分离因果与非因果特征,提升强化学习中人类反馈的奖励模型鲁棒性。
Factored Causal Representation Learning for Robust Reward Modeling in RLHF
- 将上下文嵌入分解为因果因子和非因果因子
- 在数学与对话任务上显著降低奖励欺骗行为
- 适合关注奖励模型可靠性与对齐安全的研究者
可靠的奖励模型对于通过人类反馈的强化学习对齐大语言模型至关重要。然而,标准奖励模型易受与人类标签无因果关系的虚假特征干扰,导致奖励劫持——高预测奖励并不对应更好行为。本文从因果视角出发,提出一种因子化表示学习框架,将模型上下文嵌入分解为(1)足以预测奖励的因果因子,以及(2)捕捉长度或谄媚偏见等与奖励无关属性的非因果因子。奖励头仅依赖于因果成分。此外,引入对抗头,从非因果因子预测奖励,并通过梯度反转抑制其编码奖励相关信息。在数学与对话任务上的实验表明,该方法学习到更鲁棒的奖励模型,在下游RLHF任务中持续优于现有基准。对长度与谄媚偏见的分析进一步验证了其缓解奖励劫持的有效性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
A reliable reward model is essential for aligning large language models with human preferences through reinforcement learning from human feedback. However, standard reward models are susceptible to spurious features that are not causally related to human labels. This can lead to reward hacking, where high predicted reward does not translate into better behavior. In this work, we address this problem from a causal perspective by proposing a factored representation learning framework that decomposes the model's contextual embedding into (1) causal factors that are sufficient for reward prediction and (2) non-causal factors that capture reward-irrelevant attributes such as length or sycophantic bias. The reward head is then constrained to depend only on the causal component. In addition, we introduce an adversarial head trained to predict reward from the non-causal factors, while applying gradient reversal to discourage them from encoding reward-relevant information. Experiments on both mathematical and dialogue tasks demonstrate that our method learns more robust reward models and consistently improves downstream RLHF performance over state-of-the-art baselines. Analyses on length and sycophantic bias further validate the effectiveness of our method in mitigating reward hacking behaviors.
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