Limitations of Reinforcement Studying in Slender Reasoning Domains
Reinforcement Studying RL has demonstrated robust potential to boost the reasoning capabilities of LLMs, notably in main techniques corresponding to OpenAI-O3 and DeepSeek-R1. Nevertheless, most RL analysis has centered narrowly on math and code, limiting its common applicability. This slender scope poses two points: our understanding of how RL improves reasoning could not generalize past these domains, and the ensuing fashions usually lack versatility. Increasing RL to broader reasoning duties is difficult attributable to a scarcity of dependable reward alerts and curated datasets, that are simpler to outline in mathematical and code-based phrases however tougher in open-ended reasoning domains.
Slender Area Focus and Generalization Challenges
Reinforcement Studying RL has develop into a preferred technique for enhancing the reasoning abilities of LLMs, particularly after successes with fashions like OpenAI’s GPT-3 and DeepSeek-R1. Many open-source efforts have adopted, focusing totally on mathematical and coding domains. Whereas these fashions carry out effectively of their niches, their reasoning doesn’t all the time generalize to broader duties. On the similar time, analysis has explored how RL influences reasoning. Some research recommend RL doesn’t educate new abilities however boosts the mannequin’s capacity to entry present reasoning patterns. Nevertheless, newer work signifies that prolonged RL coaching could unlock solely new reasoning methods.
Introduction of GURU Dataset: A Multi-Area RL Benchmark
Researchers from UC San Diego, MBZUAI, Carnegie Mellon, and Purdue introduce GURU, a 92 Ok-example RL dataset protecting six reasoning domains: Math, Code, Science, Logic, Simulation, and Tabular. Every area is fastidiously constructed with tailor-made reward features and rigorous filtering. Coaching fashions on GURU reveals that RL outcomes rely closely on area familiarity: widespread domains profit from cross-domain RL, whereas unfamiliar ones require in-domain coaching to enhance considerably. Their fashions, GURU-7B and GURU-32B, outperform prior open fashions by as much as 7.9% throughout 17 duties. These findings spotlight RL’s domain-specific results and the worth of broad, multi-domain reasoning benchmarks.
Cross-Area vs. In-Area Reinforcement Studying Results
To higher perceive how RL helps reasoning throughout domains, the researchers educated fashions on each particular person and mixed-domain knowledge from the GURU dataset. They discovered that domains corresponding to Math, Code, and Science benefited extra from cross-domain RL, probably attributable to their stronger presence in pre-training. Blended-domain coaching carried out as effectively or higher than single-domain coaching, displaying that combining various duties can improve common reasoning. Nevertheless, coaching solely on more durable examples improved efficiency in that area however decreased accuracy on less complicated features in others. These findings recommend that knowledge variety and balanced issue are key to efficient, transferable reasoning abilities.
GURU Mannequin Structure and Analysis Technique
The research educated 7B and 32 B-sized fashions utilizing the GURU dataset to discover how combining a number of domains throughout RL improves reasoning talents. Utilizing the Verl framework and GRPO algorithm, fashions had been evaluated on a variety of duties, together with math, code, logic, science, simulation, and tables, utilizing constant metrics. Outcomes confirmed that GURU fashions outperformed domain-specific baselines and carried out effectively on unseen duties. Notably, evaluation of Cross@okay revealed that efficiency is dependent upon activity sort, mannequin dimension, and decoding settings. Bigger fashions benefited extra from RL, and tweaking sampling parameters, corresponding to temperature and top-p, helped enhance mannequin variety and reasoning protection.

Abstract: Normal-Goal Reasoning with GURU
In conclusion, GURU is a curated RL dataset containing 92,000 high-quality, verifiable examples throughout six reasoning domains: Math, Code, Science, Logic, Simulation, and Tabular. Not like prior RL analysis, which has centered primarily on math and code, GURU permits broader reasoning research by offering domain-specific reward alerts. The researchers practice two fashions, GURU-7B and GURU-32B, which obtain state-of-the-art outcomes on 17 benchmark duties, notably excelling in domains underrepresented throughout pretraining. Their findings present RL can each refine present information and foster new reasoning talents. All knowledge, fashions, and code are publicly launched to help additional general-purpose reasoning analysis.
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