aiqbench analysis
This paper introduces GAPO, a novel alignment framework that replaces static reference policies in Direct Preference Optimization with dynamic, geometry-aware anchors to mitigate reward drift and noise sensitivity. By leveraging an adversarial local perturbation as a pessimistic baseline, the method adaptively reweights preference pairs based on their geometric stability, effectively filtering out spurious signals without sacrificing performance on standard reasoning benchmarks. The approach offers a robust solution for maintaining model alignment under distributional shifts, addressing a critical limitation in current reinforcement learning from human feedback paradigms.
Learning Where It Matters: Geometric Anchoring for Robust Preference Alignment
arXiv:2602.04909v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) and related methods align large language models from pairwise preferences by regularizing updates against a fixed reference policy. As the policy drifts, a static reference, however, can become increasingly miscalibrated, leading to distributional mismatch and amplifying spurious preference signals under noisy supervision. Conversely, reference-free variants avoid mismatch but often suffer from unconstrained reward drift. We propose Geometric Anchor Preference Optimization (GAPO), which replaces the fixed reference with a dynamic, geometry-aware anchor: an adversarial local perturbation of the current policy within a small radius that serves as a pessimistic baseline. This anchor enables an adaptive reweighting mechanism, modulating the importance of each preference pair based on its local sensitivity. We further introduce the Anchor Gap, the reward discrepancy between the policy and its anchor, and show under smoothness conditions that it approximates worst-case local margin degradation. Optimizing a logistic objective weighted by this gap downweights geometrically brittle instances while emphasizing robust preference signals. Across diverse noise settings, GAPO consistently improves robustness while matching or improving performance on standard LLM alignment and reasoning benchmarks.
Abstract:Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) and related methods align large language models from pairwise preferences by regularizing updates against a fixed reference policy. As the policy drifts, a static reference, however, can become increasingly miscalibrated, leading to distributional mismatch and amplifying spurious preference signals under noisy supervision. Conversely, reference-free variants avoid mismatch but often suffer from unconstrained reward drift. We propose Geometric Anchor Preference Optimization (GAPO), which replaces the fixed reference with a dynamic, geometry-aware anchor: an adversarial local perturbation of the current policy within a small radius that serves as a pessimistic baseline. This anchor enables an adaptive reweighting mechanism, modulating the importance of each preference pair based on its local sensitivity. We further introduce the Anchor Gap, the reward discrepancy between the policy and its anchor, and show under smoothness conditions that it approximates worst-case local margin degradation. Optimizing a logistic objective weighted by this gap downweights geometrically brittle instances while emphasizing robust preference signals. Across diverse noise settings, GAPO consistently improves robustness while matching or improving performance on standard LLM alignment and reasoning benchmarks.
Machine Learning (cs.LG)
arXiv:2602.04909 [cs.LG]
(or arXiv:2602.04909v4 [cs.LG] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.04909 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 268 words
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