Learning What Reinforcement Learning Can't: Interleaved Online
  Fine-Tuning for Hardest Questions
Authors: name: Lu Ma; name: Hao Liang; name: Meiyi Qiang; name: Lexiang Tang; name: Xiaochen Ma; name: Zhen Hao Wong; name: Junbo Niu; name: Chengyu Shen; name: Runming He; name: Bin Cui; name: Wentao Zhang
Published: 2025-06-09 08:11:20

Abstract: Recent advances in large language model (LLM) reasoning have shown that
sophisticated behaviors such as planning and self-reflection can emerge through
reinforcement learning (RL). However, despite these successes, RL in its
current form remains insufficient to induce capabilities that exceed the
limitations of the base model, as it is primarily optimized based on existing
knowledge of the model rather than facilitating the acquisition of new
information. To address this limitation, we employ supervised fine-tuning (SFT)
to learn what RL cannot, which enables the incorporation of new knowledge and
reasoning patterns by leveraging high-quality demonstration data. We analyze
the training dynamics of RL and SFT for LLM reasoning and find that RL excels
at maintaining and improving performance on questions within the model's
original capabilities, while SFT is more effective at enabling progress on
questions beyond the current scope of the model. Motivated by the complementary
strengths of RL and SFT, we introduce a novel training approach,
ReLIFT (Reinforcement Learning Interleaved
with Online Fine-Tuning). In ReLIFT, the model is primarily
trained using RL, but when it encounters challenging questions, high-quality
solutions are collected for fine-tuning, and the training process alternates
between RL and fine-tuning to enhance the model's reasoning abilities. ReLIFT
achieves an average improvement of over +5.2 points across five
competition-level benchmarks and one out-of-distribution benchmark compared to
other zero-RL models. Furthermore, we demonstrate that ReLIFT outperforms both
RL and SFT while using only 13\% of the detailed demonstration data,
highlighting its scalability. These results provide compelling evidence that
ReLIFT overcomes the fundamental limitations of RL and underscores the
significant potential.