Emerging research consensus: RL compute and environments, not architecture tweaks, drive capability gains
burny_tech · x · 2026-09-23
In an X thread, burnytech argues an open research consensus is forming that recent architectural tweaks are mostly efficiency optimizations, while better RL environments, more RL compute, and better pretraining data are the primary drivers of capability gains. He adds a caveat: he hopes this consensus won't reduce exploration of paradigm-shifting architectures and training algorithms, warning against getting stuck in the current local optimum.
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