通过保留低概率探索词,提升大模型强化学习中的持续探索能力。
Low-probability Tokens Sustain Exploration in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Reward
- 引入低概率正则化,通过重构候选分布来保护关键探索词。
- 在3000步训练中保持稳定,数学基准平均准确率达60.17%。
- 适合追求长周期训练和高可靠性的强化学习研究者。
基于可验证奖励的强化学习(RLVR)推动了大语言模型在复杂推理任务中的发展,但其扩展性常受限于训练瓶颈:随着策略熵下降,性能趋于平缓,表明探索能力丧失。现有方法多依赖维持高熵,但对有意义探索的机制仍缺乏深入理解。我们发现,过度惩罚导致有价值的低概率探索词(称为“推理火花”)被系统性消除,引发探索退化。为此提出低概率正则化(Lp-Reg),通过过滤噪声词并重归一化剩余候选,构建更纯净的启发式目标分布,增强“推理火花”的概率,以软约束形式通过KL散度保护其不被剔除。实验显示,Lp-Reg实现稳定在线策略训练,持续3000步、81,204 GPU小时,而基线方法崩溃。最终在五个数学基准上取得60.17%平均准确率,较之前方法提升2.66%。代码已公开。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has propelled Large Language Models in complex reasoning, yet its scalability is often hindered by a training bottleneck where performance plateaus as policy entropy collapses, signaling a loss of exploration. Previous methods typically address this by maintaining high policy entropy, yet the precise mechanisms that govern meaningful exploration have remained underexplored. Our analysis suggests that an unselective focus on entropy risks amplifying irrelevant tokens and destabilizing training. This paper investigates the exploration dynamics within RLVR and identifies a key issue: the gradual elimination of valuable low-probability exploratory tokens, which we term \textbf{\textit{reasoning sparks}}. We find that while abundant in pre-trained models, these sparks are systematically extinguished during RLVR due to over-penalization, leading to a degeneracy in exploration. To address this, we introduce Low-probability Regularization (Lp-Reg). Its core mechanism regularizes the policy towards a heuristic proxy distribution. This proxy is constructed by filtering out presumed noise tokens and re-normalizing the distribution over the remaining candidates. The result is a less-noisy proxy where the probability of \textit{reasoning sparks} is amplified, which then serves as a soft regularization target to shield these valuable tokens from elimination via KL divergence. Experiments show that Lp-Reg enables stable on-policy RL, sustaining continuous scaling across $3,000$ training steps and $81,204$ GPU-hours, where baseline entropy-control methods collapse. This sustained exploration leads to state-of-the-art performance, achieving a $60.17\%$ average accuracy on five math benchmarks, an improvement of $2.66\%$ over prior methods. Code is available at https://github.com/CarlanLark/Lp-Reg.
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