arXiv:2608.01743cs.LGcs.CL2026-08

提出新型正则化方法,让大模型学新任务时不忘旧能力。

Toward Plasticity-Preserving KL Regularization for Capability Retention in LLM Reinforcement Learning

论文配图:Toward Plasticity-Preserving KL Regularization for Capability Retention in LLM Reinforcement Learning
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 基于正确性条件的局部正则化,只约束正确回答分布。
  • 实验显示在多任务连续训练中保留旧能力更优。
  • 适合需要持续学习的新任务训练场景。

强化学习已成为大语言模型后训练的核心范式,但优化新目标可能导致原有能力退化。标准的全策略KL正则化虽能缓解遗忘,却会过度限制探索和新任务学习。本文提出一种新的条件正则化框架CoKL,将约束范围从整个输出分布缩小到正确性条件下的响应分布。通过前向KL散度实现有限组训练目标,在群体层面解耦正确响应总概率与其条件分布,仅对参考模型支持的正确响应进行相对概率调节,而不直接锚定错误输出或整体正确率。理论分析表明,传统全策略正则化在参考策略不完美时会引入严格最优正确性差距,而CoKL可避免此问题。在控制环境下及多个模型规模的持续后训练实验中,CoKL均在提升目标任务表现的同时,更有效地保留了原有能力,优于现有方法。代码已开源。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a central paradigm for large language model (LLM) post-training, but optimization toward new objectives can degrade capabilities already present in the base model. KL regularization is widely used to mitigate such forgetting by constraining policy drift toward a reference model. However, standard full-policy KL regularization constrains the entire response distribution and may unnecessarily restrict exploration and target-task learning. This raises a natural question: can a more precise constraint preserve existing capabilities while minimizing interference with learning new tasks? To this end, we propose \underline{Co}rrectness-Conditioned \underline{KL} Regularization (CoKL), a conditional regularization framework that narrows the preservation constraint from the full output distribution to correctness-conditioned response distributions. We instantiate CoKL with forward KL divergence and derive a practical finite-group training objective for RL-based LLM post-training. At the population level, CoKL decouples the total probability assigned to correct responses from their correctness-conditioned distribution, thereby regularizing the relative probability allocation among reference-supported correct responses without directly anchoring incorrect outputs or total correctness mass. We further show that full-policy forward and reverse KL regularization induce a strict optimal correctness gap when the reference policy is imperfect, whereas CoKL avoids this limitation. Experiments in controlled multi-solution environments and continual post-training settings across multiple model scales demonstrate that CoKL achieves a more favorable balance between target-task improvement and prior-capability retention than existing regularization methods. Our code is available at https://github.com/Lumina04/CoKL.

大模型训练强化学习能力保留

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。