Researcher pre-registers predictions on tokenizer's effect before model release

RylanSchaeffer · x · 2026-10-29

Rylan Schaeffer says he has requested the model checkpoints and publicly pre-registered his predictions: the new tokenizer achieves lower bpb on both correct and incorrect answer choices for downstream benchmarks, and downstream performance will be roughly unchanged. The mechanism: it has not learned to separate correct from incorrect answers. The pre-registration approach offers a testable way to judge whether tokenizer changes actually improve capability.

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