Researcher warns: Stop using Tic-Tac-Toe as an RL bench for tiny models, it only teaches format compliance

cephaloform · x · 2026-08-14

AI researcher @cephaloform pointed out a recent trend of using Tic-Tac-Toe as a benchmark to train tiny models via reinforcement learning. He argues this is a flawed approach because the game is completely solved with solutions all over the internet. Training models on it essentially only teaches format compliance rather than genuine logical reasoning.

Related event: Researchers Warn Tic-Tac-Toe is a Polluted Benchmark for Small Models(2 posts)→

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