arXiv AI
Radioactive Feedback: Tracing Models Trained by Label-Only LLM Supervision
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arXiv Computation and Language
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Watermark Basins: Black-Box Detection of Distilled LLMs
The paper introduces Watermark Basin Alignment (WM‑Basin), a black‑box method for detecting distilled large language models (LLMs). It exploits a persistent watermark basin—a key‑specific geometric signal embedded in the teacher’s parameter space during fine‑tuning—that remains detectable even when token‑level signals vanish. WM‑Basin maps suspect model outputs to gradient representations, removes ordinary fine‑tuning directions, and tests alignment with the watermark basin, achieving significantly higher detection rates than token‑level baselines across a range of teacher and student models.
arXiv AI
Jul 7
Reward-Gated On-Policy Distillation
arXiv:2607. 04037v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: On-policy distillation is a powerful way to transfer reasoning ability from a strong teacher to a smaller student: the student samples trajectories from its own policy, and the teacher provides dense token-level supervision on the states the student actually visits.
arXiv AI
Oct 5
Harness-Aware Distillation for Small Language Model Agents
The paper introduces Harness-Aware Distillation (HAD), a method for training smaller language model agents that preserves the surrounding harness—software managing context, tools, and feedback—while focusing distillation on the teacher’s contributions beyond the harness. HAD combines an action preference that contrasts teacher actions with and without harness information, and a validity check that filters out contradictory preference pairs. Experiments on long-horizon agent benchmarks show that HAD outperforms standard on‑policy distillation, reducing unproductive loops and improving error recovery without requiring task rewards or future information.
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 21
LLM-as-a-Coach: Experiential Learning for Non-Verifiable Tasks
arXiv:2607. 18110v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) on open-ended tasks compresses an LLM's rubric-based evaluation into a scalar reward, discarding rich textual feedback and conflating responses with distinct quality profiles.
arXiv AI
Aug 14
Beyond Outcome Rewards: Step-Level Self-Distilled Policy Optimization for Deep Search Agents
arXiv:2608. 12764v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Deep search agents operate over trajectories spanning dozens of steps, yet standard reinforcement learning provides only a single outcome reward per trajectory, which is far too sparse for effective credit assignment.
arXiv AI
Jul 3
DemoPSD: Disagreement-Modulated Policy Self-Distillation
arXiv:2607. 02502v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: On-policy self-distillation (OPSD) has emerged as a practical method for training large language models (LLMs) to reason, where a single model acts as both the teacher and the student with different levels of information access.