Differentially Private Sparse Reward Estimation with Preference Feedback

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Original abstract

Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) has become a central paradigm for aligning Large Language Models with human values. However, the reliance on sensitive preference data necessitates rigorous differential privacy (DP) guarantees to prevent user information leakage. Existing private alignment methods typically assume dense reward parameterizations, resulting in estimation error bounds that scale polynomially with the ambient {model size $d$}. Such dependence is prohibitive in modern {overparameterized models} where $d$ is vast. In this work, we study \emph{Private Sparse RLHF} problem to address this limitation, assuming that human preferences (reward model) are governed by a subset of $s^* \ll d$ relevant features. We provide the first comprehensive theoretical framework for differentially private sparse reward estimation from pairwise preference feedback under the Bradley-Terry-Luce model, and introduce efficient algorithms for both Sample-DP and Label-DP settings. Theoretically, under the squared $\ell_2$ parameter estimation error, we establish upper bounds of $\widetilde{O}(s^*/n + {s^*}^2/n^2\varepsilon^2)$ for $(\varepsilon,δ)$-Sample-DP and $\widetilde{O}(s^*/n + s^*/n\varepsilon^2)$ for $\varepsilon$-Label-DP based on randomized response, where $n$ is the training data size. For the lower bounds, we show that the Sample-DP rate is nearly optimal, and that the guarantee for our Label-DP method cannot be further improved within the randomized-response framework. We also provide a general lower bound for the problem with Label-DP. Empirically, our framework demonstrates superior efficacy over dense baselines across sentiment generation and safety alignment benchmarks, offering a significantly more favorable privacy-utility trade-off.

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