Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) adapts a model using human judgments about its behavior. It combines reinforcement learning and supervised learning, making it useful when quality depends on preferences or context that are difficult to express as a fixed reward function. section 9.7
Evaluators provide ratings, preferences, or suggestions about model outputs. That feedback guides training toward responses people find more helpful and truthful, while seeking to reduce harm and bias. Instruct models are examples of language models adapted with RLHF. section 9.7
Evaluating a conversational assistant
For an assistant that generates replies, human evaluators could rate outputs for usefulness and harmful content. Their judgments supply feedback where an explicit rule for a good reply would miss subjective or context-specific qualities. This illustrates the training role of feedback, not a production implementation. section 9.7 section 9.7.1
Plan for the costs and limits of RLHF:
- Collect enough qualified, diverse human feedback; inconsistent or biased judgments can weaken reliability and reinforce prejudice. section 9.7.1
- Budget for specialized ML skills, reward and feedback systems, and substantial compute. Scaling also requires efficient collection, sampling, distributed evaluation, and quality checks. section 9.7.1 section 9.7.2
- Monitor model behavior and test for harms. RLHF is a model-level safety measure, not a substitute for content filters, application safeguards, or user review. section 9.7.2 section 13.3.3













