Unbiased Alignment for Large Language Models with Noisy Preferences
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03248v1
- Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:04:43 GMT
- Title: Unbiased Alignment for Large Language Models with Noisy Preferences
- Abstract summary: We present a theoretical framework for unbiased alignment, introducing the Unbiased Reward Model (URM) loss and the Unbiased Direct Preference Optimization (UDPO) loss.<n>By mathematically correcting the distortion induced by preference noise, our novel objectives enable unbiased model training directly from noisy datasets.
- Score: 74.69408994904965
- License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Abstract: The alignment of large language models with human preferences is commonly achieved through Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback or Direct Preference Optimization. However, these methods are vulnerable to the significant noise prevalent in real-world preference datasets. To address this critical issue, we present a theoretical framework for unbiased alignment, introducing the Unbiased Reward Model (URM) loss and the Unbiased Direct Preference Optimization (UDPO) loss. By mathematically correcting the distortion induced by preference noise, our novel objectives enable unbiased model training directly from noisy datasets, without requiring clean ground-truth supervision. We provide rigorous theoretical analyses demonstrating that our methods are noise-tolerant, parameter downward compatible, and classification-calibrated. Comprehensive experiments across diverse datasets demonstrate that our approaches outperform state-of-the-art baselines. Code available at: https://github.com/cswjl/unbiased-alignment.
Related papers
- Preference Data Selection for Mitigating the Alignment Tax in Large Language Models [52.18310687523229]
BALIGN is a balanced data selection strategy that mitigates catastrophic forgetting while optimizing alignment efficacy.<n>By aggregating three key data-centric features into a unified composite risk score, BALIGN systematically filters out high-risk preference samples.<n>Experiments on standard human preference datasets demonstrate that BALIGN strongly preserves foundational capabilities without compromising alignment gains.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2026-08-25T07:58:42Z) - Optimal Transport for LLM Reward Modeling from Noisy Preference [21.518348751984433]
We propose SelectiveRM, a framework grounded in optimal transport.<n>We first devise a Joint Consistency Discrepancy to align the distribution of model predictions with preference data.<n>We then incorporate a Mass Relaxation mechanism via partial transport.<n>This enables the autonomous exclusion of samples with noisy preference that contradict semantic consistency.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2026-05-07T11:26:04Z) - How Sampling Shapes LLM Alignment: From One-Shot Optima to Iterative Dynamics [65.67654005892469]
We show that proper instance-dependent sampling can yield stronger ranking guarantees, while skewed on-policy sampling can induce excessive concentration under structured preferences.<n>We then analyze iterative alignment dynamics in which the learned policy feeds back into future sampling and reference policies.<n>Our theoretical insights extend to Direct Preference Optimization, indicating the phenomena we captured are common to a broader class of preference-alignment methods.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2026-02-12T17:11:08Z) - How Well Can Preference Optimization Generalize Under Noisy Feedback? [7.374590753074647]
Preference optimization trains models to distinguish between preferred and non-preferred responses based on human feedback.<n>Most existing works assume noise-free feedback, which is unrealistic due to the inherent errors and inconsistencies in human judgments.<n>This paper addresses the impact of noisy feedback on preference optimization, providing generalization guarantees under these conditions.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-10-01T20:56:31Z) - Latent Collective Preference Optimization: A General Framework for Robust LLM Alignment [7.1259212876994695]
We introduce Latent Collective Preference Optimization (LCPO) to learn the latent collective consensus from noisy data.<n>Our experiments demonstrate LCPO's effectiveness as a general framework, consistently enhancing four state-of-the-art alignment algorithms.<n>When applied to Mistral and Llama 3 models, LCPO-enhanced methods achieve substantial win rate gains on AlpacaEval 2 and Arena-Hard, with improvements of up to 7.0% on both benchmarks.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-09-29T01:17:49Z) - On Symmetric Losses for Robust Policy Optimization with Noisy Preferences [55.8615920580824]
This work focuses on reward modeling, a core component in reinforcement learning from human feedback.<n>We propose a principled framework for robust policy optimization under noisy preferences.<n>We prove that symmetric losses enable successful policy optimization even under noisy labels.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-05-30T15:30:43Z) - Debiasing Multimodal Large Language Models via Noise-Aware Preference Optimization [31.741110625305186]
We propose using the paradigm of preference optimization to solve the modality bias problem.<n>Specifically, we first construct the dataset by introducing perturbations to reduce the informational content of certain modalities.<n>To address the inevitable noise in automatically constructed data, we combine the noise robust Mean Absolute Error with the Binary Cross Entropy in Direct Preference Optimization.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-03-23T04:00:11Z) - Rethinking Relation Extraction: Beyond Shortcuts to Generalization with a Debiased Benchmark [53.876493664396506]
Benchmarks are crucial for evaluating machine learning algorithm performance, facilitating comparison and identifying superior solutions.<n>This paper addresses the issue of entity bias in relation extraction tasks, where models tend to rely on entity mentions rather than context.<n>We propose a debiased relation extraction benchmark DREB that breaks the pseudo-correlation between entity mentions and relation types through entity replacement.<n>To establish a new baseline on DREB, we introduce MixDebias, a debiasing method combining data-level and model training-level techniques.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2025-01-02T17:01:06Z) - Preference Learning Algorithms Do Not Learn Preference Rankings [62.335733662381884]
We study the conventional wisdom that preference learning trains models to assign higher likelihoods to more preferred outputs than less preferred outputs.
We find that most state-of-the-art preference-tuned models achieve a ranking accuracy of less than 60% on common preference datasets.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-05-29T21:29:44Z) - Marginal Debiased Network for Fair Visual Recognition [59.05212866862219]
We propose a novel marginal debiased network (MDN) to learn debiased representations.
Our MDN can achieve a remarkable performance on under-represented samples.
arXiv Detail & Related papers (2024-01-04T08:57:09Z)
This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.
This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.