RL Fine-Tuning
RL: Reinforcement Learning
Overview
Reinforcement learning fine-tuning (RFT) adapts pretrained language, vision-language, and control models by updating them from feedback on generated answers or actions rather than relying only on demonstrations. Common approaches include PPO and GRPO for outcome-based learning, RL with verifiable rewards for math and code, and preference or rubric-based methods for open-ended tasks; curricula, reward models, and step-level credit assignment help make feedback more useful. Work also extends to tool-using agents, robots, diffusion policies, and offline-to-online control, where methods such as value learning, residual policies, and flow-matching optimization address costly or sparse environment feedback. Key challenges are designing reliable rewards, balancing exploration with stable updates, reducing rollout costs, and ensuring gains transfer across tasks without forgetting prior capabilities or exploiting the evaluator.
Latest papers
233 papers17 papers in the last four weeks, down 23% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.