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Pretraining and Reinforcement Learning Enter One Trainer

A likelihood-based formulation mixed static data and model-generated reinforcement-learning targets inside one training system.

Published Updated Story ID: mp-2026-11-01-010
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Summary

A likelihood-based formulation mixed static data and model-generated reinforcement-learning targets inside one training system.

Foundation-model development is usually divided into pretraining, midtraining, supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning, each with different algorithms. This work derives reinforcement-learning objectives as maximum-likelihood fits to model-generated target distributions, then mixes static examples and reinforcement-learning generations in one trainer. Controlled and real-world experiments reportedly improved the accuracy-compute tradeoff and task coverage while preserving broader capabilities. The paper presents staged training as one special schedule inside a unified framework; it does not show that data selection, reward design or safety objectives become interchangeable.

Why it matters

A likelihood-based formulation mixed static data and model-generated reinforcement-learning targets inside one training system.

Limits and context

  • The paper presents staged training as one special schedule inside a unified framework; it does not show that data selection, reward design or safety objectives become interchangeable.

Key claims

  1. A likelihood-based formulation mixed static data and model-generated reinforcement-learning targets inside one training system.

    Qualification: The paper presents staged training as one special schedule inside a unified framework; it does not show that data selection, reward design or safety objectives become interchangeable.

    Evidence: source-2026-11-01-010

Sources

  1. arXiv preprint 2610.40564, original v1arXiv · primary research

Corrections

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