arXiv Computation and Language

Why Do LLM Agents Fail in Exploring New Environments? A World-Modeling Perspective

arXiv AI
4d ago

Environments as Scaffold: Enriching Feedback to Bootstrap Self-Evolving Agents in Long-Horizon Tasks

The paper introduces Feedback‑Enriched Environments (FEEs) as a new approach to training large language models as autonomous agents for long‑horizon tasks. By shifting from action guidance to observation enrichment during later stages of exploration, FEEs improve performance across SciWorld and BFCL benchmarks with various Qwen3 model scales and RL algorithms. The study shows that FEEs stabilize training, promote proactive exploration, embed environmental guidance into policy weights, and highlight intra‑group feedback consistency as key for stable optimization.

By Hongbang Yuan, Zhuoran Jin, Yixin Cao
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Explore More, Drift Less: Outcome-Only Reinforcement Learning Can Suffice for Long-Horizon Interactive Agents

The paper proposes CANOPY, a minimalist reinforcement learning protocol that addresses two common pitfalls—signal starvation and policy drift—in outcome‑only RL for long‑horizon interactive tasks. By scaling same‑task exploration, keeping updates on‑policy, and anchoring updates with KL divergence, CANOPY enables a Qwen3‑14B agent to achieve top leaderboard results on the AppWorld coding benchmark without auxiliary supervision or elaborate scaffolding. The approach also improves performance on SWE‑bench for a Qwen3.5‑9B model.

By Liming Pu, Xiaoxia Li, Yifu Liu, Teng Cao, Bin Yang
arXiv AI
Aug 6

Instruction-Conditioned Exploration for Reinforcement Learning with Self-Distillation to an Unconditioned Policy

arXiv:2608. 02087v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Post-training Large Language Models (LLMs) with Reinforcement Learning (RL) has become an important tool for improving model capabilities, but the LLM action-space structure introduces challenges distinct from classical RL, with implications for inducing exploration.

By Jim Dilkes, Vahid Yazdanpanah, Sebastian Stein
arXiv AI
Aug 6

Agentic Reinforcement Learning with Observation-Calibrated Self-Distillation

arXiv:2608. 04788v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model agents are commonly trained through reinforcement learning with sparse trajectory-level rewards, which offer limited guidance on how strongly individual tokens should be updated.

By Yi Yang, Cong Qin, Xiaodan Liu, Chishui Chen, Qing Dong, Yan Zhang, Cao Liu, Zhao Yang, Lu Pan, Jiaye Lin, Yi Feng
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 5

Agentic Reinforcement Learning with Observation-Calibrated Self-Distillation

Large language model agents are commonly trained through reinforcement learning with sparse trajectory-level rewards, which offer limited guidance on how strongly individual tokens should be updated. On-Policy Self-Distillation (OPSD) addresses this by re-scoring generated tokens under a privileged replay view to obtain dense, token-level supervision.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Demystifying Reinforcement Learning Post-Training of Language Models

The paper "Demystifying Reinforcement Learning Post-Training of Language Models" investigates how reinforcement learning (RL) post‑training enhances large language models (LLMs) for tasks such as reasoning, math, and coding. By isolating RL components in a controlled setting, the authors analyze how the base model’s prior distribution, reward granularity, prompt diversity, and model scale influence outcomes, using policy entropy to compare pre‑training, supervised fine‑tuning (SFT), and RL stages. The study clarifies the role of spurious rewards, the importance of the base model’s probability mass on desired behaviors, and how these factors interact to determine post‑training success, offering a practical primer for NLP researchers. "whyItMatters":"The work provides a clearer understanding of RL post‑training mechanics, helping researchers and practitioners effectively apply RL to improve LLM capabilities."

By Donovan Clay, Saket Gollapudi, Sankar Harilal, Min Jang, Jacob Morrison, Sewoong Oh, Natasha Jaques
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Instruction-Conditioned Exploration with Asymmetric Reinforcement Learning and Self-Distillation

arXiv:2608. 02087v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Post-training Large Language Models (LLMs) with Reinforcement Learning (RL) has become an important tool for improving model capabilities, but the LLM action-space structure introduces challenges distinct from classical RL, with implications for inducing exploration.

By Jim Dilkes, Vahid Yazdanpanah, Sebastian Stein
arXiv AI
Jul 16

Representation-Based Exploration for Language Models: From Test-Time to Post-Training

arXiv:2510. 11686v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) promises to expand the capabilities of language models, but it is unclear if current RL techniques promote the discovery of novel behaviors, or simply sharpen those already present in the base model.

By Jens Tuyls, Dylan J. Foster, Akshay Krishnamurthy, Jordan T. Ash