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Post-alignment of large language models (LLMs) is critical in improving their utility, safety, and alignment with human intentions. Direct preference optimisation (DPO) has become one of the most widely used algorithms for achieving this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-06 Rasul Tutnov , Antoine Grosnit , Haitham Bou-Ammar

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),…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Kaichen Zhang , Yuzhong Hong , Junwei Bao , Hongfei Jiang , Yang Song , Dingqian Hong , Hui Xiong

This work revisits the dominant supervised fine-tuning (SFT) then reinforcement learning (RL) paradigm for training Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs), and reveals a key finding: SFT can significantly undermine subsequent RL by inducing…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-04-17 Hardy Chen , Haoqin Tu , Fali Wang , Hui Liu , Xianfeng Tang , Xinya Du , Yuyin Zhou , Cihang Xie

This study investigates the effectiveness of reinforcement learning (RL) fine-tuning techniques on a compact language model (Qwen2.5-0.5B Base) for two challenging tasks: instruction following and mathematical reasoning. We compare…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Yifu Han , Geo Zhang

Reinforcement learning (RL) in continuous state-action spaces remains challenging in scientific computing due to poor sample efficiency and lack of pathwise physical consistency. We introduce Differential Reinforcement Learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Minh Nguyen , Chandrajit Bajaj

Large language models (LLMs) acquire extensive prior knowledge through large-scale pretraining and can be further enhanced via supervised fine-tuning (SFT) or reinforcement learning (RL)-based post-training. A growing body of evidence has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-28 Honglin Zhang , Qianyue Hao , Fengli Xu , Yong Li

Since DeepSeek-R1 popularized, Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) has become the core part of training Reasoning LLMs. However, we find some deficiency that influences RL stability and inference efficiency, like zero-variance in…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Chen Li , Nazhou Liu , Kai Yang

Existing reinforcement learning (RL) approaches treat large language models (LLMs) as a unified policy, overlooking their internal mechanisms. In this paper, we decompose the LLM-based policy into Internal Layer Policies and Internal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Yuqiao Tan , Minzheng Wang , Shizhu He , Huanxuan Liao , Chengfeng Zhao , Qiunan Lu , Tian Liang , Jun Zhao , Kang Liu

Recent advances in Large Language Model (LLM) agents have demonstrated their promising general capabilities. However, their performance in specialized real-world domains often degrades due to challenges in effectively integrating external…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-10 Yuzheng Cai , Siqi Cai , Yuchen Shi , Zihan Xu , Lichao Chen , Yulei Qin , Xiaoyu Tan , Gang Li , Zongyi Li , Haojia Lin , Yong Mao , Ke Li , Xing Sun

In this work, we present a simple yet theoretically motivated improvement to Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) for the Large Language Model (LLM), addressing its limited generalization compared to reinforcement learning (RL). Through…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Yongliang Wu , Yizhou Zhou , Zhou Ziheng , Yingzhe Peng , Xinyu Ye , Xinting Hu , Wenbo Zhu , Lu Qi , Ming-Hsuan Yang , Xu Yang

The rapid development of large language model (LLM) alignment algorithms has resulted in a complex and fragmented landscape, with limited clarity on the effectiveness of different methods and their inter-connections. This paper introduces…

Recent applications of Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) to Large Language Models (LLMs) and Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have demonstrated significant success in enhancing reasoning capabilities for complex tasks.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Fanfan Liu , Youyang Yin , Peng Shi , Siqi Yang , Zhixiong Zeng , Haibo Qiu

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a transformative approach for aligning and enhancing Large Language Models (LLMs), addressing critical challenges in instruction following, ethical alignment, and reasoning capabilities. This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Saksham Sahai Srivastava , Vaneet Aggarwal

Asynchronous reinforcement learning has become increasingly central to scaling LLM post-training, delivering major throughput gains by decoupling rollout generation from policy updates. However, widely used policy-gradient objectives such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Luke J. Huang , Zhuoyang Zhang , Qinghao Hu , Shang Yang , Song Han

Diffusion large language models (dLLMs) offer a promising route to parallel and efficient text generation, but improving their reasoning ability requires effective post-training. Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) is a…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Zichao Yu , Shengze Xu , Bingqing Jiang , Wenyi Zhang , Difan Zou

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in language processing, yet they often struggle with tasks requiring genuine visual spatial reasoning. In this paper, we introduce a novel two-stage training framework…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-02-26 Alan Dao , Dinh Bach Vu

Self-improvement via RL often fails on complex reasoning tasks because GRPO-style post-training methods rely on the model's initial ability to generate positive samples. Without guided exploration, these approaches merely reinforce what the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-28 Ruiyang Zhou , Shuozhe Li , Amy Zhang , Liu Leqi

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly adopted in clinical decision support, yet aligning them with the multifaceted reasoning pathways of real-world medicine remains a major challenge. Using more than 8,000 infertility treatment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Dou Liu , Ying Long , Sophia Zuoqiu , Kaipeng Xie , Runze Yang , Di Liu , Kang Li , Yiting Lin , Hanyi Liu , Rong Yin , Tian Tang

Instruct LLM provide a paradigm used in large scale language model to align LLM to human preference. The paradigm contains supervised fine tuning and reinforce learning from human feedback. This paradigm is also used in downstream scenarios…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-08-21 Shiming Xie , Hong Chen , Fred Yu , Zeye Sun , Xiuyu Wu

The soft-thinking paradigm for Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning can outperform the conventional discrete-token Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning in some scenarios, underscoring its research and application value. However, while the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Zhi Zheng , Yu Gu , Wei Liu , Yee Whye Teh , Wee Sun Lee