Reward Learning From Preference With Ties

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Jinsong, Ge, Dongdong, Zhu, Ruihao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913535881117696
author Liu, Jinsong
Ge, Dongdong
Zhu, Ruihao
author_facet Liu, Jinsong
Ge, Dongdong
Zhu, Ruihao
contents Reward learning plays a pivotal role in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), ensuring the alignment of language models. The Bradley-Terry (BT) model stands as the prevalent choice for capturing human preferences from datasets containing pairs of chosen and rejected responses. In preference modeling, the focus is not on absolute values but rather on the reward difference between chosen and rejected responses, referred to as preference strength. Thus, precise evaluation of preference strength holds paramount importance in preference modeling. However, an easily overlooked factor significantly affecting preference strength measurement is that human attitudes towards two responses may not solely indicate a preference for one over the other and ties are also a common occurrence. To address this, we propose the adoption of the generalized Bradley-Terry model -- the Bradley-Terry model with ties (BTT) -- to accommodate tied preferences, thus leveraging additional information. We prove that even with the access to the true distributions of prompt and response, disregarding ties can lead to a notable bias in preference strength measurement. Comprehensive experiments further validate the advantages of incorporating ties in preference modeling. Notably, fine-tuning with BTT significantly outperforms fine-tuning with BT on synthetic preference datasets with ties, labeled by state-of-the-art open-source LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_05328
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reward Learning From Preference With Ties
Liu, Jinsong
Ge, Dongdong
Zhu, Ruihao
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Reward learning plays a pivotal role in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), ensuring the alignment of language models. The Bradley-Terry (BT) model stands as the prevalent choice for capturing human preferences from datasets containing pairs of chosen and rejected responses. In preference modeling, the focus is not on absolute values but rather on the reward difference between chosen and rejected responses, referred to as preference strength. Thus, precise evaluation of preference strength holds paramount importance in preference modeling. However, an easily overlooked factor significantly affecting preference strength measurement is that human attitudes towards two responses may not solely indicate a preference for one over the other and ties are also a common occurrence. To address this, we propose the adoption of the generalized Bradley-Terry model -- the Bradley-Terry model with ties (BTT) -- to accommodate tied preferences, thus leveraging additional information. We prove that even with the access to the true distributions of prompt and response, disregarding ties can lead to a notable bias in preference strength measurement. Comprehensive experiments further validate the advantages of incorporating ties in preference modeling. Notably, fine-tuning with BTT significantly outperforms fine-tuning with BT on synthetic preference datasets with ties, labeled by state-of-the-art open-source LLMs.
title Reward Learning From Preference With Ties
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.05328