arXiv:2510.03669cs.LGcs.CL2025-10被引 8

提出词级奖励机制,可精细调控大模型推理中的探索与利用。

Token Hidden Reward: Steering Exploration-Exploitation in Group Relative Deep Reinforcement Learning

  • 基于组相对策略优化,量化每个词对正确输出的影响。
  • 正向词增强信心提升贪心解码准确率,负向词保留备选提升多步通过率。
  • 可适配多种模型与目标,适用于需要精准控制推理行为的场景。

具有可验证奖励的强化学习显著提升了大语言模型的推理能力,但如何显式引导训练偏向探索或利用仍是一个开放问题。本文提出词级隐藏奖励(Token Hidden Reward, THR),用于衡量在组相对策略优化(GRPO)下每个词对正确响应概率的影响。研究发现,训练动态主要由少数高绝对值THR的词主导。值得注意的是,正THR词增强正确输出的信心,促进利用;负THR词保留其他输出的概率质量,支持探索。据此提出一种基于THR的重加权算法,通过调节GRPO的学习信号,显式引导训练偏向利用或探索。在多种数学推理基准上验证了该方法的有效性:放大正THR词、弱化负THR词可提升贪心解码准确率,反向操作则持续提升Pass@K准确率。进一步证明该算法可无缝集成至其他强化学习目标(如GSPO),并在Llama等不同架构间具有良好泛化性。这些结果确立了THR作为可解释、细粒度的探索-利用动态调控机制,为推理密集型任务提供了新的微调工具。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards has significantly advanced the reasoning capabilities of large language models, yet how to explicitly steer training toward exploration or exploitation remains an open problem. We introduce Token Hidden Reward (THR), a token-level metric that quantifies each token's influence on the likelihood of correct responses under Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). We find that training dynamics are dominated by a small subset of tokens with high absolute THR values. Most interestingly, tokens with positive THR strengthen confidence in correct outputs, thus favoring exploitation, while tokens with negative THR preserve probability mass for alternative outputs, enabling exploration. This insight suggests a natural intervention: a THR-guided reweighting algorithm that modulates GRPO's learning signals to explicitly bias training toward exploitation or exploration. We validate the efficacy of this algorithm on diverse math reasoning benchmarks. By amplifying tokens with positive THR value and weakening negative ones, our algorithm improves greedy-decoding accuracy, favoring exploitation. The reverse strategy yields consistent gains in Pass@K accuracy, favoring exploration. We further demonstrate that our algorithm integrates seamlessly with other RL objectives such as GSPO and generalizes across architectures including Llama. These findings establish THR as a principled and fine-grained mechanism for dynamically controlling exploration and exploitation in RL-tuned LLMs, providing new tools for targeted fine-tuning in reasoning-intensive applications.

强化学习大模型推理探索利用可控生成

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