提出显式投影的列表优化方法,提升大模型推理训练稳定性与多样性。
Listwise Policy Optimization: Group-based RLVR as Target-Projection on the LLM Response Simplex
- 将响应优化视为在单纯形上的目标投影,显式建模策略更新方向。
- 在多种任务和模型上超越基线,实现单调性能提升且保持响应多样性。
- 支持灵活选择散度度量,适合追求稳定训练的大模型推理优化场景。
基于可验证奖励的强化学习(RLVR)已成为提升大语言模型(LLM)推理能力的标准后训练方法。现有主流方案采用分组策略梯度:每提示生成一组回复,通过组内相对优势信号更新策略。本文揭示这些方法具有共同的几何结构:均隐式定义了响应单纯形上的目标分布,并通过一阶近似进行投影。基于此,我们提出列表策略优化(LPO),显式执行目标投影——通过将近端强化学习目标限制在响应单纯形上,再以精确散度最小化进行策略投影。该框架具备:(i) 列表目标上单调改进,伴随有界、零和且自校正的投影梯度;(ii) 分离投影步骤,支持多种散度选择,具有不同结构特性。在多种推理任务与模型架构上,LPO在相同目标下持续优于典型策略梯度基线,同时内在保持优化稳定性和响应多样性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has become a standard approach for large language models (LLMs) post-training to incentivize reasoning capacity. Among existing recipes, group-based policy gradient is prevalent, which samples a group of responses per prompt and updates the policy via group-relative advantage signals. This work reveals that these optimization strategies share a common geometric structure: each implicitly defines a target distribution on the response simplex and projects toward it via first-order approximation. Building on this insight, we propose Listwise Policy Optimization (LPO) to explicitly conduct the target-projection, which demystifies the implicit target by restricting the proximal RL objective to the response simplex, and then projects the policy via exact divergence minimization. This framework provides (i) monotonic improvement on the listwise objective with bounded, zero-sum, and self-correcting projection gradients, and (ii) flexibility in divergence selection with distinct structural properties through the decoupled projection step. On diverse reasoning tasks and LLM backbones, LPO consistently improves training performance over typical policy gradient baselines under matched targets, while intrinsically preserving optimization stability and response diversity.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。