arXiv:2506.23235cs.CL2025-06被引 32

从预训练模型中直接提取高质量奖励信号,无需额外训练。

Generalist Reward Models: Found Inside Large Language Models

  • 利用预训练模型自身隐含的奖励机制,无需人工标注数据。
  • 理论证明该方法比基线模型误差更小,且可提升强化学习效果。
  • 适合追求高效对齐、减少人工成本的研究者与工程师。

大型语言模型(LLM)的对齐依赖于昂贵的人类偏好数据训练的奖励模型。尽管近期研究尝试用AI反馈替代人类标注,但缺乏严格的理论基础。本文发现,任何通过标准自回归训练的LLM内部已隐含一个强大的通用奖励模型。我们证明该内生奖励并非启发式方法,而是等价于离线逆强化学习所学得的奖励函数。这一发现使我们能直接从基础模型(预训练或监督微调)中提取高质量奖励信号,无需额外训练。关键的是,我们进一步证明:使用此内生奖励进行强化学习,所得策略的误差界理论上优于基线模型。据我们所知,这是首个关于LLM强化学习有效性的理论证明。实验验证了该理论,结果表明该方法不仅优于现有的LLM作裁判方法,甚至可超越专门训练的奖励模型。这表明奖励建模阶段可被一种基于预训练知识提取的严谨方法取代,为大模型对齐及多模态模型带来更高效、强大且可扩展的新范式。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

The alignment of Large Language Models (LLMs) is critically dependent on reward models trained on costly human preference data. While recent work explores bypassing this cost with AI feedback, these methods often lack a rigorous theoretical foundation. In this paper, we discover that a powerful generalist reward model is already latently present within any LLM trained via standard next-token prediction. We prove that this endogenous reward is not a heuristic, but is theoretically equivalent to a reward function learned through offline inverse reinforcement learning. This connection allows us to directly elicit a high-quality reward signal from a base (pre-trained or supervised fine-tuned) model without any further training. Critically, we also prove that subsequent reinforcement learning using this endogenous reward leads to a policy with a provably superior error bound compared to the base model. To our best knowledge, this is the first theoretical proof of the effectiveness of reinforcement learning for LLMs. Our experiments validate this theory, demonstrating that our method not only outperforms existing LLM-as-a-judge approaches but can also surpass explicitly trained reward models. These findings suggest that the reward modeling stage can be replaced by a principled method of eliciting the knowledge already captured during pre-training, heralding a more efficient, powerful, and scalable paradigm for LLMs alignment as well as multi-modal models.

奖励模型对齐强化学习预训练

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