arXiv:2505.07686cs.AIcs.LG2025-05NeurIPS被引 99

让大模型学会适时停止思考,又准又快。

S-GRPO: Early Exit via Reinforcement Learning in Reasoning Models

  • 用序列式奖励衰减机制引导模型评估思考进度,提前终止冗余推理。
  • 在多个数学推理数据集上,平均减少50%以上思考长度,准确率还提升了近6%。
  • 适合追求高效推理、资源受限部署的开发者或研究者使用。

随着测试时扩展成为大语言模型领域的重要方向,先进后训练方法日益强调延长思维链(CoT)生成长度,以提升推理能力,接近Deepseek R1类模型水平。然而,近期研究表明,推理模型(包括Qwen3)在生成过程中普遍存在过度思考问题,即思维链中存在大量冗余内容。该现象源于传统基于结果奖励的强化学习方法,无法有效调控中间推理过程。本文提出一种新型强化学习范式——序列组衰减奖励策略优化(S-GRPO),使模型能够隐式评估中间推理步骤的充分性,从而实现思维链中的提前退出。与并行采样多条路径的GRPO不同,S-GRPO仅采样一条推理路径,并从该路径中串行选择多个时间点作为退出位置;对于正确答案,奖励随退出位置从前往后逐步衰减。该设计促使模型生成更准确、更简洁的推理过程,同时在适当时机鼓励提前终止思考。实证评估表明,S-GRPO可兼容当前主流推理模型,如Qwen3和Deepseek-distill。在GSM8K、AIME 2024、AMC 2023、MATH-500及GPQA Diamond等多个基准测试中,序列长度平均减少35.4%至61.1%,同时准确率绝对提升0.72%至6.08%。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

As Test-Time Scaling emerges as an active research focus in the large language model community, advanced post-training methods increasingly emphasize extending chain-of-thought (CoT) generation length, thereby enhancing reasoning capabilities to approach Deepseek R1-like reasoning models. However, recent studies reveal that reasoning models (even Qwen3) consistently exhibit excessive thought redundancy in CoT generation. This overthinking issue arises from the inherent limitations of conventional outcome-reward reinforcement learning, which systematically overlooks the regulation of intermediate reasoning processes. This paper introduces Serial-Group Decaying-Reward Policy Optimization (S-GRPO), a novel reinforcement learning paradigm that enables models to implicitly evaluate the sufficiency of intermediate reasoning steps, thereby facilitating early exit in CoT generation. Unlike GRPO, which samples multiple possible reasoning paths in parallel (parallel group), S-GRPO only samples one reasoning path and serially selects multiple temporal positions from the path to exit thinking and directly generate answers (serial group). For correct answers within a serial group, rewards gradually decrease based on the exit positions along the reasoning path from front to back. This design encourages the model to produce more accurate and concise thoughts, while also incentivizing early thinking termination when appropriate. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that S-GRPO is compatible with state-of-the-art reasoning models, including Qwen3 and Deepseek-distill. Across diverse benchmarks such as GSM8K, AIME 2024, AMC 2023, MATH-500, and GPQA Diamond, S-GRPO achieves a substantial reduction in sequence length (35.4% - 61.1%) while simultaneously improving accuracy (absolute 0.72% - 6.08%).

推理优化强化学习思维链早停机制

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