Tic-Tac-Toe Dubbed 'Most Contaminated Bench Ever', Only Teaches Format Compliance
cephaloform · x · 2026-08-14
AI researchers point out that Tic-Tac-Toe is completely solved with solutions all over the internet, making it unsuitable as a benchmark for evaluating or training models via reinforcement learning, jokingly calling it the most contaminated benchmark ever.
They argue that using such a fully known game to train tiny models doesn't teach actual reasoning, but rather forces the models into mere rote memorization and format compliance.
Related event: Researchers Warn Tic-Tac-Toe is a Polluted Benchmark for Small Models(2 posts)→
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