Can a 4B model outperform a 235B model on financial analysis for under $500?

Snorkel AI shared a talk by research scientist Charles Dickens at the AI Engineer World’s Fair. It says he discussed how verified financial data and reinforcement learning helped train a smaller finance agent, and what the results reveal about tool use, task design and evaluation. Snorkel AI frames the talk around whether a 4B model can outperform a 235B model on financial analysis for under $500.