Understanding Reward Models

Reward models are essential for scoring the quality of generated content by assessing whether it meets specific criteria, such as helpfulness or safety. These models are trained using pairwise preferences, where two responses to a prompt are evaluated to determine which is superior. This approach allows for feedback to be gathered efficiently, as human evaluators can easily indicate which response is better without the need for in-depth analysis. The insights gained from reward models enable researchers to refine language models to generate responses that align more closely with user needs.