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Best-of-N (BoN) sampling is a widely used inference-time alignment method for language models, whereby N candidate responses are sampled from a reference model and the one with the highest predicted reward according to a learned reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Ved Sriraman , Adam Block

Sampling multiple outputs from a Large Language Model (LLM) and selecting the most frequent (Self-consistency) or highest-scoring (Best-of-N) candidate is a popular approach to achieve higher accuracy in tasks with discrete final answers.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Amin Rakhsha , Kanika Madan , Tianyu Zhang , Amir-massoud Farahmand , Amir Khasahmadi

Best-of-$n$ (BoN) sampling is a practical approach for aligning language model outputs with human preferences without expensive fine-tuning. BoN sampling is performed by generating $n$ responses to a prompt and then selecting the sample…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-07 Claudio Mayrink Verdun , Alex Oesterling , Himabindu Lakkaraju , Flavio P. Calmon

Recent advances in test-time alignment methods, such as Best-of-N sampling, offer a simple and effective way to steer language models (LMs) toward preferred behaviors using reward models (RM). However, these approaches can be…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Vinod Raman , Hilal Asi , Satyen Kale

Inference-time computation offers a powerful axis for scaling the performance of language models. However, naively increasing computation in techniques like Best-of-N sampling can lead to performance degradation due to reward hacking.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-09 Audrey Huang , Adam Block , Qinghua Liu , Nan Jiang , Akshay Krishnamurthy , Dylan J. Foster

Best-of-N (BoN) is a popular and effective algorithm for aligning language models to human preferences. The algorithm works as follows: at inference time, N samples are drawn from the language model, and the sample with the highest reward,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Afra Amini , Tim Vieira , Elliott Ash , Ryan Cotterell

Allocating more computation during inference time (test-time scaling) improves language model performance, especially for reasoning tasks. However, popular methods like Best-of-$N$ sampling often show diminishing returns as $N$ increases.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Yung-Chen Tang , Pin-Yu Chen , Andrea Cavallaro

A simple yet effective method for inference-time alignment of generative models is Best-of-$N$ (BoN), where $N$ outcomes are sampled from a reference policy, evaluated using a proxy reward model, and the highest-scoring one is selected.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-07-09 Gholamali Aminian , Idan Shenfeld , Amir R. Asadi , Ahmad Beirami , Youssef Mroueh

Recent studies have indicated that effectively utilizing inference-time compute is crucial for attaining better performance from large language models (LLMs). In this work, we propose a novel inference-aware fine-tuning paradigm, in which…

LLM inference often generates a batch of candidates for a prompt and selects one via strategies like majority voting or Best-of- N (BoN). For difficult tasks, this single-shot selection often underperforms. Consequently, evaluations…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Qiwei Di , Kaixuan Ji , Xuheng Li , Heyang Zhao , Quanquan Gu

The safe and effective deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) involves a critical step called alignment, which ensures that the model's responses are in accordance with human preferences. Prevalent alignment techniques, such as DPO, PPO…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-04 Hanshi Sun , Momin Haider , Ruiqi Zhang , Huitao Yang , Jiahao Qiu , Ming Yin , Mengdi Wang , Peter Bartlett , Andrea Zanette

This paper concerns the problem of aligning samples from large language models to human preferences using best-of-$n$ sampling, where we draw $n$ samples, rank them, and return the best one. We consider two fundamental problems. First: what…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Lin Gui , Cristina Gârbacea , Victor Veitch

A common paradigm to improve the performance of large language models is optimizing for a reward model. Reward models assign a numerical score to an LLM's output that indicates, for example, how likely it is to align with user preferences…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-06 Hadi Khalaf , Claudio Mayrink Verdun , Alex Oesterling , Himabindu Lakkaraju , Flavio du Pin Calmon

Best-of-N (BoN) sampling with a reward model has been shown to be an effective strategy for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) to human preferences at the time of decoding. BoN sampling is susceptible to a problem known as reward hacking…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-01-30 Yuu Jinnai , Tetsuro Morimura , Kaito Ariu , Kenshi Abe

Best-of-N (BoN) sampling with a reward model has been shown to be an effective strategy for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences at the time of decoding. BoN sampling is susceptible to a problem known as reward…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-19 Yuki Ichihara , Yuu Jinnai , Tetsuro Morimura , Kaito Ariu , Kenshi Abe , Mitsuki Sakamoto , Eiji Uchibe

Inference-time computation is a powerful paradigm to enhance the performance of large language models (LLMs), with Best-of-N sampling being a widely used technique. However, this method is computationally expensive, requiring both (1) an…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-04 Rohin Manvi , Anikait Singh , Stefano Ermon

Best-of-N selection is a key technique for improving the reasoning performance of Large Language Models (LLMs) through increased test-time computation. Current state-of-the-art methods often employ computationally intensive reward models…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-15 Zhewei Kang , Xuandong Zhao , Dawn Song

Best-of-N (BoN) sampling, a common strategy for test-time scaling of Large Language Models (LLMs), relies on reward models to select the best candidate solution from multiple generations. However, traditional reward models often assign…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-20 Yantao Liu , Zijun Yao , Rui Min , Yixin Cao , Lei Hou , Juanzi Li

Using the bit string generation problem as a case study, we theoretically compare two standard methods for adapting large language models to new tasks. The first, referred to as supervised fine-tuning, involves training a new next token…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-31 Seamus Somerstep , Vinod Raman , Unique Subedi , Yuekai Sun

Process Reward Models (PRMs) emerge as a promising approach for process supervision in mathematical reasoning of Large Language Models (LLMs), which aim to identify and mitigate intermediate errors in the reasoning processes. However, the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Zhenru Zhang , Chujie Zheng , Yangzhen Wu , Beichen Zhang , Runji Lin , Bowen Yu , Dayiheng Liu , Jingren Zhou , Junyang Lin
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