通过自适应最优传输机制,提升奖励模型对相似样本的区分能力。
APLOT: Robust Reward Modeling via Adaptive Preference Learning with Optimal Transport
- 基于语义相似度和预测差异动态调整惩罚边界
- 在多个基准上显著提升分布内与分布外性能
- 适合需要强泛化能力的强化学习对齐场景
奖励模型(RM)在通过强化学习对齐大语言模型(LLMs)与人类偏好中起关键作用,其中 Bradley-Terry(BT)目标因其简洁高效被广泛用于成对偏好学习。然而,基于BT的RM常难以有效区分相似偏好响应,导致优选与非优选输出间的分离不足,易过拟合简单样本且在分布外(OOD)样本上泛化能力差。为此,本文提出一种基于最优传输(OT)的自适应边际增强方法:通过融合语义相似度与模型预测奖励差异,动态调整对更难样本的关注度,从分布视角构建合理代价矩阵。该机制使RM更精准捕捉优选与拒选响应的分布差异,显著提升性能、收敛速度与泛化能力。多基准实验表明,本方法在分布内(ID)与分布外(OOD)均优于现有技术;强化学习人类反馈(RLHF)实验进一步验证其在对齐效果上的实用性。代码已开源。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The reward model (RM) plays a crucial role in aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences through Reinforcement Learning, where the Bradley-Terry (BT) objective has been recognized as simple yet powerful, specifically for pairwise preference learning. However, BT-based RMs often struggle to effectively distinguish between similar preference responses, leading to insufficient separation between preferred and non-preferred outputs. Consequently, they may easily overfit easy samples and cannot generalize well to Out-Of-Distribution (OOD) samples, resulting in suboptimal performance. To address these challenges, this paper introduces an effective enhancement to BT-based RMs through an adaptive margin mechanism. Specifically, we design to dynamically adjust the RM focus on more challenging samples through margins, based on both semantic similarity and model-predicted reward differences, which is approached from a distributional perspective solvable with Optimal Transport (OT). By incorporating these factors into a principled OT cost matrix design, our adaptive margin enables the RM to better capture distributional differences between chosen and rejected responses, yielding significant improvements in performance, convergence speed, and generalization capabilities. Experimental results across multiple benchmarks demonstrate that our method outperforms several existing RM techniques, showcasing enhanced performance in both In-Distribution (ID) and OOD settings. Moreover, RLHF experiments support our practical effectiveness in better aligning LLMs with human preferences. Our code is available at https://github.com/BIRlz/APLOT
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