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Day 20: 🧠RLHF — Why LLMs Need Human Feedback to Improve
3 min read2 days ago
Learn what RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) is, how it makes AI models like ChatGPT more helpful, and why developers should care.
📌 Part of the 30 Days of AI + Java Tips — simplifying powerful AI concepts for backend devs and builders.
🤔 What Is RLHF?
RLHF stands for Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback.
It’s the process that fine-tunes large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT after their initial training, using human ratings and reward signals to teach the model what kind of answers are best.
Think of it as:
“The model learns to speak better — because real people tell it what sounds right.”
🎯 Why Do LLMs Need It?
Training on raw internet text alone doesn’t teach models:
- How to respond kindly
- What tone to use
- When to admit uncertainty
- What’s useful vs irrelevant
RLHF helps align models with human preferences by:
- Letting humans rank answers
- Using those rankings to train a reward model
- Reinforcing that reward model with techniques like PPO…
