arXiv:2502.07193cs.LGstat.ML2025-02NeurIPS被引 8

提出一种无需存储历史数据的一次性奖励建模方法,显著提升在线强化学习对齐效率。

Provably Efficient Online RLHF with One-Pass Reward Modeling

  • 将在线RLHF建模为上下文偏好老虎机问题,用改进的在线镜像下降算法替代传统最大似然估计。
  • 实现每轮迭代恒定时间更新,计算与存储开销不随迭代次数增长。
  • 适用于主动/被动数据收集及部署时自适应,适合追求高效持续对齐的LLM研究者。

基于人类反馈的强化学习(RLHF)在对齐大语言模型(LLMs)与人类偏好方面表现卓越。传统方法依赖固定数据集,覆盖范围有限。为此,在线RLHF成为新方向,支持迭代数据收集与优化。然而,该范式面临关键瓶颈:需不断将新数据整合进数据集,并从头重新优化模型,导致计算与存储成本随迭代次数线性增长。本文提出一种一次性奖励建模方法,无需存储历史数据,每轮迭代可实现恒定时间更新。我们首先将RLHF形式化为上下文偏好老虎机问题,设计基于在线镜像下降与定制局部范数的新算法,取代标准最大似然估计进行奖励建模。该方法应用于被动数据收集、主动数据收集及部署时自适应等多种场景。理论分析表明,该方法同时提升统计与计算效率。我们还为LLMs设计了实用算法,在Llama-3-8B-Instruct与Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct模型上,于Ultrafeedback与Mixture2数据集上验证了其有效性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has shown remarkable success in aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences. Traditional RLHF methods rely on a fixed dataset, which often suffers from limited coverage. To this end, online RLHF has emerged as a promising direction, enabling iterative data collection and refinement. Despite its potential, this paradigm faces a key bottleneck: the requirement to continuously integrate new data into the dataset and re-optimize the model from scratch at each iteration, resulting in computational and storage costs that grow linearly with the number of iterations. In this work, we address this challenge by proposing a one-pass reward modeling method that eliminates the need to store historical data and achieves constant-time updates per iteration. Specifically, we first formalize RLHF as a contextual preference bandit and develop a new algorithm based on online mirror descent with a tailored local norm, replacing the standard maximum likelihood estimation for reward modeling. We then apply it to various online RLHF settings, including passive data collection, active data collection, and deployment-time adaptation. We provide theoretical guarantees showing that our method enhances both statistical and computational efficiency. Finally, we design practical algorithms for LLMs and conduct experiments with the Llama-3-8B-Instruct and Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct models on Ultrafeedback and Mixture2 datasets, validating the effectiveness of our approach.

强化学习在线学习大模型对齐奖励建模

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