mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Uni-DPO: A Unified Paradigm for Dynamic Preference Optimization of LLMs

arXiv 2506.10054 ↗First posted 11 Jun 2025cs.LG cs.AI cs.CLcited by 9

On the map: LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation → LLM preference optimization methods

Abstract (arXiv)

Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a cornerstone of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) due to its simplicity and efficiency. However, existing DPO-based methods typically treat all preference pairs equally, overlooking substantial variations in data quality and learning difficulty, which leads to inefficient data utilization and suboptimal performance. To address this limitation, we propose Uni-DPO, a unified dynamic preference optimization framework that jointly considers (a) the inherent quality of preference pairs and (b) the model's evolving performance during training. By adaptively reweighting samples based on both factors, Uni-DPO enables more effective use of preference data and achieves superior performance. Extensive experiments across models and benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization of Uni-DPO. On textual tasks, Gemma-2-9B-IT fine-tuned with Uni-DPO surpasses the leading LLM, Claude 3 Opus, by 6.7 points on Arena-Hard. On mathematical and multimodal tasks, Uni-DPO consistently outperforms baseline methods across all benchmarks, providing strong empirical evidence of its effectiveness and robustness.

Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in LLM preference optimization methods, one of 10 directions in LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation. Builds on 92 of its 169 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Jun 2025.

Builds on

92 of 169 references.

Closest ancestors · 16

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Pre-DPO: Improving Data Utilization in Direct Preference Optimization Using a Guiding Reference Model22 Apr
  2. 2025Less is More: Improving LLM Alignment via Preference Data Selection20 Feb
  3. 2025Earlier Tokens Contribute More: Learning Direct Preference Optimization From Temporal Decay Perspective20 Feb
  4. 2024Uncertainty-Penalized Direct Preference Optimization26 Oct
  5. 2024Understanding Reference Policies in Direct Preference Optimization18 Jul
  6. 2024Towards Robust Alignment of Language Models: Distributionally Robustifying Direct Preference Optimization10 Jul
  7. 2024WPO: Enhancing RLHF with Weighted Preference Optimization17 Jun
  8. 2024Eliminating Biased Length Reliance of Direct Preference Optimization via Down-Sampled KL Divergence16 Jun
  9. 2024From r to Q^*: Your Language Model is Secretly a Q-Function18 Apr
  10. 2024Learn Your Reference Model for Real Good Alignment15 Apr
  11. 2024Towards Analyzing and Understanding the Limitations of DPO: A Theoretical Perspective6 Apr
  12. 2024Disentangling Length from Quality in Direct Preference Optimization28 Mar
4 more
  1. 2024Smaug: Fixing Failure Modes of Preference Optimisation with DPO-Positive20 Feb
  2. 2024Direct Preference Optimization with an Offset16 Feb
  3. 2024Relative Preference Optimization: Enhancing LLM Alignment through Contrasting Responses across Identical and Diverse Prompts12 Feb
  4. 2021A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment1 Dec

Other references · 76

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  2. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  3. 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 13,028
  4. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
  5. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  6. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,820
  7. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
  8. 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
  9. 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,942
  10. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,588
  11. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,234
  12. 2023Let's Verify Step by Stepcited by 3,789
38 more
  1. 2022Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 3,720
  2. 2024Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of contextcited by 3,224
  3. 2023MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Modelscited by 2,711
  4. 2019Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferencescited by 2,150
  5. 2024Gemma 2: Improving Open Language Models at a Practical Sizecited by 1,998
  6. 2017Decoupled Weight Decay Regularizationcited by 1,831
  7. 2024Mixtral of Expertscited by 1,823
  8. 2023Evaluating Object Hallucination in Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 1,729
  9. 2023MME: A Comprehensive Evaluation Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 1,652
  10. 2022ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoningcited by 1,479
  11. 2025Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training: A Critical Perspectivecited by 1,345
  12. 2023Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Modelscited by 1,228
  13. 2024OlympiadBench: A Challenging Benchmark for Promoting AGI with Olympiad-Level Bilingual Multimodal Scientific Problemscited by 1,136
  14. 2024Qwen2.5-Math Technical Report: Toward Mathematical Expert Model via Self-Improvementcited by 1,090
  15. 2023SEED-Bench: Benchmarking Multimodal LLMs with Generative Comprehensioncited by 940
  16. 2024Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?cited by 914
  17. 2024Length-Controlled AlpacaEval: A Simple Way to Debias Automatic Evaluatorscited by 897
  18. 2024DeepSeek-V3 Technical Reportcited by 811
  19. 2023The RefinedWeb Dataset for Falcon LLM: Outperforming Curated Corpora with Web Data, and Web Data Onlycited by 763
  20. 2023Open Problems and Fundamental Limitations of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 759
  21. 2024Self-Rewarding Language Modelscited by 681
  22. 2023WizardMath: Empowering Mathematical Reasoning for Large Language Models via Reinforced Evol-Instructcited by 625
  23. 2025SimpleRL-Zoo: Investigating and Taming Zero Reinforcement Learning for Open Base Models in the Wildcited by 511
  24. 2025Process Reinforcement through Implicit Rewardscited by 504
  25. 2025Open-Reasoner-Zero: An Open Source Approach to Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning on the Base Modelcited by 461
  26. 2018Scalable agent alignment via reward modeling: a research directioncited by 447
  27. 2025The Lessons of Developing Process Reward Models in Mathematical Reasoningcited by 415
  28. 2023UltraFeedback: Boosting Language Models with Scaled AI Feedbackcited by 406
  29. 2024Interpretable Preferences via Multi-Objective Reward Modeling and Mixture-of-Expertscited by 376
  30. 2024VisionZip: Longer is Better but Not Necessary in Vision Language Modelscited by 313
  31. 2024ProcessBench: Identifying Process Errors in Mathematical Reasoningcited by 292
  32. 2023A Long Way to Go: Investigating Length Correlations in RLHFcited by 291
  33. 2024Step-DPO: Step-wise Preference Optimization for Long-chain Reasoning of LLMscited by 273
  34. 2024RLHF Workflow: From Reward Modeling to Online RLHFcited by 267
  35. 2023A Survey of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedbackcited by 264
  36. 2022Is Reinforcement Learning (Not) for Natural Language Processing: Benchmarks, Baselines, and Building Blocks for Natural Language Policy Optimizationcited by 246
  37. 2023Secrets of RLHF in Large Language Models Part I: PPOcited by 229
  38. 2023Beyond Hallucinations: Enhancing LVLMs through Hallucination-Aware Direct Preference Optimizationcited by 225

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 7.

9 papers.

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Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024A Comprehensive Survey of Direct Preference Optimization: Datasets, Theories, Variants, and Applications
  2. 2025A Survey of Direct Preference Optimization
  3. 2024MallowsPO: Fine-Tune Your LLM with Preference Dispersions
  4. 2024New Desiderata for Direct Preference Optimization
  5. 2024Minor DPO reject penalty to increase training robustness
  6. 2024SimPO: Simple Preference Optimization with a Reference-Free Reward
  7. 2024AlphaDPO: Adaptive Reward Margin for Direct Preference Optimization
  8. 2025Active Learning for Direct Preference Optimization