Related papers: Matching Accuracy, Different Geometry: Evolution S…

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in solving complex mathematical problems, yet they still fall short of producing accurate and consistent solutions. Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a framework for aligning these models with…

Reinforcement Learning and the Evolutionary Strategy are two major approaches in addressing complicated control problems. Both are strong contenders and have their own devotee communities. Both groups have been very active in developing new…

We propose an evolution strategies-based algorithm for estimating gradients in unrolled computation graphs, called ES-Single. Similarly to the recently-proposed Persistent Evolution Strategies (PES), ES-Single is unbiased, and overcomes…

This paper provides a self-contained, from-scratch, exposition of key algorithms for instruction tuning of models: SFT, Rejection Sampling, REINFORCE, Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Group…

We introduce a novel reinforcement learning algorithm (AGRO, for Any-Generation Reward Optimization) for fine-tuning large-language models. AGRO leverages the concept of generation consistency, which states that the optimal policy satisfies…

Unrolled computation graphs arise in many scenarios, including training RNNs, tuning hyperparameters through unrolled optimization, and training learned optimizers. Current approaches to optimizing parameters in such computation graphs…

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms have been successfully applied to a range of challenging control tasks. However, these methods typically suffer from three core difficulties: temporal credit assignment with sparse rewards, lack…

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become central to enhancing reasoning in large language models (LLMs). Yet on-policy algorithms such as Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) often suffer in early training: noisy gradients from…

Adapting large language models (LLMs) to a targeted task efficiently and effectively remains a fundamental challenge. Such adaptation often requires iteratively improving the model toward a targeted task, yet collecting high-quality…

Recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have significantly enhanced the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), a lightweight variant of Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO),…

Post-training plays a crucial role in refining and aligning large language models to meet specific tasks and human preferences. While recent advancements in post-training techniques, such as Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO),…

The design of binary error-correcting codes is a challenging optimization problem with several applications in telecommunications and storage, which has also been addressed with metaheuristic techniques and evolutionary algorithms. Still,…

Post-training alignment has produced dozens of competing algorithms -- DPO, SimPO, KTO, GRPO, and others -- yet practitioners lack controlled comparisons to guide algorithm selection. We present OXRL, a unified framework implementing 51…

Evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is an important solution concept in game theory which has been applied frequently to biological models. Informally an ESS is a strategy that if followed by the population cannot be taken over by a…

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a key driver of language model reasoning. Among RL algorithms, Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) is the de facto standard, avoiding the need for a critic by using per-prompt baselines and…

Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) is highly effective for post-training autoregressive (AR) language models, yet its direct application to diffusion large language models (dLLMs) often triggers reward collapse. We identify two…

Fine-tuning pre-trained generative models with Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as an effective approach for aligning outputs more closely with nuanced human preferences. In this paper, we investigate the application of Group…

Large language model (LLM) alignment via reinforcement learning from human preferences (RLHF) suffers from unstable policy updates, ambiguous gradient directions, poor interpretability, and high gradient variance in mainstream pairwise…

Diffusion large language models (dLLMs), which offer a promising alternative to traditional autoregressive LLMs, have recently shown strong results in pretraining. However, due to their lack of tractable sequence-level likelihoods, they…

Hybrid training methods for large language models combine supervised fine tuning (SFT) on expert demonstrations with reinforcement learning (RL) on model rollouts, typically at the sample level. We propose Entropy Gated Selective Policy…