Related papers: Why Does RL Generalize Better Than SFT? A Data-Cen…

Large language models (LLMs) trained via pretraining and supervised fine-tuning (SFT) can still produce harmful and misaligned outputs, or struggle in domains like math and coding. Reinforcement learning (RL)-based post-training methods,…

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) has become a crucial step for aligning pretrained large language models (LLMs) using supervised datasets of input-output pairs. However, despite being supervised, SFT is inherently limited by its generative…

Some reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can stitch pieces of experience to solve a task never seen before during training. This oft-sought property is one of the few ways in which RL methods based on dynamic-programming differ from RL…

A large language model's (LLM's) out-of-distribution (OOD) generalisation ability is crucial to its deployment. Previous work assessing LLMs' generalisation performance, however, typically focuses on a single out-of-distribution dataset.…

Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are susceptible to jailbreak attacks: researchers have developed a variety of attack strategies that can successfully bypass the safety mechanisms of VLMs. Among these approaches, jailbreak methods based…

We consider the problem of OOD generalization, where the goal is to train a model that performs well on test distributions that are different from the training distribution. Deep learning models are known to be fragile to such shifts and…

Training large language models (LLMs) for reasoning via maths and code datasets has become a major new focus in LLM post-training. Two particularly popular approaches are reinforcement learning (RL) and supervised fine-tuning (SFT), but…

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).…

Post-training algorithms such as Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (RFT) are widely used to adapt (multimodal) large language models to downstream tasks. While effective at task adaptation, their impact on retaining…

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) is the predominant method for adapting large language models (LLMs), yet it often struggles with generalization compared to reinforcement learning (RL). In this work, we posit that this performance disparity…

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) on chain-of-thought (CoT) trajectories demonstrations is a common approach for enabling reasoning in large language models. Standard practices typically only retain trajectories with correct final answers…

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…

Data selection methods address a critical challenge in LLM post-training: effectively leveraging scarce, high-fidelity target data alongside abundant but imperfectly aligned general training data. In this work, we move beyond the…

With the availability of large pre-trained models, a modern workflow for building real-world machine learning solutions is to fine-tune such models on a downstream task with a relatively small domain-specific dataset. In such applications,…

While reinforcement learning (RL) successfully enhances reasoning in large language models, its role in fostering compositional generalization (the ability to synthesize novel skills from known components) is often conflated with mere…

Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) is a critical step in aligning large language models (LLMs) with human instructions and values, yet many aspects of SFT remain poorly understood. We trained a wide range of base models on a variety of datasets…

Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) on domain-specific datasets is a common approach to adapt Large Language Models (LLMs) to specialized tasks but is often believed to degrade their general capabilities. In this work, we revisit this trade-off…

Post-training has become central to turning pretrained large language models (LLMs) into aligned, capable, and deployable systems. Recent progress spans supervised fine-tuning (SFT), preference optimization, reinforcement learning (RL),…

Large Language Models (LLMs) show strong reasoning abilities, often amplified by Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting and reinforcement learning (RL). Although RL algorithms can substantially improve reasoning, they struggle to expand reasoning…

Reinforcement learning (RL) is often credited with improving language model reasoning and generalization at the expense of degrading memorized knowledge. We challenge this narrative by observing that RL-enhanced models consistently…