$f$-Trajectory Balance: A Loss Family for Tuning GFlowNets, Generative Models, and LLMs with Off- and On-Policy Data
In GFlowNets and variational inference, it has been shown that the mean square error between target and model log probabilities is an effective, low variance, surrogate loss for training generative models. This loss has the property that when evaluated \emph{on-policy} its gradients correspond to those of the KL divergence, while \emph{off-policy} it remains a valid loss with the same global minimizer. In this work, we demonstrate that this construction can be extended to the whole family of $f$-divergences, leading to a family of losses whose on-policy gradients are that of the corresponding $f$-divergence, but retain the same global minimizer off-policy. Specifically, we show that the o...
| Authors | Jake Fawkes, Jason Hartford |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 14 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 14 May 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.