arXiv:2606.20740cs.CLcs.LG2026-06

为形式化验证训练的推理模型提供理论保证,解决其泛化能力无依据的问题。

VeriBound: PAC-Bayesian Generalization Bounds for Process Reward Models Trained with Formal Verification Tools

  • 基于概率-贝叶斯框架,建立形式验证数据训练下的泛化误差上界。
  • 证明仅需 $O(d \log(d/δ) / ε^2)$ 个样本即可实现 $ε$ 误差的高概率泛化。
  • 首次给出步骤级验证误差对最终推理性能的影响机制,适合可信AI研究者。

过程奖励模型(PRM)可对大语言模型推理进行步骤级验证,但其训练数据获取仍是瓶颈:人工标注成本高,蒙特卡洛回溯估计噪声大。近期方法FOVER利用Z3、Isabelle等形式化验证工具自动标注步骤级错误标签训练PRM,实证发现其在符号任务上训练后可在多样推理基准上实现跨任务泛化。然而该现象缺乏理论解释,且尚无关于泛化误差、样本复杂度、收敛速率或下游Best-of-K性能的正式边界。本文提出VeriBound,一个针对形式化验证训练的PRM的PAC-Bayesian泛化边界理论框架。主要成果包括:(i) 建立从形式验证标注数据经验误差到未见推理任务期望误差的泛化界,依赖于验证准确率与训练/测试任务分布差异;(ii) 样本复杂度结果表明,$O(d \log(d/δ) / ε^2)$ 个形式验证标注样本足以以 $1-δ$ 概率实现 $ε$ 的泛化误差,其中 $d$ 为PRM假设类复杂度;(iii) 在 $L$-光滑性与有界方差条件下,证明了训练收敛于线性速率;(iv) 建立误差传播界,关联步骤级验证误差与Best-of-K性能下降。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Process Reward Models (PRMs) provide step-level verification for Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning, yet their training data acquisition remains a bottleneck: human annotation is costly and Monte Carlo roll-out estimates are noisy. A recent approach, FOVER, trains PRMs on step-level error labels automatically annotated by formal verification tools such as Z3 and Isabelle, and empirically observes cross-task generalization from symbolic tasks to diverse reasoning benchmarks. However, this generalization phenomenon lacks any theoretical explanation, and no formal bounds exist on the generalization error, sample complexity, convergence rate, or downstream Best-of-K performance of such PRMs. We propose VeriBound, a theoretical framework that provides PAC-Bayesian generalization bounds for PRMs trained with formal verification tools. We establish four main results: (i) a PAC-Bayesian generalization bound that relates the empirical verification error on formal-verification-annotated training data to the expected error on unseen reasoning tasks, with the bound depending on the formal verification accuracy and the divergence between training and test task distributions; (ii) a sample complexity result showing that $O(d \log(d/δ) / ε^2)$ formal-verification-annotated examples suffice to achieve generalization error $ε$ with probability $1-δ$, where $d$ is the complexity of the PRM hypothesis class; (iii) a convergence analysis proving that PRM training with formal verification labels converges at a linear rate under $L$-smoothness and bounded variance conditions; and (iv) an error propagation bound that relates step-level verification error to Best-of-K performance degradation.

形式验证泛化理论推理模型概率边界

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