English
Related papers

Related papers: Causal Reward Adjustment: Mitigating Reward Hackin…

200 papers

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) typically optimizes for outcome rewards without imposing constraints on intermediate reasoning. This leaves training susceptible to reward hacking, where models exploit loopholes (e.g.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Songtao Wang , Quang Hieu Pham , Fangcong Yin , Xinpeng Wang , Jocelyn Qiaochu Chen , Greg Durrett , Xi Ye

Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting methods have enabled large language models (LLMs) to generate reasoning paths and solve math word problems (MWPs). However, they are sensitive to mistakes in the paths, as any mistake can result in an…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-12-13 Zhenyu Wu , Meng Jiang , Chao Shen

Process Reward Models (PRMs) have emerged as a powerful tool for providing step-level feedback when evaluating the reasoning of Large Language Models (LLMs), which frequently produce chains of thought (CoTs) containing errors even when the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Raffaele Pisano , Roberto Navigli

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has emerged as a key method for improving Large Language Models' reasoning capabilities, yet recent evidence suggests it may paradoxically shrink the reasoning boundary rather than…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-03 Phuc Minh Nguyen , Chinh D. La , Duy M. H. Nguyen , Nitesh V. Chawla , Binh T. Nguyen , Khoa D. Doan

Process Reward Models (PRMs) are crucial in complex reasoning and problem-solving tasks (e.g., LLM agents with long-horizon decision-making) by verifying the correctness of each intermediate reasoning step. In real-world scenarios, LLMs may…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-05-30 Xiang Li , Haiyang Yu , Xinghua Zhang , Ziyang Huang , Shizhu He , Kang Liu , Jun Zhao , Fei Huang , Yongbin Li

Designing robust reinforcement learning (RL) agents in the presence of imperfect reward signals remains a core challenge. In practice, agents are often trained with proxy rewards that only approximate the true objective, leaving them…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Zixuan Liu , Xiaolin Sun , Zizhan Zheng

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…

Large reasoning models (LRMs) have recently shown promise in solving complex math problems when optimized with Reinforcement Learning (RL). But conventional approaches rely on outcome-only rewards that provide sparse feedback, resulting in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-01 Tao He , Rongchuan Mu , Lizi Liao , Yixin Cao , Ming Liu , Bing Qin

Reward-based alignment methods for large language models (LLMs) face two key limitations: vulnerability to reward hacking, where models exploit flaws in the reward signal; and reliance on brittle, labor-intensive prompt engineering when…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Zae Myung Kim , Chanwoo Park , Vipul Raheja , Suin Kim , Dongyeop Kang

Large language models (LLMs) have shown promise in performing complex multi-step reasoning, yet they continue to struggle with mathematical reasoning, often making systematic errors. A promising solution is reinforcement learning (RL)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Hanning Zhang , Pengcheng Wang , Shizhe Diao , Yong Lin , Rui Pan , Hanze Dong , Dylan Zhang , Pavlo Molchanov , Tong Zhang

Preference-based reward learning is widely used for shaping agent behavior to match a user's preference, yet its sparse binary feedback makes it especially vulnerable to causal confusion. The learned reward often latches onto spurious…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-06 Minjune Hwang , Yigit Korkmaz , Daniel Seita , Erdem Bıyık

Reward models are critical for reinforcement learning from human feedback, as they determine the alignment quality and reliability of generative models. For complex tasks such as image editing, reward models are required to capture global…

Reward modeling is essential for aligning Large Language Models(LLMs) with human preferences, yet conventional reward models suffer from poor interpretability and heavy reliance on costly expert annotations. While recent rubric-based…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Dengcan Liu , Fengkai Yang , Xiaohan Wang , Shurui Yan , Jiajun Chai , Jiahao Li , Yikun Ban , Zhendong Mao , Wei Lin , Guojun Yin

Despite significant progress, Vision-Language Models (VLMs) still struggle with complex visual reasoning, where multi-step dependencies cause early errors to cascade through the reasoning chain. Existing post-training paradigms are limited:…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2025-11-14 Yanbei Jiang , Chao Lei , Yihao Ding , Krista Ehinger , Jey Han Lau

Reward models learned from human preferences are central to aligning large language models (LLMs) via reinforcement learning from human feedback, yet they are often vulnerable to reward hacking due to noisy annotations and systematic biases…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Zhibin Duan , Guowei Rong , Zhuo Li , Bo Chen , Mingyuan Zhou , Dandan Guo

Reward hacking is a form of misalignment in which models overoptimize proxy rewards without genuinely solving the underlying task. Precisely measuring reward hacking occurrence remains challenging because true task rewards are often…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Muhammad Khalifa , Zohaib Khan , Omer Tafveez , Hao Peng , Lu Wang

A safe and trustworthy use of Large Language Models (LLMs) requires an accurate expression of confidence in their answers. We propose a novel Reinforcement Learning approach that allows to directly fine-tune LLMs to express calibrated…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-03 David Bani-Harouni , Chantal Pellegrini , Paul Stangel , Ege Özsoy , Kamilia Zaripova , Nassir Navab , Matthias Keicher

In this paper, we introduce Reward-RAG, a novel approach designed to enhance the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) model through Reward-Driven Supervision. Unlike previous RAG methodologies, which focus on training language models (LMs)…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Thang Nguyen , Peter Chin , Yu-Wing Tai

We show that when large language models learn to reward hack on production RL environments, this can result in egregious emergent misalignment. We start with a pretrained model, impart knowledge of reward hacking strategies via synthetic…

In practice, rigorous reasoning is often a key driver of correct code, while Reinforcement Learning (RL) for code generation often neglects optimizing reasoning quality. Bringing process-level supervision into RL is appealing, but it faces…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Lishui Fan , Yu Zhang , Mouxiang Chen , Zhongxin Liu