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Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful tools for addressing a wide range of general inquiries and tasks. Despite this, fine-tuning aligned LLMs on smaller, domain-specific datasets, critical to adapting them to specialized…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-04 Guanlin Li , Kangjie Chen , Shangwei Guo , Jie Zhang , Han Qiu , Chao Zhang , Guoyin Wang , Tianwei Zhang , Jiwei Li

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) aims to align language models (LMs) with human values by training reward models (RMs) on binary preferences and using these RMs to fine-tune the base LMs. Despite its importance, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-21 Manon Revel , Matteo Cargnelutti , Tyna Eloundou , Greg Leppert

Large language models (LLMs) trained with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities, but their underlying reward functions and decision-making processes remain opaque. This paper introduces…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Jared Joselowitz , Ritam Majumdar , Arjun Jagota , Matthieu Bou , Nyal Patel , Satyapriya Krishna , Sonali Parbhoo

Despite the success of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) in aligning language models with human values, reward hacking, also termed reward overoptimization, remains a critical challenge. This issue primarily arises from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-04 Yuchun Miao , Sen Zhang , Liang Ding , Rong Bao , Lefei Zhang , Dacheng Tao

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is widely used to align large language models (LLMs) with human preferences. However, RLHF-trained reward models often exhibit length bias -- a systematic tendency to favor longer responses…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-18 Hyeonji Kim , Sujeong Oh , Sanghack Lee

Language models (LMs) are increasingly used in high-stakes, multi-agent settings, where following instructions and maintaining value alignment are critical. Most alignment research focuses on interactions between a single LM and a single…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Maria Chang , Ronny Luss , Miao Liu , Keerthiram Murugesan , Karthikeyan Ramamurthy , Djallel Bouneffouf

Specification gaming under Reinforcement Learning (RL) is known to cause LLMs to develop sycophantic, manipulative, or deceptive behavior, yet the conditions under which this occurs remain unclear. We train 11 instruction-tuned LLMs…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Leon Eshuijs , Shihan Wang , Antske Fokkens

Aligning generative models with human preference via RLHF typically suffers from overoptimization, where an imperfectly learned reward model can misguide the generative model to output undesired responses. We investigate this problem in a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-05 Zhihan Liu , Miao Lu , Shenao Zhang , Boyi Liu , Hongyi Guo , Yingxiang Yang , Jose Blanchet , Zhaoran Wang

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in natural language tasks, but their safety and morality remain contentious due to their training on internet text corpora. To address these concerns, alignment…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-08-06 Mohammad Bahrami Karkevandi , Nishant Vishwamitra , Peyman Najafirad

Large language models (LLMs) are now ubiquitous in everyday tools, raising urgent safety concerns about their tendency to generate harmful content. The dominant safety approach -- reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) --…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Sathwik Karnik , Somil Bansal

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is a variant of reinforcement learning (RL) that learns from human feedback instead of relying on an engineered reward function. Building on prior work on the related setting of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-30 Timo Kaufmann , Paul Weng , Viktor Bengs , Eyke Hüllermeier

As Large Language Model (LLM) agents become more widespread, associated misalignment risks increase. While prior research has studied agents' ability to produce harmful outputs or follow malicious instructions, it remains unclear how likely…

The alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human values is critical as these models become increasingly integrated into various societal and decision-making processes. Traditional methods, such as reinforcement learning from human…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-08 Prashant Trivedi , Souradip Chakraborty , Avinash Reddy , Vaneet Aggarwal , Amrit Singh Bedi , George K. Atia

Safety-critical robot systems need thorough testing to expose design flaws and software bugs which could endanger humans. Testing in simulation is becoming increasingly popular, as it can be applied early in the development process and does…

The alignment of large language models (LLMs) with human preferences is commonly achieved through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) simplified this paradigm by establishing a direct…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-26 Yuandong Tan

Safety alignment is a key requirement for building reliable Artificial General Intelligence. Despite significant advances in safety alignment, we observe that minor latent shifts can still trigger unsafe responses in aligned models. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Tianle Gu , Kexin Huang , Zongqi Wang , Yixu Wang , Jie Li , Yuanqi Yao , Yang Yao , Yujiu Yang , Yan Teng , Yingchun Wang

Large language model alignment is widely used and studied to avoid LLM producing unhelpful and harmful responses. However, the lengthy training process and predefined preference bias hinder adaptation to online diverse human preferences. To…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-05-02 Guanying Jiang , Lingyong Yan , Haibo Shi , Dawei Yin

Human cognition, driven by complex neurochemical processes, oscillates between imagination and reality and learns to self-correct whenever such subtle drifts lead to hallucinations or unsafe associations. In recent years, LLMs have…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-09 Sharanya Dasgupta , Arkaprabha Basu , Sujoy Nath , Swagatam Das

Reinforcement learning (RL) commonly relies on scalar rewards with limited ability to express temporal, conditional, or safety-critical goals, and can lead to reward hacking. Temporal logic expressible via the more general class of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-26 Dominik Wagner , Leon Witzman , Luke Ong

We introduce a method to address goal misgeneralization in reinforcement learning (RL), leveraging Large Language Model (LLM) feedback during training. Goal misgeneralization, a type of robustness failure in RL occurs when an agent retains…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Houda Nait El Barj , Theophile Sautory