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Related papers: Poly-EPO: Training Exploratory Reasoning Models

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Recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have improved the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs). However, the widely used Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) consistently…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Chen Wang , Lai Wei , Yanzhi Zhang , Chenyang Shao , Zedong Dan , Weiran Huang , Ge Lan , Yue Wang

We deploy large language models (LLMs) as business development (BD) agents for persuasive price negotiation in online travel agencies (OTAs). The agent must follow a multi-stage Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and strict guardrails (no…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Xia Zeng , Yihan Chen , Luhui Liu , Chao Luo , Ye Chen , Zhuoran Zhuang

Exploration is a crucial skill for in-context reinforcement learning in unknown environments. However, it remains unclear if large language models can effectively explore a partially hidden state space. This work isolates exploration as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Tim Grams , Patrick Betz , Sascha Marton , Stefan Lüdtke , Christian Bartelt

Humans face countless scenarios that require reasoning and judgment in daily life. However, existing large language model training methods primarily allow models to learn from existing textual content or solve predetermined problems,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Yin Cai , Zhouhong Gu , Juntao Zhang , Ping Chen

Learning complex robot behavior through interactions with the environment necessitates principled exploration. Effective strategies should prioritize exploring regions of the state-action space that maximize rewards, with optimistic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-12 Jasmine Bayrooti , Carl Henrik Ek , Amanda Prorok

Language model alignment (or, reinforcement learning) techniques that leverage active exploration -- deliberately encouraging the model to produce diverse, informative responses -- offer the promise of super-human capabilities. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-17 Dylan J. Foster , Zakaria Mhammedi , Dhruv Rohatgi

This paper investigates Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches to enhance the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Model (LLM) agents in long-horizon, multi-turn scenarios. Although RL algorithms such as Group Relative Policy…

Large language models (LLMs) benefit substantially from supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) in reasoning tasks. However, these recipes perform poorly in instruction-based molecular…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Xuan Li , Zhanke Zhou , Zongze Li , Jiangchao Yao , Yu Rong , Lu Zhang , Bo Han

Reward-based alignment methods for large language models (LLMs) face two key limitations: vulnerability to reward hacking, where models exploit flaws in the reward signal; and reliance on brittle, labor-intensive prompt engineering when…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Zae Myung Kim , Chanwoo Park , Vipul Raheja , Suin Kim , Dongyeop Kang

Reasoning large language models (LLMs) excel in complex tasks, which has drawn significant attention to reinforcement learning (RL) for LLMs. However, existing approaches allocate an equal number of rollouts to all questions during the RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Mengqi Liao , Xiangyu Xi , Ruinian Chen , Jia Leng , Yangen Hu , Ke Zeng , Shuai Liu , Huaiyu Wan

We evaluate the ability of the current generation of large language models (LLMs) to help a decision-making agent facing an exploration-exploitation tradeoff. While previous work has largely study the ability of LLMs to solve combined…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Keegan Harris , Aleksandrs Slivkins

Recently, preference optimization methods such as DPO have significantly enhanced large language models (LLMs) in wide tasks including dialogue and question-answering. However, current methods fail to account for the varying difficulty…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-31 Jingyuan Ma , Rui Li , Zheng Li , Lei Sha , Zhifang Sui

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable proficiency in English mathematical reasoning, yet a significant performance disparity persists in multilingual contexts, largely attributed to deficiencies in language…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-27 Xu Huang , Zhejian Lai , Zixian Huang , Jiajun Chen , Shujian Huang

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have popularized test-time scaling, where models generate additional reasoning tokens before producing final answers. These approaches have demonstrated significant performance improvements on…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Wenxun Wu , Yuanyang Li , Guhan Chen , Linyue Wang , Hongyang Chen

Reinforcement learning (RL) has enabled the training of large language model (LLM) agents to interact with the environment and to solve multi-turn long-horizon tasks. However, the RL-trained agents often struggle in tasks that require…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Yulun Jiang , Liangze Jiang , Damien Teney , Michael Moor , Maria Brbic

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for inducing explicit reasoning behaviors in large language and vision-language models. However, reasoning-oriented RL post-training remains fundamentally challenging due to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Fan Yang , Rui Meng , Trudi Di Qi , Ali Ezzati , Yuxin Wen

Large Language Models (LLMs) trained via Reinforcement Learning (RL) have exhibited strong reasoning capabilities and emergent reflective behaviors, such as rethinking and error correction, as a form of in-context exploration. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Shenao Zhang , Yaqing Wang , Yinxiao Liu , Tianqi Liu , Peter Grabowski , Eugene Ie , Zhaoran Wang , Yunxuan Li

Go-Explore achieved breakthrough performance on challenging reinforcement learning (RL) tasks with sparse rewards. The key insight of Go-Explore was that successful exploration requires an agent to first return to an interesting state…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-09 Zhao Yang , Thomas M. Moerland , Mike Preuss , Aske Plaat

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated notable success in post-training large language models (LLMs) as agents for tasks such as computer use, tool calling, and coding. However, exploration remains a central challenge in RL for LLM…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Andrew Szot , Michael Kirchhof , Omar Attia , Alexander Toshev

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) is a promising paradigm for enhancing the reasoning ability in Large Language Models (LLMs). However, prevailing methods primarily rely on self-exploration or a single off-policy teacher…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-10 Xiaoyang Yuan , Yujuan Ding , Yi Bin , Wenqi Shao , Jinyu Cai , Jingkuan Song , Yang Yang , Heng Tao Shen