Small Language Models for Efficient Agentic Tool Calling: Outperforming Large Models with Targeted Fine-tuning
This paper demonstrates that a single-epoch, domain-adapted fine-tuning of a 350M-parameter Small Language Model (OPT-350M) can significantly outperform larger models and existing baselines in tool-calling tasks, achieving a 77.55% pass rate on ToolBench and proving that targeted training can make generative AI more cost-effective and scalable for enterprise use.