arXiv:2602.18037cs.LGcs.AI2026-02中稿 · ICML被引 6

用梯度正则化让模型更关注奖励准确的区域,防止奖励欺骗。

Gradient Regularization Mitigates Reward Hacking in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback and Verifiable Rewards

  • 通过梯度正则化引导模型往奖励更准确的区域优化
  • 实验显示梯度范数与奖励准确性显著相关,提升奖励可信度
  • 比传统KL惩罚更有效,尤其在数学任务中避免格式作弊

基于人类反馈(RLHF)或可验证奖励(RLVR)是现代语言模型后训练的关键步骤。常见问题是奖励欺骗,即策略利用奖励模型的不准确学习非预期行为。以往工作多通过向参考模型施加KL惩罚限制策略更新。本文提出新思路:训练时引导策略更新偏向奖励更准确的区域。首先推导出奖励模型准确性与收敛最优解平坦性之间的理论关联;梯度正则化(GR)可使训练偏向更平坦区域,从而维持奖励准确性。实证表明梯度范数与奖励准确性存在相关性。进一步发现,参考模型重置(Reference Resets)能寻得更平坦区域且奖励更准确。我们提出使用高效有限差分估计的显式梯度正则化,实验表明其在多种语言模型的强化学习任务中优于KL惩罚:在GPT评判中胜率更高,减少对规则类数学奖励格式的过度依赖,并防止在LLM-as-a-Judge数学任务中被黑客攻击。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) or Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) are two key steps in the post-training of modern Language Models (LMs). A common problem is reward hacking, where the policy may exploit inaccuracies of the reward and learn an unintended behavior. Most previous works address this by limiting the policy update with a Kullback-Leibler (KL) penalty towards a reference model. We propose a different framing: Train the LM in a way that biases policy updates towards regions in which the reward is more accurate. First, we derive a theoretical connection between the accuracy of a reward model and the flatness of an optimum at convergence. Gradient regularization (GR) can then be used to bias training to flatter regions and thereby maintain reward model accuracy. We confirm these results by showing that the gradient norm and reward accuracy are empirically correlated in RLHF. We then empirically show that Reference Resets of the KL penalty find flatter regions with a higher reward accuracy. We further improve on this by proposing to use explicit GR with an efficient finite-difference estimate. Empirically, GR performs better than a KL penalty across a diverse set of RL experiments with LMs. GR achieves a higher GPT-judged win-rate in RLHF, avoids overly focusing on the format in rule-based math rewards, and prevents hacking the judge in LLM-as-a-Judge math tasks.

强化学习奖励欺骗梯度正则语言模型

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