Training Language Models to Self-Correct via Reinforcement Learning

Aviral Kumar; Vincent Zhuang; Rishabh Agarwal; Yi Su; John D Co-Reyes; Avi Singh; Kate Baumli; Shariq Iqbal; Colton Bishop; Rebecca Roelofs; Lei M Zhang; Kay McKinney; Disha Shrivastava; Cosmin Paduraru; George Tucker; Doina Precup; Feryal Behbahani; Aleksandra Faust

arXiv · 2409.12917

Training Language Models to Self-Correct via Reinforcement Learning

Aviral Kumar·Vincent Zhuang·Rishabh Agarwal·Yi Su·John D Co-Reyes·Avi Singh·Kate Baumli·Shariq Iqbal·Colton Bishop·Rebecca Roelofs·Lei M Zhang·Kay McKinney·Disha Shrivastava·Cosmin Paduraru·George Tucker·Doina Precup·Feryal Behbahani·Aleksandra Faust

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Abstract

Self-correction is a highly desirable capability of large language models (LLMs), yet it has consistently been found to be largely ineffective in modern LLMs. Current methods for training self-correction typically depend on either multiple models, a more advanced model, or additional forms of supervision. To address these shortcomings, we develop a multi-turn online reinforcement learning (RL) approach, SCoRe, that significantly improves an LLM's self-correction ability using entirely self-generated data. To build SCoRe, we first show that variants of supervised fine-tuning (SFT) on offline model-generated correction traces are often insufficient for instilling self-correction behavior. In particular, we observe that training via SFT falls prey to either a distribution mismatch between mistakes made by the data-collection policy and the model's own responses, or to behavior collapse, where learning implicitly prefers only a certain mode of correction behavior that is often not effective at self-correction on test problems. SCoRe addresses these challenges by training under the model's own distribution of self-generated correction traces and using appropriate regularization to steer the learning process into learning a self-correction behavior that is effective at test time as opposed to fitting high-reward responses for a given prompt. This regularization process includes an initial phase of multi-turn RL on a base model to generate a policy initialization that is less susceptible to collapse, followed by using a reward bonus to amplify self-correction. With Gemini 1.0 Pro and 1.5 Flash models, we find that SCoRe achieves state-of-the-art self-correction performance, improving the base models' self-correction by 15.6% and 9.1% respectively on MATH and HumanEval.

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Aviral Kumar, Vincent Zhuang, Rishabh Agarwal, Yi Su, John D Co-Reyes, Avi Singh, Kate Baumli, Shariq Iqbal, Colton Bishop, Rebecca Roelofs, Lei M Zhang, Kay McKinney, Disha Shrivastava, Cosmin Paduraru, George Tucker, Doina Precup, Feryal Behbahani, Aleksandra Faust. 2024-10-04. Training Language Models to Self-Correct via Reinforcement Learning. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.12917

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