通过重设计预训练目标,提升大模型推理的探索空间。
Diversity or Precision? A Deep Dive into Next Token Prediction
- 将词元预测建模为随机决策过程,引入奖励调节策略
- 精度导向的先验使强化学习探索更有效,提升推理性能
- 适合研究大模型推理与强化学习融合的学者
近期研究表明,强化学习(RL)可显著提升大语言模型(LLM)的推理能力。然而,其效果高度依赖于预训练模型生成词元分布所定义的探索空间。本文重新审视标准交叉熵损失,将其视为单步回合中策略梯度优化的特例。为系统研究预训练分布对后续强化学习探索的影响,我们提出一种广义的预训练目标,将在线强化学习原则应用于监督学习。通过将下一个词元预测建模为随机决策过程,引入一种显式平衡多样性与精度的奖励调节策略:采用正向奖励缩放因子控制真实词元的概率集中度,并设计秩感知机制不对称处理高排名与低排名负样本。该方法可重构预训练词元输出分布,探究如何为强化学习提供更优的探索空间,最终提升端到端推理性能。出乎意料的是,相比高熵分布,精度导向的先验反而构成更优越的探索空间。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Recent advancements have shown that reinforcement learning (RL) can substantially improve the reasoning abilities of large language models (LLMs). The effectiveness of such RL training, however, depends critically on the exploration space defined by the pre-trained model's token-output distribution. In this paper, we revisit the standard cross-entropy loss, interpreting it as a specific instance of policy gradient optimization applied within a single-step episode. To systematically study how the pre-trained distribution shapes the exploration potential for subsequent RL, we propose a generalized pre-training objective that adapts on-policy RL principles to supervised learning. By framing next-token prediction as a stochastic decision process, we introduce a reward-shaping strategy that explicitly balances diversity and precision. Our method employs a positive reward scaling factor to control probability concentration on ground-truth tokens and a rank-aware mechanism that treats high-ranking and low-ranking negative tokens asymmetrically. This allows us to reshape the pre-trained token-output distribution and investigate how to provide a more favorable exploration space for RL, ultimately enhancing end-to-end reasoning performance. Contrary to the intuition that higher distribution entropy facilitates effective exploration, we find that imposing a precision-oriented prior yields a superior exploration space for RL.
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