Falcon engineer asks: what does RL add over SFT in a single-step decision process?
antoine_chaffin · x · 2026-10-14
Falcon research engineer Antoine Chaffin poses a technical question: what would RL bring in a single-step decision process compared to SFT on teacher labels? He then hints at the answer himself — unless it's not actually a single-step process, implying RL's advantage comes from multi-step exploration and credit assignment. A worthwhile discussion point on post-training method choices.
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