arxivcs.LG2026-07-05
On the effectiveness of reward functions in reinforcement learning for confidence calibration of large language models
Chee Heng Tan, Zhuoyi Lin, Mehul Motani, Wee Sun Lee
In this paper, we consider the setting where large language models (LLMs) are trained using reinforcement learning (RL) to simultaneously improve reasoning accuracy and verbalize its confidence. Our reward scheme uses two functions for rewarding confidence verbalized by the LLM:…