PVPO: Pre-Estimated Value-Based Policy Optimization for Agentic Reasoning

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Feng, Wenfeng, Zhao, Penghong, Jiang, Guochao, Hao, Chuzhan, Zhang, Yuewei, Liu, Guohua, Wang, Hao
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Feng, Wenfeng
Zhao, Penghong
Jiang, Guochao
Hao, Chuzhan
Zhang, Yuewei
Liu, Guohua
Wang, Hao
author_facet Feng, Wenfeng
Zhao, Penghong
Jiang, Guochao
Hao, Chuzhan
Zhang, Yuewei
Liu, Guohua
Wang, Hao
contents Critic-free reinforcement learning methods, particularly group policies, have attracted considerable attention for their efficiency in complex tasks. However, these methods rely heavily on multiple sampling and comparisons within the policy to estimate advantage, which may cause the policy to fall into local optimum and increase computational cost. To address these issues, we propose PVPO, an efficient reinforcement learning method enhanced by an advantage reference anchor and data pre-sampling. Specifically, we use the reference model to rollout in advance and employ the calculated reward score as a reference anchor. Our approach effectively corrects the cumulative bias introduced by intra-group comparisons and significantly reduces reliance on the number of rollouts during training. Meanwhile, the reference model can assess sample difficulty during data pre-sampling, enabling effective selection of high-gain data to improve training efficiency. Moreover, PVPO is orthogonal to other advanced critic-free RL algorithms, making it compatible with and complementary to these methods. Experiments conducted on nine datasets across two domains demonstrate that PVPO achieves State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) performance. Our approach not only demonstrates robust generalization across multiple tasks, but also exhibits scalable performance across models of varying scales.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_21104
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PVPO: Pre-Estimated Value-Based Policy Optimization for Agentic Reasoning
Feng, Wenfeng
Zhao, Penghong
Jiang, Guochao
Hao, Chuzhan
Zhang, Yuewei
Liu, Guohua
Wang, Hao
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Critic-free reinforcement learning methods, particularly group policies, have attracted considerable attention for their efficiency in complex tasks. However, these methods rely heavily on multiple sampling and comparisons within the policy to estimate advantage, which may cause the policy to fall into local optimum and increase computational cost. To address these issues, we propose PVPO, an efficient reinforcement learning method enhanced by an advantage reference anchor and data pre-sampling. Specifically, we use the reference model to rollout in advance and employ the calculated reward score as a reference anchor. Our approach effectively corrects the cumulative bias introduced by intra-group comparisons and significantly reduces reliance on the number of rollouts during training. Meanwhile, the reference model can assess sample difficulty during data pre-sampling, enabling effective selection of high-gain data to improve training efficiency. Moreover, PVPO is orthogonal to other advanced critic-free RL algorithms, making it compatible with and complementary to these methods. Experiments conducted on nine datasets across two domains demonstrate that PVPO achieves State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) performance. Our approach not only demonstrates robust generalization across multiple tasks, but also exhibits scalable performance across models of varying scales.
title PVPO: Pre-Estimated Value-Based Policy Optimization for Agentic Reasoning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21104