diff --git a/common/train.cpp b/common/train.cpp
index f38c25bd5..1eec3e3fb 100644
--- a/common/train.cpp
+++ b/common/train.cpp
@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@ struct ggml_tensor * randomize_tensor_normal(struct ggml_tensor * tensor, struct
             }
             break;
         default:
-            GGML_ASSERT(!"Unsupported tensor->n_dims");
+            die("Unsupported tensor->n_dims");
     };
     return tensor;
 }
@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@ struct ggml_tensor * randomize_tensor_uniform(struct ggml_tensor * tensor, struc
             }
             break;
         default:
-            GGML_ASSERT(!"Unsupported tensor->n_dims");
+            die("Unsupported tensor->n_dims");
     };
     return tensor;
 }
@@ -581,7 +581,7 @@ void load_opt_context_gguf(struct gguf_context * fctx, struct ggml_context * f_g
         copy_tensor_by_name(opt->lbfgs.lms,  f_ggml_ctx, LLM_TENSOR_OPTIMIZER_LBFGS_MEMORY_S);
         copy_tensor_by_name(opt->lbfgs.lmy,  f_ggml_ctx, LLM_TENSOR_OPTIMIZER_LBFGS_MEMORY_Y);
     } else {
-        throw std::runtime_error("unknown optimizer type\n");
+        die("unknown optimizer type\n");
     }
 }
 
diff --git a/examples/finetune/finetune.cpp b/examples/finetune/finetune.cpp
index c1227897c..548075493 100644
--- a/examples/finetune/finetune.cpp
+++ b/examples/finetune/finetune.cpp
@@ -1664,12 +1664,12 @@ int main(int argc, char ** argv) {
 
         if (opt_param_count_changed) {
             print_lora_params(&lora.hparams);
-            GGML_ASSERT(!"Provided rank differs from checkpoint file. To use different rank start finetune from scratch with empty input checkpoint, e.g --checkpoint-in ''. Aborting.");
+            die("Provided rank differs from checkpoint file. To use different rank start finetune from scratch with empty input checkpoint, e.g --checkpoint-in ''. Aborting.");
             // need to discard previous optimizer gradient statistics and opt_init with new shapes
             // TODO
         }
         if (opt_past_changed) {
-            GGML_ASSERT(!"Optimizer parameter '--opt-past N' differs from checkpoint file. To use different value finetune from scratch with empty input checkpoint, e.g --checkpoint-in ''. Aborting");
+            die("Optimizer parameter '--opt-past N' differs from checkpoint file. To use different value finetune from scratch with empty input checkpoint, e.g --checkpoint-in ''. Aborting");
             // need to discard previous optimizer past function value statistics and opt_init with new shapes
             // TODO
         }