Advanced LLM Alignment: Constitutional AI and RLAIF
Chapter 1: The Scalable Alignment Problem
Limitations of Supervised Fine-Tuning for Alignment
Challenges in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF)
Defining Scalable Oversight
The Need for AI Feedback Mechanisms
Theoretical Frameworks for AI-Assisted Alignment
Chapter 2: Constitutional AI: Theoretical Deep Dive
Core Principles of Constitutional AI
Designing Effective Constitutions
The Supervised Learning Phase (Critique and Revision)
Mathematical Formulation of CAI Feedback
Relationship to Instruction Following
Limitations and Critiques of the CAI Framework
Chapter 3: Implementing Constitutional AI Systems
Setting up the Constitution Document
Generating Initial Responses
Implementing the AI Critiquer Model
Implementing the AI Revision Model
Constructing the Supervised Fine-Tuning Dataset
Fine-Tuning the LLM with CAI Data
Debugging and Iterating on the CAI Process
Hands-on Practical: Building a Simple CAI Critique Step
Chapter 4: Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback (RLAIF)
From RLHF to RLAIF: Motivation and Differences
AI Preference Modeling Techniques
Generating AI Preference Labels
Designing Reward Functions from AI Preferences
Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for RLAIF (Advanced PPO)
Addressing Stability and Convergence in RLAIF
Theoretical Guarantees and Limitations of RLAIF
Chapter 5: Advanced RLAIF Implementation Details
Building the AI Preference Labeler
Preference Data Collection and Management
Training the Preference Model
Implementing the PPO Loop for RLAIF
Hyperparameter Tuning for RLAIF Systems
Scaling RLAIF Pipelines
Common Failure Modes and Debugging Strategies
Practice: Training a Basic AI Preference Model
Chapter 6: Integrating CAI and RLAIF
Synergistic Opportunities: CAI Guiding RLAIF
Using CAI Outputs as Input for RLAIF
Sequential vs. Joint Training Pipelines
Handling Conflicts Between Constitution and AI Preferences
Architectural Considerations for Combined Systems
Comparative Performance Analysis
Chapter 7: Advanced Evaluation of Aligned Models
Standard Benchmarks: Alignment-Specific Metrics
Red Teaming Strategies for CAI/RLAIF Models
Robustness Testing Against Adversarial Inputs
Analyzing Failure Modes Specific to AI Feedback
Statistical Significance in Alignment Evaluation
Qualitative Analysis of Model Behavior
Hands-on Practical: Designing a Red Teaming Test Suite
Chapter 8: Optimization and Scalability Considerations
Computational Costs of CAI and RLAIF
Efficient Implementation of Feedback Generation
Optimizing the RL Training Loop (PPO Efficiency)
Distributed Training Strategies
Model Distillation for Aligned Models
Quantization and Pruning Considerations
Resource Management and Infrastructure Planning
Common Failure Modes and Debugging Strategies
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- Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback, Yuntao Bai, Saurav Kadavath, Sandipan Kundu, Amanda Askell, Jackson Kernion, Andy Jones, Anna Chen, Anna Goldie, Azalia Mirhoseini, Cameron McKinnon, Carol Chen, Catherine Olsson, Christopher Olah, Danny Hernandez, Dawn Drain, Deep Ganguli, Dustin Li, Eli Tran-Johnson, Ethan Perez, Jamie Kerr, Jared Mueller, Jeffrey Ladish, Joshua Landau, Kamal Ndousse, Kamile Lukosuite, Liane Lovitt, Michael Sellitto, Nelson Elhage, Nicholas Schiefer, Noemi Mercado, Nova DasSarma, Robert Lasenby, Robin Larson, Sam Ringer, Scott Johnston, Shauna Kravec, Sheer El Showk, Stanislav Fort, Tamera Lanham, Timothy Telleen-Lawton, Tom Conerly, Tom Henighan, Tristan Hume, Samuel R. Bowman, Zac Hatfield-Dodds, Ben Mann, Dario Amodei, Nicholas Joseph, Sam McCandlish, Tom Brown, Jared Kaplan, 2022 arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.08073 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2212.08073 - This paper introduces Constitutional AI, a core topic of the course, and provides an early example of Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback (RLAIF), discussing challenges in aligning AI with human values through self-correction.
- Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, Yuntao Bai, Andy Jones, Kamal Ndousse, Amanda Askell, Anna Chen, Nova DasSarma, Dawn Drain, Stanislav Fort, Deep Ganguli, Tom Henighan, Nicholas Joseph, Saurav Kadavath, Jackson Kernion, Tom Conerly, Sheer El-Showk, Nelson Elhage, Zac Hatfield-Dodds, Danny Hernandez, Tristan Hume, Scott Johnston, Shauna Kravec, Liane Lovitt, Neel Nanda, Catherine Olsson, Dario Amodei, Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Sam McCandlish, Chris Olah, Ben Mann, Jared Kaplan, 2022 arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.05862 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2204.05862 - This paper details the process of training a helpful and harmless assistant using RLHF, covering preference modeling and the alignment challenges, which are highly relevant to RLAIF's failure modes like reward hacking.
- Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms, John Schulman, Filip Wolski, Prafulla Dhariwal, Alec Radford, Oleg Klimov, 2017 arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.06347 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1707.06347 - This foundational paper introduces the PPO algorithm, which is central to RLAIF implementation, and understanding it is critical for debugging training instabilities and hyperparameter tuning.
- Concrete Problems in AI Safety, Dario Amodei, Chris Olah, Jacob Steinhardt, Paul Christiano, John Schulman, Dan Mané, 2016 arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.06565 (arXiv) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1606.06565 - This paper outlines several significant challenges in AI safety, including reward hacking and specification gaming, providing foundational context for understanding common failure modes in alignment efforts like RLAIF.