Kimi K3 training curves suggest better scores with fewer steps as RL FLOPs rise

prdeepakbabu · x · 2026-07-29

The Kimi K3 paper includes a chart showing that, for coding experience tasks, higher RL FLOPs correlate with higher scores while average steps start to drop mid-way.
The poster argues this may indicate the model is becoming more efficient or exploiting the task better, rather than continuing to explore inefficiently.
They note the pattern does not appear similarly in other domains, and wonder whether the reason is limited optimization headroom or a curriculum confounder.

More from Models