arXiv:2512.07478cs.CL2025-12被引 10

用分阶段奖励和价值采样优化,提升语言模型在复杂任务中的推理能力。

Enhancing Agentic RL with Progressive Reward Shaping and Value-based Sampling Policy Optimization

  • 设计分阶段奖励机制,逐步引导模型掌握工具调用、事实准确与答案质量。
  • 在多个问答基准上,相比传统方法,收敛更快且最终性能更高。
  • 适合需要长期规划与多步推理的智能体系统开发与优化研究者。

大语言模型(LLMs)结合工具集成推理(TIR)可迭代规划、调用外部工具并整合返回信息以解决复杂长程推理任务。代理强化学习(Agentic RL)通过完整工具交互轨迹优化此类模型,但面临两大挑战:(1) 奖励稀疏且无指导性,如二值0-1验证信号,对中间步骤指引有限,导致收敛缓慢;(2) 组相对策略优化(GRPO)中同一回放组内奖励相同会导致优势为零,降低样本效率。为此,我们提出两种互补技术:渐进式奖励塑造(PRS)和基于价值的采样策略优化(VSPO)。PRS是一种课程式奖励设计,引入密集的阶段性反馈——先鼓励模型掌握可解析且格式正确的工具调用,再优化事实正确性和答案质量。我们在短文本问答中使用长度感知BLEU评分,在长文本问答中采用大模型作为裁判进行评分以防止奖励劫持。VSPO是改进的GRPO变体,用任务价值度量平衡难度与不确定性的提示替代零优势样本,并应用价值平滑裁剪稳定梯度更新。在多个短文本与长文本问答基准上的实验表明,PRS持续优于传统二值奖励,而VSPO相较SFT、PPO和GRPO基线实现了更优稳定性、更快收敛与更高最终表现。两者协同使基于LLM的TIR智能体具备更强跨领域泛化能力。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Large Language Models (LLMs) empowered with Tool-Integrated Reasoning (TIR) can iteratively plan, call external tools, and integrate returned information to solve complex, long-horizon reasoning tasks. Agentic Reinforcement Learning (Agentic RL) optimizes such models over full tool-interaction trajectories, but two key challenges hinder effectiveness: (1) Sparse, non-instructive rewards, such as binary 0-1 verifiable signals, provide limited guidance for intermediate steps and slow convergence; (2) Gradient degradation in Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), where identical rewards within a rollout group yield zero advantage, which reducing sample efficiency. To address these challenges, we propose two complementary techniques: Progressive Reward Shaping (PRS) and Value-based Sampling Policy Optimization (VSPO). PRS is a curriculum-inspired reward design that introduces dense, stage-wise feedback - encouraging models to first master parseable and properly formatted tool calls, then optimize for factual correctness and answer quality. We instantiate PRS for short-form QA (with a length-aware BLEU to fairly score concise answers) and long-form QA (with LLM-as-a-Judge scoring to prevent reward hacking). VSPO is an enhanced GRPO variant that replaces zero advantages samples with prompts selected by a task-value metric balancing difficulty and uncertainty, and applies value-smoothing clipping to stabilize gradient updates. Experiments on multiple short-form and long-form QA benchmarks show that PRS consistently outperforms traditional binary rewards, and VSPO achieves superior stability, faster convergence, and higher final performance compared to SFT, PPO and GRPO baselines. Together, PRS and VSPO yield LLM-based TIR agents that generalize better across domains.

强化学习语言模型推理优化工具调用

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