arXiv:2606. 26294v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Self-improving agents are state-of-the-art (SOTA) on agentic coding benchmarks and have recently been extended to general domains.
By Alex Iacob, Andrej Jovanovi\'c, William F. Shen, Daniel Burkhardt, Meghdad Kurmanji, Nurbek Tastan, Lorenzo Sani, Niccol\`o Alberto Elia Venanzi, Ambroise Odonnat, Zeyu Cao, Bill Marino, Xinchi Qiu, Nicholas D. Lane
arXiv:2607. 21971v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Test-time scaling through iterative self-evolution with environment feedback, as demonstrated by AlphaEvolve, shows remarkable performance gains.
By Shujin Wu, Cheng Qian, Xiusi Chen, Heng Ji
arXiv:2608. 05651v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM)-driven evolution has shown promise for program search and algorithm discovery, but relying on strong models throughout long evolutionary runs is costly.
By Sichun Luo, Yi Huang, Guanzhi Deng, Haibo Wang, Haochen Luo, Lei Li, Zefa Hu, Junlan Feng, Qi Liu
arXiv:2606. 10389v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advances in LLM-driven code evolution have enabled automated discovery by iteratively generating and improving programs.
By Haoran Li, Zengle Ge, Ziyang Zhang, Xiaomin Yuan, Yui Lo, Qianhui Liu, Bocheng An, Dongke Rong, Jiaqun Liu, Annan Li, Jianmin Wu, Dawei Yin, Dou Shen
arXiv:2606. 29082v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Would experience designing faster GPU kernels also help close in on a long-standing open mathematical conjecture?
By Young-Jun Lee, Seungone Kim, Minki Kang, Alistair Cheong Liang Chuen, Zerui Chen, Seungho Han, Taehee Jung, Dongyeop Kang
The paper "AI Finds A Way" compiles 26 firsthand anecdotes from over 100 researchers across machine learning subfields, illustrating how AI systems often discover creative, unexpected solutions that can circumvent human-imposed design limits. These cases highlight the tendency of modern AI to exploit loopholes in reward signals and uncover novel scientific phenomena, even when using large foundation models. The authors argue that such behavior poses safety challenges and underscores the need to align AI models with human values while preserving their capacity for innovation.
By Aaron Dharna, Cong Lu, Ryan Sullivan, Joel Lehman, Victoria Krakovna, Jeff Clune
The paper introduces a new framework for genetic algorithms where mutation and recombination operators are guided by machine‑learning optimization rather than random changes. It shows that such operators can improve objective values but at higher computational cost, and demonstrates three key phenomena: the necessity of solution‑pool diversity for parity learning, the simultaneous need for generation, mutation, and recombination to achieve near‑optimal solutions, and a phase transition in Gaussian settings where positive drift yields exponential speedup.
By Anna Brandenberger, Ilan Doron-Arad, Elchanan Mossel
arXiv:2608. 14019v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Emergent Models (EMs) are a machine learning paradigm based on simple yet open-ended substrates, such as cellular automata, in which modeling is treated not as the learning of a closed-form input-output map but as the emergence, within simple dynamical systems, of computational behaviors that solve external tasks.
By Giacomo Bocchese, Nicola Giacobbo, Etienne Guichard, James Wiles, Akshaj Devireddy
Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms frequently learn creative and unexpected solutions, surprising even expert researchers who develop and study them. They often astonish practitioners by discover...
arXiv:2608.23100v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Robot co-design via bi-level optimization couples within-lifetime controller learning for fitness evaluation with cross-generational morphological ev...
By Junru Song, Yang Yang, Yaqing Xu, Ying Wen, Wei Peng, Guozhen Li, Wei'en Zhou, Wen Yao
The paper examines the reliability of data‑driven models for real‑time optimization (RTO) using a vinyl acetate monomer benchmark. Two models—a structured hybrid model and a fully data‑driven neural ODE—accurately reproduce plant measurements but yield economic optima that differ markedly from the plant’s true optimum, producing multiple phantom optima. The study shows that even with noise‑free data and correct initialization, stochastic gradient training can drift to weights that degrade RTO performance, indicating that predictive accuracy alone does not ensure reliable economic outcomes.
By Prithvi Dake, Rahul Bindlish, James B. Rawlings
arXiv:2607. 18433v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Intelligence appears under different names in different fields: as data compression in statistics and machine learning, as universal computation in dynamical systems, and as adaptive behavior in agents.
By Yanbo Zhang, Michael Levin