Parent-Guided Semantic Reward Model (PGSRM): Embedding-Based Reward Functions for Reinforcement Learning of Transformer Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Plashchinsky, Alexandr
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915659559993344
author Plashchinsky, Alexandr
author_facet Plashchinsky, Alexandr
contents We introduce the Parent-Guided Semantic Reward Model (PGSRM), a lightweight reward framework for reinforcement learning (RL) of transformer language models. PGSRM replaces binary correctness signals, human preference data, and trained reward models with a simple signal: cosine similarity between a parent model's reference output embedding and a child model's generated output for the same input. This yields a dense, semantically meaningful reward with no human annotation or additional model training. We apply PGSRM on five language tasks and find that it produces smoother reward improvement and more stable PPO dynamics than a binary reward baseline, suggesting that embedding-based semantic rewards are a practical alternative to RLHF-style reward modeling for parent-guided alignment in smaller transformer models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_06920
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Parent-Guided Semantic Reward Model (PGSRM): Embedding-Based Reward Functions for Reinforcement Learning of Transformer Language Models
Plashchinsky, Alexandr
Machine Learning
We introduce the Parent-Guided Semantic Reward Model (PGSRM), a lightweight reward framework for reinforcement learning (RL) of transformer language models. PGSRM replaces binary correctness signals, human preference data, and trained reward models with a simple signal: cosine similarity between a parent model's reference output embedding and a child model's generated output for the same input. This yields a dense, semantically meaningful reward with no human annotation or additional model training. We apply PGSRM on five language tasks and find that it produces smoother reward improvement and more stable PPO dynamics than a binary reward baseline, suggesting that embedding-based semantic rewards are a practical alternative to RLHF-style reward modeling for parent-guided alignment in smaller transformer models.
title Parent-Guided Semantic Reward Model (PGSRM): Embedding-Based Reward Functions for Reinforcement Learning of Transformer Language Models
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06920