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Review Supervised Fine-Tuning

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Definition

SFT stands for supervised fine-tuning, a stage where a pretrained model is further trained on labeled examples to improve task-following behavior.
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Plain-Language Explanation

Supervised Fine-Tuning, or SFT, continues training a pretrained model on labeled input-output examples that demonstrate the desired task or response behavior.
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Why It Matters

SFT can teach format, task behavior, and domain patterns, but it reproduces the strengths and blind spots of the demonstrations. Data selection and review remain central.
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Example

A pretrained language model is fine-tuned on prompts paired with carefully reviewed support answers so it learns the organization’s response style and escalation rules.
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Common Misconception

SFT is not the same as prompting and does not guarantee broad alignment. It changes model parameters based on a specific demonstration set.
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Remember It This Way

Show labeled examples, then continue training the model on them.
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Related Terms

* [[fine-tuning|Fine-Tuning]] * [[pretraining|Pretraining]] * [[supervised-learning|Supervised Learning]] * [[rlhf|RLHF]]
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Sources

* [Long Ouyang and colleagues, “Training Language Models to Follow Instructions with Human Feedback”](https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.02155) — documents supervised fine-tuning on human-written demonstrations as the first InstructGPT post-training stage.
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Learn More

* Compare [[fine-tuning|Fine-Tuning]], [[pretraining|Pretraining]], [[supervised-learning|Supervised Learning]], and [[rlhf|RLHF]] to place Supervised Fine-Tuning in the surrounding system. * Follow the cited source material above for the method, standard, or research context behind this draft.
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