Rethinking "RL Generalizes, SFT Memorizes": The Role of SFT Data

Yunlong Hou, Fengzhuo Zhang, Yuan Cheng, Jiachun Pan, Xingyao Li, Zhuoran Yang

Keywords: Supervise Fine-tuning, Reinforcement Learning, Generalization

TL;DR: We rethink "RL Generalizes, SFT Memorizes" and show the importance of data source and scale on the generalization of SFT both empirically and theoretically.

Abstract: Large language models trained with Reinforcement Learning (RL) with verifiable rewards exhibit strong reasoning ability and broad generalization, whereas models trained with Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) are often viewed as more prone to memorization and limited transfer. This paper rethinks this distinction through the lens of SFT training data. First, we study the role of data source and show that it is critical: a carefully mixed SFT dataset substantially outperforms data generated solely by a larger model. Second, we study the role of data scale and show that matching the number of correct rollouts between SFT and RL greatly improves SFT generalization, while matching the total rollout budget enables SFT to generalize as well as RL. Combining these two factors further enables SFT to generalize even better than RL. Third, by using LLM annotations to characterize the solution methods in training rollouts, we show that larger datasets cover more tail methods and that these tail methods provide generalizable reasoning signals. Finally, we support these empirical findings theoretically by analyzing the training dynamics of shallow transformers under both RL and SFT.

Submission Number: 175