Li

In Large Language Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems can significantly enhance the performance of large language models by integrating external knowledge. However, RAG also introduces new security risks. Existing research…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-16 Linlin Wang , Tianqing Zhu , Laiqiao Qin , Longxiang Gao , Wanlei Zhou

Reward models play a critical role in guiding large language models toward outputs that align with human expectations. However, an open challenge remains in effectively utilizing test-time compute to enhance reward model performance. In…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-21 Jiaxin Guo , Zewen Chi , Li Dong , Qingxiu Dong , Xun Wu , Shaohan Huang , Furu Wei

Large language models (LLMs) trained with reinforcement objectives often achieve superficially correct answers via shortcut strategies, pairing correct outputs with spurious or unfaithful reasoning and degrading under small causal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Xiangqi Wang , Yue Huang , Yujun Zhou , Xiaonan Luo , Kehan Guo , Xiangliang Zhang

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has been shown to enhance the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs), enabling the development of large reasoning models (LRMs). However, LRMs such as DeepSeek-R1 and…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-13 Yuhao Wang , Xiaopeng Li , Cheng Gong , Ziru Liu , Suiyun Zhang , Rui Liu , Xiangyu Zhao

Recent advances in sparse reward policy gradient methods have enabled effective reinforcement learning (RL)-based language model post-training. However, for reasoning tasks such as mathematical problem solving, binarized outcome rewards…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Yongjae Lee , Taekhyun Park , Sunghyun Sim , Hyerim Bae

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) is widely used to improve reasoning in large language models, but rewards only final-answer correctness with no supervision over intermediate steps. Rubric-based methods such as Rubrics…

Learning policies via preference-based reward learning is an increasingly popular method for customizing agent behavior, but has been shown anecdotally to be prone to spurious correlations and reward hacking behaviors. While much prior work…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Jeremy Tien , Jerry Zhi-Yang He , Zackory Erickson , Anca D. Dragan , Daniel S. Brown

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong reasoning abilities in mathematical tasks, often enhanced through reinforcement learning (RL). However, RL-trained models frequently produce unnecessarily long reasoning traces -- even…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Jinyan Su , Claire Cardie

Language models trained with reinforcement learning (RL) can engage in reward hacking--the exploitation of unintended strategies for high reward--without revealing this behavior in their chain-of-thought reasoning. This makes the detection…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Miles Turpin , Andy Arditi , Marvin Li , Joe Benton , Julian Michael

Conversational Recommender Systems (CRS) actively elicit user preferences to generate adaptive recommendations. Mainstream reinforcement learning-based CRS solutions heavily rely on handcrafted reward functions, which may not be aligned…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Zhendong Chu , Nan Wang , Hongning Wang

Recent RL methods have substantially improved the reasoning abilities of LLMs. Existing reward designs mainly follow two paradigms: (1) Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) derives outcome signals from executable checks or…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Sirui Chen , Lei Xu , Yuying Zhao , Yutian Chen , Yu Wang , Beier Zhu , Hanwang Zhang , Shengjie Zhao , Chaochao Lu

Large Language Models (LLMs) are prone to hallucination, especially during multi-hop and reasoning-intensive tasks such as mathematical problem solving. While Outcome Reward Models verify only final answers, Process Reward Models (PRMs)…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Tej Deep Pala , Panshul Sharma , Amir Zadeh , Chuan Li , Soujanya Poria

Recent advances in reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and preference optimization have substantially improved the usability, coherence, and safety of large language models. However, recurring behaviors such as performative…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 William Parris

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly relied upon for solving complex reasoning tasks in domains such as mathematics, logic, and multi-step question answering. A growing line of work seeks to improve reasoning quality by scaling…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Seyyed Saeid Cheshmi , Azal Ahmad Khan , Xinran Wang , Zirui Liu , Ali Anwar

Aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences through reinforcement learning (RLHF) can lead to reward hacking, where LLMs exploit failures in the reward model (RM) to achieve seemingly high rewards without meeting the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-23 Alexandre Ramé , Nino Vieillard , Léonard Hussenot , Robert Dadashi , Geoffrey Cideron , Olivier Bachem , Johan Ferret

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms struggle with learning optimal policies for tasks where reward feedback is sparse and depends on a complex sequence of events in the environment. Probabilistic reward machines (PRMs) are finite-state…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Jan Corazza , Hadi Partovi Aria , Daniel Neider , Zhe Xu

Large language models excel at complex reasoning, yet evaluating their intermediate steps remains challenging. Although process reward models provide step-wise supervision, they often suffer from a risk compensation effect, where incorrect…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Jiujiu Chen , Yazheng Liu , Sihong Xie , Hui Xiong

Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities but suffer from cognitive inefficiencies like "overthinking" simple problems and "underthinking" complex ones. While existing methods that use supervised fine-tuning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Tian Liang , Wenxiang Jiao , Zhiwei He , Jiahao Xu , Haitao Mi , Dong Yu