arXiv Machine Learning

What Does Preference Learning Recover from Pairwise Comparison Data?

arXiv:2602. 10286v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Pairwise preference learning is central to machine learning, with recent applications in aligning language models with human preferences.

arXiv AI
Jun 10

A Comprehensive Survey of Direct Preference Optimization: Datasets, Theories, Variants, and Applications

arXiv:2410. 15595v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: With the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), aligning policy models with human preferences has become increasingly critical.

By Wenyi Xiao, Zechuan Wang, Leilei Gan, Shuai Zhao, Zongrui Li, Ruirui Lei, Wanggui He, Luu Anh Tuan, Long Chen, Hao Jiang, Zhou Zhao, Fei Wu
arXiv AI
Jun 11

TokenRatio: Principled Token-Level Preference Optimization via Ratio Matching

arXiv:2605. 12288v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) is a widely used RL-free method for aligning language models from pairwise preferences, but it models preferences over full sequences even though generation is driven by per-token decisions.

By Truong Nguyen, Tien-Phat Nguyen, Linh Ngo Van, Duy Minh Ho Nguyen, Khoa Doan, Trung Le
arXiv AI
Jul 21

From Weights to Words: Expressing and Editing Preference Model Inferences in Natural Language

arXiv:2607. 16232v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The growing use of statistical learning algorithms to infer human preferences from high-dimensional choice data runs up against a fundamental challenge: choice alternatives typically differ in many ways simultaneously, so it is generally unclear which factors actually drove an observed decision and should be credited as preferences.

By Zachary Wojtowicz, Ayush Nayak, Jacob Andreas