arXiv:2608.29352v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) still exhibit limited capability in following complex instructions. While existing approaches often rely on preference lea...
By Runsheng Li, Kai Sun, Bin Shi, Bo Dong
arXiv:2509. 23982v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Preference alignment is a critical step in making Large Language Models (LLMs) useful and aligned with (human) preferences.
By Lucio La Cava, Andrea Tagarelli
The paper investigates how the quality of instructions used to generate response pairs affects preference learning for language models. It shows that low‑quality or ambiguous instructions limit the range of response quality, weakening preference signals, and introduces an instruction‑refinement pipeline that improves data quality without discarding examples. Experiments across models and benchmarks demonstrate that refining instructions leads to better alignment and complements other data‑improvement methods.
By Seohyeong Lee, Hwaran Lee, Buru Chang
arXiv:2606. 16276v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in real-world applications, alignment is no longer governed by a single universal notion of safety or helpfulness, but instead by provider- or application-specific model specifications.
By Wenjie Wang, Yue Huang, Zhengqing Yuan, Han Bao, Shiyi Du, Yuchen Ma, Yue Zhao, Yanfang Ye, Xiangliang Zhang
arXiv:2602. 02898v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Language model benchmarks are pervasive and computationally-efficient proxies for real-world performance.
By Marco Gutierrez, Xinyi Leng, Hannah Cyberey, Jonathan Richard Schwarz, Ahmed Alaa, Thomas Hartvigsen
arXiv:2607. 20470v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Enhancing the task-specific capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) primarily requires substantial instruction-tuning datasets.
By Jiacheng Wang, Weiyan Zhang, Guangya Yu
The paper introduces DSPA, a dynamic sparse autoencoder (SAE) steering technique that aligns language model outputs with user preferences during inference, avoiding costly weight updates. DSPA constructs a conditional-difference map from preference triples to adjust token-active latents, improving MT‑Bench scores and matching AlpacaEval performance on models like Gemma‑2 and Qwen3 while preserving accuracy. It demonstrates robustness with limited preference data, outperforms the two‑stage RAHF‑SCIT pipeline in FLOPs, and reveals that preference directions are largely driven by discourse and stylistic cues.
By James Wedgwood, Aashiq Muhamed, Mona T. Diab, Virginia Smith
arXiv:2609.17019v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: While Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning has been proven to be effective, it often leads to overthinking, resulting in computational overhead, inference...
By Qinhong Lin, Yuhao Zhang, Yinglun Feng, Zhongliang Yang, Linna Zhou
The paper introduces GAP-DPO, a method for personalizing large language models by selecting preference pairs based on gradient alignment with user utility. It formalizes personalized preference learning as a geometry‑aligned optimization problem, showing that off‑policy sampling can shift DPO updates from error correction to reinforcement when preference margins align with utility gradients. Experiments demonstrate that GAP‑DPO improves stylistic fidelity, preference alignment, and overall generation quality over standard DPO variants.
By Ruoming Jin, Xinyu Li, Hao Zhou, Jianfeng Zhu, Ruixin Guo, Feodor Dragan, Lei Xu, Haixun Wang, Yang Zhou
arXiv:2508.04698v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: LLM-powered conversational assistants are often deployed in a one-size-fits-all manner, which fails to accommodate individual user preferences. Rec...
By Thibaut Thonet, Germ\'an Kruszewski, Jos Rozen, Pierre Erbacher, Marc Dymetman
arXiv:2509. 03647v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) increasingly serve as automated evaluators, yet they suffer from "self-preference bias": a tendency to favor their own outputs over those of other models.
By Dani Roytburg, Matthew Bozoukov, Matthew Nguyen, Jou Barzdukas, Simon Fu, Narmeen Oozeer
arXiv:2607. 24845v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been applied to sequential recommendation by formulating it as a natural language task.
By Harshini Kavuru, Dwipam Katariya, Giri Iyengar, Pranab Mohanty, Kalanand Mishra, Kalanand Mishra