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Conveying complex objectives to reinforcement learning (RL) agents often requires meticulous reward engineering. Preference-based RL methods are able to learn a more flexible reward model based on human preferences by actively incorporating…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-26 Xinran Liang , Katherine Shu , Kimin Lee , Pieter Abbeel

Learning human preferences in language models remains fundamentally challenging, as reward modeling relies on subtle, subjective comparisons or shades of gray rather than clear-cut labels. This study investigates the limits of current…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Simona-Vasilica Oprea , Adela Bâra

Inference-time alignment methods have gained significant attention for their efficiency and effectiveness in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. However, existing dominant approaches using reward-guided search…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-01 Bin Xie , Bingbing Xu , Yige Yuan , Shengmao Zhu , Huawei Shen

Reward models (RMs) play a central role in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. However, RMs are often sensitive to spurious features such as response length. Existing inference-time approaches for mitigating these…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-01 Kazutoshi Shinoda , Kosuke Nishida , Kyosuke Nishida

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback aligns the outputs of Large Language Models with human values and preferences. Central to this process is the reward model (RM), which translates human feedback into training signals for optimising…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Zeyu Huang , Zihan Qiu , Zili Wang , Edoardo M. Ponti , Ivan Titov

We study estimation and statistical inference for reward models used in aligning large language models (LLMs). A key component of LLM alignment is reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), where humans compare pairs of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-04 Pangpang Liu , Junwei Lu , Will Wei Sun

Aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) to human preferences is a central challenge in improving the quality of the models' generative outputs for real-world applications. A common approach is to use reward…

Reward models are pivotal for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences. Existing approaches face two key limitations: Discriminative reward models require large-scale annotated data, as they cannot exploit the preference…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Yongfu Xue

Preference-based reinforcement learning is an effective way to handle tasks where rewards are hard to specify but can be exceedingly inefficient as preference learning is often tabula rasa. We demonstrate that Large Language Models (LLMs)…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-04-04 Chao Yu , Qixin Tan , Hong Lu , Jiaxuan Gao , Xinting Yang , Yu Wang , Yi Wu , Eugene Vinitsky

Aligning AI systems with human preferences typically suffers from the infamous reward hacking problem, where optimization of an imperfect reward model leads to undesired behaviors. In this paper, we investigate reward hacking in offline…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-13 Paria Rashidinejad , Yuandong Tian

Preference-based reinforcement learning (RL) offers a promising approach for aligning policies with human intent but is often constrained by the high cost of human feedback. In this work, we introduce PrefVLM, a framework that integrates…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-04 Udita Ghosh , Dripta S. Raychaudhuri , Jiachen Li , Konstantinos Karydis , Amit Roy-Chowdhury

Reinforcement learning for LLMs is vulnerable to reward hacking, where models exploit shortcuts to maximize reward without solving the intended task. We systematically study this phenomenon in coding tasks using an environment-manipulation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Rui Wu , Ruixiang Tang

We consider the problem of multi-objective alignment of foundation models with human preferences, which is a critical step towards helpful and harmless AI systems. However, it is generally costly and unstable to fine-tune large foundation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-17 Rui Yang , Xiaoman Pan , Feng Luo , Shuang Qiu , Han Zhong , Dong Yu , Jianshu Chen

Reinforcement learning (RL) often struggles with reward misalignment, where agents optimize given rewards but fail to exhibit the desired behaviors. This arises when the reward function incentivizes proxy behaviors misaligned with the true…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-19 Mohammad Saif Nazir , Chayan Banerjee

This paper presents PRISM: an instruction-conditioned refinement method for imitation policies in robotic manipulation. This approach bridges Imitation Learning (IL) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) frameworks into a seamless pipeline, such…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Arnau Boix-Granell , Alberto San-Miguel-Tello , Magí Dalmau-Moreno , Néstor García

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) provides a principled framework for aligning AI systems with human preference data. For various reasons, e.g., personal bias, context ambiguity, lack of training, etc, human annotators may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-10 Alexander Bukharin , Ilgee Hong , Haoming Jiang , Zichong Li , Qingru Zhang , Zixuan Zhang , Tuo Zhao

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is a powerful paradigm for aligning foundation models to human values and preferences. However, current RLHF techniques cannot account for the naturally occurring differences in individual…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-20 Sriyash Poddar , Yanming Wan , Hamish Ivison , Abhishek Gupta , Natasha Jaques

One of the challenges of aligning large models with human preferences lies in both the data requirements and the technical complexities of current approaches. Predominant methods, such as RLHF, involve multiple steps, each demanding…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-19 Siliang Zeng , Yao Liu , Huzefa Rangwala , George Karypis , Mingyi Hong , Rasool Fakoor

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

Aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences is crucial for their deployment in real-world applications. Recent advancements in Self-Rewarding Language Models suggest that an LLM can use its internal reward models (such as…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-14 Xin Zhou , Yiwen Guo , Ruotian Ma , Tao Gui , Qi Zhang , Xuanjing Huang