Not the person you’re replying to, but I read the whole article as an admission that it’s still a next-token predictor. More specifically: what does RLVR fundamentally change that somehow makes the whole process no longer a next-token predictor? The article makes no attempt to explain this. Additionally, I find its framing of the term “next-token predictor” as meaning “predicting the next token only based on raw training data” in common usage to be a bit dishonest.

To summarize: yes, RLVR and other synthetic training methods exist! It’s still a next-token predictor, and it does not “learn” or “think” or “reason” in the human sense, like so many people seem to believe.