Shreyas Chaudhari, Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan, Ameet Deshpande, Bruno Castro da Silva
{"title":"RLHF Deciphered: A Critical Analysis of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback for LLMs","authors":"Shreyas Chaudhari, Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan, Ameet Deshpande, Bruno Castro da Silva","doi":"10.1145/3743127","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A significant challenge in training large language models (LLMs) as effective assistants is aligning them with human preferences. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a promising solution. However, our understanding of RLHF is often limited to initial design choices. This paper analyzes RLHF through reinforcement learning principles, focusing on the reward model. It examines modeling choices and function approximation caveats, highlighting assumptions about reward expressivity and revealing limitations like incorrect generalization, model misspecification, and sparse feedback. A categorical review of current literature provides insights for researchers to understand the challenges of RLHF and build upon existing methods.","PeriodicalId":50926,"journal":{"name":"ACM Computing Surveys","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":28.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACM Computing Surveys","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3743127","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, THEORY & METHODS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A significant challenge in training large language models (LLMs) as effective assistants is aligning them with human preferences. Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a promising solution. However, our understanding of RLHF is often limited to initial design choices. This paper analyzes RLHF through reinforcement learning principles, focusing on the reward model. It examines modeling choices and function approximation caveats, highlighting assumptions about reward expressivity and revealing limitations like incorrect generalization, model misspecification, and sparse feedback. A categorical review of current literature provides insights for researchers to understand the challenges of RLHF and build upon existing methods.
期刊介绍:
ACM Computing Surveys is an academic journal that focuses on publishing surveys and tutorials on various areas of computing research and practice. The journal aims to provide comprehensive and easily understandable articles that guide readers through the literature and help them understand topics outside their specialties. In terms of impact, CSUR has a high reputation with a 2022 Impact Factor of 16.6. It is ranked 3rd out of 111 journals in the field of Computer Science Theory & Methods.
ACM Computing Surveys is indexed and abstracted in various services, including AI2 Semantic Scholar, Baidu, Clarivate/ISI: JCR, CNKI, DeepDyve, DTU, EBSCO: EDS/HOST, and IET Inspec, among others.