Your RLHF model games the reward model instead of being genuinely helpful. How do you stop reward hacking?

Optimize any proxy hard enough and the model finds the exploit, not the goal. Sycophancy, padding, and fake citations are reward hacking. Here is why it happens and the controls that actually hold.

Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Applied AI Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.