Research Reveals Dual Nature of Generalization in LLM Distillation

IQuestLab · hf · 2026-08-24

This study investigates the generalization mechanisms in on-policy distillation of Large Language Models. It finds that distillation primarily transfers reasoning behaviors rather than specific answers. Generalization is strongly tied to the alignment of teacher-student origins, and multi-teacher combinations can lead to capability trade-offs.

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