What is instruction tuning, and how does it differ from pretraining and alignment?
Instruction tuning converts a bare next-token predictor into a model that obeys instructions. What you are being tested on is slotting it correctly into the pretrain to SFT to alignment pipeline and stating precisely what it does and does not repair.
Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real GenAI, LLM, and AI/ML engineering interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Instruction tuning converts a bare next-token predictor into a model that obeys instructions. What you are being tested on is slotting it correctly into the pretrain to SFT to alignment pipeline and stating precisely what it does and does not repair.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
