Tim Lee: Post-Training, Not Pre-Training, Drives LLM Capability
Tech writer Tim Lee argues that pre-training is essentially imitation learning while post-training is mostly reinforcement learning, calling the belief that most LLM capability comes from pre-training an outdated "zombie view" stuck in 2023-2024.
2026-11-02 ~ 2026-11-03 · 3 related posts
- Tim Lee calls "capabilities come from pretraining" a zombie idea from 2023 — binarybits · 2026-11-02
- 'Zombie ideas': many still believe most LLM capability comes from pretraining, says AI explainer author — batterystaple42 · 2026-11-03
- Tim Lee: Pretraining is imitation learning, post-training is reinforcement learning — binarybits · 2026-11-03