无需训练价值网络,用策略隐含值优化大模型推理能力
VIMPO: Value-Implicit Policy Optimization for LLMs

- 从KL正则强化学习推导出策略隐含价值函数,无需训练评论家
- 在数学推理任务上优于GRPO,在竞赛类评测中提升显著
- 对噪声奖励鲁棒,适合追求简洁高效训练的模型优化场景
基于可验证奖励的强化学习已成为提升大语言模型推理能力的核心工具,但现有方法在简单性与信用分配之间存在权衡。群相对方法(如GRPO)避免训练评论家,但通常将轨迹级优势分配给每个词元;演员-评论家方法提供更密集的学习信号,却需训练价值函数,存在自身训练不稳定性。我们提出VIMPO,一种无需评论家的策略优化方法,其价值函数由KL正则强化学习的最优性条件推导而来。对于自回归生成,该价值递归可表示为策略-参考对数比率,并以轨迹末端无未来奖励作为锚点。这带来一个简单的价值损失,能融入结果级可验证奖励而无需训练评论家。同一推导还得到一种无需评论家的演员优势,使VIMPO能够将奖励融合(通过价值损失)与策略改进(通过类似PPO的演员更新)解耦。在数学推理的RLVR基准测试中,VIMPO在MATH-500、AIME 2024、AIME 2025和OlympiadBench上均优于GRPO,尤其在竞赛风格评估中表现更优。在噪声奖励下,VIMPO仍保持对GRPO的一致优势,表明策略隐含价值优化可在保持批判自由训练的实用性的同时,实现更精细的信用分配。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards has become a central tool for improving the reasoning ability of large language models, but current methods face a trade-off between simplicity and credit assignment. Group-relative methods such as GRPO avoid training a critic, but typically assign a trajectory-level advantage to every token. Actor-critic methods provide denser learning signals, but require a learned value function with its own training instability. We introduce VIMPO, a critic-free policy optimization method that derives a policy-implied value function from the optimality conditions of KL-regularized reinforcement learning. For autoregressive generation, the resulting value recurrence can be written in terms of policy-reference log-ratios and anchored by the terminal condition that no future reward remains at the end of a trajectory. This gives a simple value loss that incorporates outcome-level verifiable rewards without training a critic. The same derivation also yields a critic-free actor advantage, allowing VIMPO to separate reward incorporation through the value loss from policy improvement through a PPO-style actor update. On mathematical RLVR benchmarks, VIMPO improves over GRPO across MATH-500, AIME 2024, AIME 2025, and OlympiadBench, with especially larger gains on competition-style evaluations. Under noisy rewards, VIMPO retains a consistent advantage over GRPO, suggesting that policy-implied value optimization can provide finer credit assignment while preserving the practical simplicity of critic-free training.
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