Synthetic Data Lacks a Moat; Human Expertise Remains the Core Value
himanshustwts · x · 2026-08-09
Echoing the view that synthetic data companies have underwhelmed, the author argues that human judgment remains irreplaceable in generating RL data.
Synthesizing tasks requires heavy human curation across multiple dimensions like authenticity, difficulty calibration, business relevance, and context sufficiency. Since models cannot reliably identify the frontier of their own mistakes, organizing millions of human experts to solve hard problems is the true key to creating durable value and training frontier intelligence.
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