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Large language models (LLMs) trained via pretraining and supervised fine-tuning (SFT) can still produce harmful and misaligned outputs, or struggle in domains like math and coding. Reinforcement learning (RL)-based post-training methods,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Zhichao Wang , Kiran Ramnath , Bin Bi , Shiva Kumar Pentyala , Sougata Chaudhuri , Shubham Mehrotra , Zixu , Zhu , Xiang-Bo Mao , Sitaram Asur , Na , Cheng

Generating grounded and trustworthy responses remains a key challenge for large language models (LLMs). While retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with citation-based grounding holds promise, instruction-tuned models frequently fail even in…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-19 Shang Hong Sim , Tej Deep Pala , Vernon Toh , Hai Leong Chieu , Amir Zadeh , Chuan Li , Navonil Majumder , Soujanya Poria

We study a common challenge in reinforcement learning for large language models (LLMs): the Zero-Reward Assumption, where non-terminal actions (i.e., intermediate token generations) receive zero task-specific immediate reward, while only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-04 Shenghua He , Tian Xia , Xuan Zhou , Hui Wei

Recent advances in large language model (LLM) reasoning, led by reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), have inspired self-play post-training, where models improve by generating and solving their own problems. While self-play…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-03 Justin Yang Chae , Md Tanvirul Alam , Nidhi Rastogi

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) for Large Reasoning Models hinges on baseline estimation for variance reduction, but existing approaches pay a heavy price: PPO requires a policy-model scale critic, while GRPO needs…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Yunho Choi , Jongwon Lim , Woojin Ahn , Minjae Oh , Jeonghoon Shim , Yohan Jo

Reinforcement Learning (RL) can directly enhance the reasoning capabilities of large language models without extensive reliance on Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT). In this work, we revisit the traditional Policy Gradient (PG) mechanism and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Xiangxiang Chu , Hailang Huang , Xiao Zhang , Fei Wei , Yong Wang

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has become a standard recipe for improving large language models (LLMs) on reasoning tasks, with Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) widely used in practice. Yet GRPO wastes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-13 Yunzhen Feng , Parag Jain , Anthony Hartshorn , Yaqi Duan , Julia Kempe

Reinforcement learning improves LLM reasoning, yet sparse delayed reward over long sequences makes token-level credit assignment the key bottleneck. We study the verifiable-reward setting, where the final answer is checkable and multiple…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Hieu Tran , Zonghai Yao , Hong Yu

Reinforcement learning (RL)-based fine-tuning has become a crucial step in post-training language models for advanced mathematical reasoning and coding. Following the success of frontier reasoning models, recent work has demonstrated that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-11 Rosie Zhao , Alexandru Meterez , Sham Kakade , Cengiz Pehlevan , Samy Jelassi , Eran Malach

Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is commonly used in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback to align large language models (LLMs) with downstream tasks. This paper investigates the feasibility of using PPO for direct reinforcement…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Alexander G. Padula , Dennis J. N. J. Soemers

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

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Cheng Ge , Caitlyn Heqi Yin , Hao Liang , Jiawei Zhang

Training critiquing language models to assess and provide feedback on model outputs is a promising way to improve LLMs for complex reasoning tasks. However, existing approaches typically rely on stronger supervisors for annotating critique…

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

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…

Reinforcement learning with verifiable reward has recently emerged as a central paradigm for post-training large language models (LLMs); however, prevailing mean-based methods, such as Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), suffer from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-02 Tao Ren , Jinyang Jiang , Hui Yang , Wan Tian , Minhao Zou , Guanghao Li , Zishi Zhang , Qinghao Wang , Shentao Qin , Yanjun Zhao , Rui Tao , Hui Shao , Yijie Peng

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as an effective approach for enhancing the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs), especially in scenarios where supervised fine-tuning (SFT) falls short due to limited…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Jian Xiong , Jingbo Zhou , Jingyong Ye , Qiang Huang , Dejing Dou

Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful paradigm for fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) for text generation. In particular, recent LLMs such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 can engage in fluent conversations with users after…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-14 Jonathan D. Chang , Kiante Brantley , Rajkumar Ramamurthy , Dipendra Misra , Wen Sun

Reinforcement learning (RL) from unit-test feedback has become a standard post-training recipe for improving large language models (LLMs) on code generation. However, the pass-all-tests binary reward can be sparse, yielding no learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Xin-Ye Li , Ren-Biao Liu , Yun-Ji Zhang , Hui Sun , Zheng Xie , Ming Li

The growing disparity between the exponential scaling of computational resources and the finite growth of high-quality text data now constrains conventional scaling approaches for large language models (LLMs). To address this challenge, we…

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