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Understanding Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback Part 3: Collecting Human Preferences

In Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF), human preference collection involves generating multiple responses for a given prompt and asking people to select the preferred one, which is faster than manual response writing. This collected preference data is then used to train the model to assign higher scores to preferred responses, gradually aligning its outputs with human preferences.

read2 min views10 publishedMay 20, 2026

In the previous article we explored the concept of aligning the pretrained model. Now, we will look at the next component: human preference collection.

The first step in understanding RLHF is to understand that, given a specific prompt, a model can generate different responses.

One way to generate a response is to configure the model to always select the token with the highest output value at every step.

In this case, the model will generate the same response every single time for a given prompt.

Generating Different Responses #

Instead of always selecting the highest-value token, we can also use the outputs of the softmax function as probabilities for selecting tokens.

In this approach:

  • the token with the highest probability is more likely to be selected - but other tokens still have a chance of being selected

As a result, the model can generate different responses for the same prompt.

Collecting Human Preferences #

Since a model can generate multiple responses, we can create pairs of responses for the same prompt.

We can then ask people which response they prefer.

For example, given two possible answers, a person can simply choose the better one.

Collecting preferences like this is much faster than asking people to manually write responses for every prompt.

This preference collection process is the “Human Feedback” part of RLHF.

Using Preference Data #

Once we collect preference data, we can use it to train the model so that it assigns higher scores to preferred responses and lower scores to less preferred ones.

Over time, this helps the model generate responses that better match human preferences.

In the next article, we will explore how to train the model using this preference data.

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