Data-Centric Human Preference with Rationales for Direct Preference Alignment

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Just, Hoang Anh, Jin, Ming, Sahu, Anit, Phan, Huy, Jia, Ruoxi
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866916841070264320
author Just, Hoang Anh
Jin, Ming
Sahu, Anit
Phan, Huy
Jia, Ruoxi
author_facet Just, Hoang Anh
Jin, Ming
Sahu, Anit
Phan, Huy
Jia, Ruoxi
contents Aligning language models with human preferences through reinforcement learning from human feedback is crucial for their safe and effective deployment. The human preference is typically represented through comparison where one response is chosen over another for a given prompt. However, standard preference datasets often lack explicit information on why a particular choice was made, presenting an ambiguity that can hinder efficient learning and robust alignment, especially given the high cost of acquiring extensive human annotations. While many studies focus on algorithmic improvements, this work adopts a data-centric perspective, exploring how to enhance learning from existing preference data. We propose augmenting standard preference pairs with rationales that explain the reasoning behind the human preference. Specifically, we introduce a simple and principled framework that leverages machine-generated rationales to enrich preference data for preference optimization algorithms. Our comprehensive analysis demonstrates that incorporating rationales improves learning efficiency. Extensive experiments reveal some advantages: rationale-augmented learning accelerates convergence and can achieve higher final model performance. Furthermore, this approach is versatile and compatible with various direct preference optimization algorithms. Our findings showcase the potential of thoughtful data design in preference learning, demonstrating that enriching existing datasets with explanatory rationales can help unlock improvements in model alignment and annotation efficiency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_14477
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Data-Centric Human Preference with Rationales for Direct Preference Alignment
Just, Hoang Anh
Jin, Ming
Sahu, Anit
Phan, Huy
Jia, Ruoxi
Machine Learning
Aligning language models with human preferences through reinforcement learning from human feedback is crucial for their safe and effective deployment. The human preference is typically represented through comparison where one response is chosen over another for a given prompt. However, standard preference datasets often lack explicit information on why a particular choice was made, presenting an ambiguity that can hinder efficient learning and robust alignment, especially given the high cost of acquiring extensive human annotations. While many studies focus on algorithmic improvements, this work adopts a data-centric perspective, exploring how to enhance learning from existing preference data. We propose augmenting standard preference pairs with rationales that explain the reasoning behind the human preference. Specifically, we introduce a simple and principled framework that leverages machine-generated rationales to enrich preference data for preference optimization algorithms. Our comprehensive analysis demonstrates that incorporating rationales improves learning efficiency. Extensive experiments reveal some advantages: rationale-augmented learning accelerates convergence and can achieve higher final model performance. Furthermore, this approach is versatile and compatible with various direct preference optimization algorithms. Our findings showcase the potential of thoughtful data design in preference learning, demonstrating that enriching existing datasets with explanatory rationales can help unlock improvements in model alignment and annotation efficiency.
title Data-Centric Human Preference with Rationales for Direct Preference Alignment
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.14477