mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Silence the Judge: Reinforcement Learning with Self-Verifier via Latent Geometric Clustering

arXiv 2601.08427 ↗First posted 13 Jan 2026cs.CL cs.LGcited by 6

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reinforcement learning for reasoning

Abstract (arXiv)

Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) significantly enhances the reasoning performance of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, this success heavily relies on expensive external verifiers or human rules. Such dependency not only leads to significant computational costs and training latency, but also yields sparse rewards that hinder optimization efficiency. To address these challenges, we propose Latent-GRPO, a framework that derives intrinsic rewards directly from latent space geometry. Crucially, our empirical analysis reveals a compelling geometric property: terminal token representations of correct reasoning trajectories form dense clusters with high intra-class similarity, whereas incorrect trajectories remain scattered as outliers. In light of this discovery, we introduce the Iterative Robust Centroid Estimation (IRCE) algorithm, which generates dense, continuous rewards by mitigating magnitude fluctuations via spherical projection and estimating a robust ``truth centroid'' through iterative aggregation. Experimental results on multiple datasets show that our method maintains model performance while achieving a training speedup of over 2x compared to baselines. Furthermore, extensive results demonstrate strong generalization ability and robustness. The code will be released soon.

Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reinforcement learning for reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 33 of its 47 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 13 Jan 2026.

Builds on

33 of 47 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Hybrid Reinforcement: When Reward Is Sparse, It's Better to Be Dense8 Oct
  2. 2025Reinforcing General Reasoning without Verifiers27 May
  3. 2025TinyV: Reducing False Negatives in Verification Improves RL for LLM Reasoning20 May
  4. 2025Understanding R1-Zero-Like Training: A Critical Perspective26 Mar
  5. 2025Process Reinforcement through Implicit Rewards3 Feb
  6. 2023Let's Verify Step by Step31 May
  7. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model29 May
  8. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms20 Jul

Other references · 25

  1. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  2. 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,393
  3. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
  4. 2020Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understandingcited by 7,768
  5. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,203
  6. 2020Learning to summarize from human feedbackcited by 2,562
  7. 2019Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferencescited by 2,124
  8. 2022Challenging BIG-Bench Tasks and Whether Chain-of-Thought Can Solve Themcited by 1,767
  9. 2022Scaling Laws for Reward Model Overoptimizationcited by 1,056
  10. 2021GLaM: Efficient Scaling of Language Models with Mixture-of-Expertscited by 890
  11. 2020Prevalence of Neural Collapse during the terminal phase of deep learning trainingcited by 713
  12. 2023The Geometry of Truth: Emergent Linear Structure in Large Language Model Representations of True/False Datasetscited by 673
13 more
  1. 2025Scaling up Test-Time Compute with Latent Reasoning: A Recurrent Depth Approachcited by 372
  2. 2023Think before you speak: Training Language Models With Pause Tokenscited by 254
  3. 2019A Study of BFLOAT16 for Deep Learning Trainingcited by 227
  4. 2023Platypus: Quick, Cheap, and Powerful Refinement of LLMscited by 150
  5. 2024Fast Best-of-N Decoding via Speculative Rejectioncited by 112
  6. 2024Forest-of-Thought: Scaling Test-Time Compute for Enhancing LLM Reasoningcited by 110
  7. 2024Transformers represent belief state geometry in their residual streamcited by 73
  8. 2023PLANNER: Generating Diversified Paragraph via Latent Language Diffusion Modelcited by 56
  9. 2024Latent Space Chain-of-Embedding Enables Output-free LLM Self-Evaluationcited by 56
  10. 2024Language Models are Hidden Reasoners: Unlocking Latent Reasoning Capabilities via Self-Rewardingcited by 53
  11. 2025Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable yet Noisy Rewards under Imperfect Verifierscited by 40
  12. 2025Knowing Before Saying: LLM Representations Encode Information About Chain-of-Thought Success Before Completioncited by 22
  13. 2025Latent Thinking Optimization: Your Latent Reasoning Language Model Secretly Encodes Reward Signals in Its Latent Thoughtscited by 18

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Latent-GRPO: Group Relative Policy Optimization for Latent Reasoning
  2. 2026Dropout-GRPO: Variational Stochasticity for Continuous Latent Reasoning
  3. 2025Geometric-Mean Policy Optimization
  4. 2026Beyond Alignment: Expanding Reasoning Capacity via Manifold-Reshaping Policy Optimization
  5. 2025Scaf-GRPO: Scaffolded Group Relative Policy Optimization for Enhancing LLM Reasoning
  6. 2026AMIR-GRPO: Inducing Implicit Preference Signals into GRPO
  7. 2025Predictive Scaling Laws for Efficient GRPO Training of Large Reasoning Models
  8. 2026N-GRPO: Embedding-Level Neighbor Mixing for Enhanced Policy Optimization