arXiv:2607.05394cs.LGcs.AI2026-07被引 6

用小模型的强化学习经验,快速提升大模型推理能力。

Weak-to-Strong Generalization via Direct On-Policy Distillation

  • 通过对比弱模型前后策略差异,生成隐式奖励信号指导强模型。
  • 在8张A100上4小时,使Qwen3-1.7B在AIME 2024上从48.3%提升至58.3%。
  • 无需对强模型重跑强化学习,适合高效迭代大模型推理能力。

基于可验证奖励的强化学习(RLVR)能显著提升语言模型的推理能力,但每次训练新强模型时需大量采样,成本高昂。随着模型规模增大,后训练成为瓶颈。本文提出弱到强的替代方案:在小模型上运行一次强化学习,再将所得知识迁移至更强的目标模型。直接蒸馏弱教师模型效果有限,因其最终策略混合了小模型的局限性。为此提出直接在线策略蒸馏(Direct-OPD),不直接复制策略,而是将弱模型在强化学习前后的策略差异转化为密集的隐式奖励信号。该信号以日志概率比形式表达,指示哪些动作被强化学习所偏好,并作用于强模型自身的在线状态。实证表明,Direct-OPD能稳定利用弱教师提升强模型性能;尤其在8张A100 GPU上仅4小时,即可将Qwen3-1.7B在AIME 2024上的准确率从48.3%提升至58.3%。其效果优于相同步数的直接强化学习,且支持多阶段策略转移序列。结果证明,强化学习成果可作为跨模型尺度的隐式奖励信号复用,而不仅是模仿最终模型。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) is a powerful recipe for improving language-model reasoning, but it is expensive to repeat on every new strong model because the target model must generate many rollouts during training. As models scale, post-training itself becomes a bottleneck. We study a weak-to-strong alternative: run RL on a smaller model where rollouts are cheaper, then reuse what that RL run learned to improve a stronger target model. Directly distilling the post-RL weak teacher is not enough, because the teacher's final policy mixes useful RL gains with the limitations of the smaller model. We propose Direct On-Policy Distillation (Direct-OPD), which transfers the teacher's RL-induced policy shift instead. Direct-OPD compares the post-RL teacher with its own pre-RL reference and treats their log-ratio as a dense implicit reward for the student. In plain terms, the checkpoint pair tells us which actions RL made the weak model more or less likely to take, and Direct-OPD applies that signal on the stronger student's own on-policy states. This directly reuses the weak model's RL supervision signal without running sparse-reward RL on the target model. Empirically, Direct-OPD consistently leverages weaker teachers to improve stronger target models; notably, it boosts Qwen3-1.7B from 48.3% to 58.3% on AIME 2024 in just 4 hours on 8 A100 GPUs. It outperforms step-matched direct RL and enables the sequential composition of multiple policy shifts. Our results show that RL outcomes can be reused across model scales as implicit reward signals, not merely as final models to imitate.

强化学习模型蒸馏推理增强高效训练

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