ModelRefs / Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) — AI Glossary

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) — AI Glossary

A training paradigm using human preference signals and RL to align model outputs with human values and instructions.

Overview

RLHF (Stiennon et al. 2020; Ouyang et al. 2022) has three stages: supervised fine-tuning on demonstrations, reward model training on preference pairs, and PPO optimization against the reward model. Used to train InstructGPT, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Largely complemented by DPO, which skips the explicit RL stage.

Reference details

Topictraining
Also known asRLHF, human preference learning
Last reviewed2026-06-24

Primary source

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Frequently asked questions

What is Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)?

A training paradigm using human preference signals and RL to align model outputs with human values and instructions.

Is Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) the same as RLHF?

Yes — RLHF, human preference learning are common aliases for Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).

What concepts are related to Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)?

Closely related concepts include rlhf, dpo, reward model, ppo.