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Post-training processes are essential phases in grounding pre-trained language models to real-world tasks, with learning from demonstrations or preference signals playing a crucial role in this adaptation. We present a unified theoretical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-08 Bo Wang , Qinyuan Cheng , Runyu Peng , Rong Bao , Peiji Li , Qipeng Guo , Linyang Li , Zhiyuan Zeng , Yunhua Zhou , Xipeng Qiu

Data selection during supervised fine-tuning (SFT) can critically change the behavior of large language models (LLMs). Although existing work has studied the effect of selecting data based on heuristics such as perplexity, difficulty, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Siyuan Liu , Tinghong Chen , Xinghan Li , Yifei Wang , Jingzhao Zhang

In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant potential in complex reasoning tasks like mathematical problem-solving. However, existing research predominantly relies on reinforcement learning (RL) frameworks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-12 ShaoZhen Liu , Xinting Huang , Houwen Peng , Xin Chen , Xinyang Song , Qi Li , Zhenan Sun

Modern instruction-tuned large language models (LLMs) have made remarkable progress in code generation. However, these LLMs fine-tuned with standard supervised fine-tuning (SFT) sometimes generate plausible-looking but functionally…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Lishui Fan , Zhongxin Liu , Haoye Wang , Lingfeng Bao , Xin Xia , Shanping Li

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable performance across a wide range of tasks. Advances in prompt engineering and fine-tuning techniques have further enhanced their ability to address complex reasoning challenges.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-12-16 Jing Bi , Yuting Wu , Weiwei Xing , Zhenjie Wei

Harnessing the power of human-annotated data through Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) is pivotal for advancing Large Language Models (LLMs). In this paper, we delve into the prospect of growing a strong LLM out of a weak one without the need…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-18 Zixiang Chen , Yihe Deng , Huizhuo Yuan , Kaixuan Ji , Quanquan Gu

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) is the standard approach for binary classification tasks such as toxicity detection, factuality verification, and causal inference. However, SFT often performs poorly in real-world settings with label noise,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Punya Syon Pandey , Zhijing Jin

The pre-training and fine-tuning paradigm has contributed to a number of breakthroughs in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Instead of directly training on a downstream task, language models are first pre-trained on large datasets with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-01 Vithursan Thangarasa , Abhay Gupta , William Marshall , Tianda Li , Kevin Leong , Dennis DeCoste , Sean Lie , Shreyas Saxena

Recent advances in large language model (LLM) reasoning have shown that sophisticated behaviors such as planning and self-reflection can emerge through reinforcement learning (RL). However, despite these successes, RL in its current form…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-12 Lu Ma , Hao Liang , Meiyi Qiang , Lexiang Tang , Xiaochen Ma , Zhen Hao Wong , Junbo Niu , Chengyu Shen , Runming He , Yanhao Li , Bin Cui , Wentao Zhang

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) is the standard approach for post-training large language models (LLMs), yet it often shows limited generalization. We trace this limitation to its default training objective: negative log likelihood (NLL).…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Gaotang Li , Ruizhong Qiu , Xiusi Chen , Heng Ji , Hanghang Tong

Understanding how language model capabilities transfer from pretraining to supervised fine-tuning (SFT) is fundamental to efficient model development and data curation. In this work, we investigate four core questions: RQ1. To what extent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Simin Fan , Dimitris Paparas , Natasha Noy , Binbin Xiong , Noveen Sachdeva , Berivan Isik

The prevailing approach to aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) typically relies on human or AI feedback and assumes access to specific types of preference datasets. In our work, we question the efficacy of such datasets and explore…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 Hao Sun

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) is a variant of RL where the policy is learned from a previously collected dataset of trajectories and rewards. In our work, we propose a practical approach to offline RL with large language models…

Current language model training commonly applies multi-task Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) using a homogeneous compute budget across all sub-datasets. This approach is fundamentally sub-optimal: heterogeneous learning dynamics cause…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Woosung Koh , Jeyoung Jeon , Youngjin Song , Yujin Cheon , Soowon Oh , Jaehyeong Choi , Se-Young Yun

Reasoning is a cognitive process of using evidence to reach a sound conclusion. The reasoning capability is essential for large language models (LLMs) to serve as the brain of the artificial general intelligence agent. Recent studies reveal…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Peiyi Wang , Lei Li , Liang Chen , Feifan Song , Binghuai Lin , Yunbo Cao , Tianyu Liu , Zhifang Sui

Large language models (LLMs) acquire substantial world knowledge during pre-training, which is further shaped by post-training techniques such as supervised fine-tuning (SFT). However, the impact of SFT on a model's knowledge remains…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Junjie Ye , Yuming Yang , Yang Nan , Shuo Li , Qi Zhang , Tao Gui , Xuanjing Huang , Peng Wang , Zhongchao Shi , Jianping Fan

Large Language Models (LLMs) are typically static after training, yet real-world applications require continual adaptation to new knowledge without degrading existing capabilities. Standard approaches to updating models, like full…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-08 Satyam Goyal , Anirudh Kanchi , Garv Shah , Prakhar Gupta

In recent years, continual learning with pre-training (CLPT) has received widespread interest, instead of its traditional focus of training from scratch. The use of strong pre-trained models (PTMs) can greatly facilitate knowledge transfer…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2024-08-16 Gengwei Zhang , Liyuan Wang , Guoliang Kang , Ling Chen , Yunchao Wei

The fine-tuning of pre-trained language models has a great success in many NLP fields. Yet, it is strikingly vulnerable to adversarial examples, e.g., word substitution attacks using only synonyms can easily fool a BERT-based sentiment…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2021-12-23 Xinhsuai Dong , Luu Anh Tuan , Min Lin , Shuicheng Yan , Hanwang Zhang

To acquire instruction-following capabilities, large language models (LLMs) undergo instruction tuning, where they are trained on instruction-response pairs using next-token prediction (NTP). Efforts to improve instruction tuning often…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Yuxin Xiao , Shujian Zhang , Wenxuan Zhou , Marzyeh Ghassemi , Sanqiang Zhao