Gradient-Guided Reward Optimization for Inference-time Alignment
arXiv:2606. 09635v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Ensuring the reliability of Large Language Models (LLMs) under distribution drift requires inference-time adaptation.
arXiv:2606. 09635v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Ensuring the reliability of Large Language Models (LLMs) under distribution drift requires inference-time adaptation.
arXiv:2610.19525v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Verifiable instruction-following benchmarks emphasize output-constraint satisfaction but can overlook whether responses meaningfully answer the underly...
The paper addresses reward hacking that arises when large language models (LLMs) are post‑trained using cheap surrogate judges instead of expensive human feedback. It introduces envelope sampling, a theoretically grounded recalibration technique that uses a small set of ground‑truth annotated outputs to adjust the surrogate judge before further training. Experiments on clinical note generation and a sycophancy task demonstrate that envelope sampling reduces reward hacking compared to traditional base‑model recalibration methods.
arXiv:2607. 04332v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this paper, we consider the setting where large language models (LLMs) are trained using reinforcement learning (RL) to simultaneously improve reasoning accuracy and verbalize its confidence.
The paper introduces Stepwise Marginal Information Gain (MIG), an intrinsic process reward that evaluates how each reasoning step of a large language model (LLM) or vision-language model (VLM) improves the likelihood of the reference answer. MIG rewards only new likelihood maxima, preventing duplicate credit, and is combined with outcome, format, and self‑distillation objectives to guide training. Experiments on eight benchmarks show that this method outperforms outcome‑only reinforcement learning and improves accuracy by up to 4.8 points over binary‑reward training, including a 12.6‑point gain on MathVerse and a 12.9‑point advantage on vision‑language transfer at 7B parameters.
The paper introduces POISE, a reinforcement learning algorithm that uses a model’s internal states as a value estimator to reduce variance in reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR). By employing a lightweight probe that reads internal signals during the forward pass, POISE predicts baselines online and uses a cross‑rollout construction to keep gradients unbiased. Experiments on Qwen3‑4B and OLMo3‑7B‑Instruct‑DPO across six domains show POISE outperforms existing RLVR baselines, offering more stable training and a value model that generalizes across tasks and scales with the policy.
arXiv:2602. 18037v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) or Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) are two key steps in the post-training of modern Language Models (LMs).
arXiv:2608. 10209v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Feedback signals used to train Large Language Models (LLMs) are the primary driver of their behavior and our main lever for instilling alignment with human values and objectives.
arXiv:2609.37119v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent approaches to reinforcement learning (RL) post-training for large language models increasingly remove the critic to reduce training instabilit...
arXiv:2605. 21125v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), a prominent algorithm within the Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) framework, has achieved strong results in improving the reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs).
arXiv:2602. 09305v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate transformative potential, yet their reasoning remains inconsistent and unreliable.
Verifiable instruction-following benchmarks emphasize output-constraint satisfaction but can overlook whether responses meaningfully answer the underlying request, creating an evaluation blind spot. W...