Position: Don't Just "Fix it in Post": A Science of AI Must Study Training Dynamics

2026-06-03

AI Summary

Current AI research often treats models as static artifacts, overlooking the fundamental influence of training dynamics on critical properties such as capability, bias, robustness, and safety. This work proposes shifting the focus toward the training process itself to establish a science of AI centered on training dynamics. By analyzing the interactions among data, objectives, architectures, and optimizers, the paper develops a theoretical framework that is predictive, intervenable, and design-oriented. Integrating approaches from mechanistic interpretability, fairness, memory mechanisms, and simplicity biases, it uncovers causal links between early-training signals and final model behavior. The study systematically outlines key challenges and open problems, offering both theoretical pathways and practical foundations for extending scaling laws beyond performance to encompass multidimensional model attributes.

Abstract

What would it mean to have a scientific understanding of AI? Models are not static objects: they are snapshots of time-evolving processes shaped by data, objectives, architectures, and optimization dynamics. Yet much of AI research treats models as fixed artifacts, analyzing behaviors after training rather than asking why they emerge. This position paper argues that a science of AI must move beyond post-hoc fixes and study the training dynamics that produce model behavior. Such a science should support progressively stronger forms of understanding: predicting outcomes from early training signals, intervening when trajectories go wrong, and ultimately designing training procedures that more reliably produce desired properties. Scaling laws have made prediction routine for loss; the challenge is extending this success to capabilities, biases, robustness, and safety-relevant behaviors. We articulate requirements for such theories grounded in the history and philosophy of science, examine progress in mechanistic interpretability, fairness, memorization, and simplicity bias, and identify concrete open problems.

Problem

• training dynamics
• AI science
• model behavior
• predictability
• safety

Innovation

• training dynamics
• predictive understanding
• intervention in training
• AI science
• scaling laws