arXiv AI

Interpreting Neural Combinatorial Optimization via Evolving Programmatic Bottlenecks

arXiv:2606. 19741v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) achieves strong performance, yet its black-box nature remains a key roadblock to deployment and scientific diagnosis.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 3

Overcoming the Weakest-Link Effect in LLM-Driven Program Optimization via Heterogeneous Edit Recombination

arXiv:2607. 28947v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to solve complex problems by searching over program space, offering a general paradigm for scientific problems that can be naturally represented and solved as programs.

By Jingwen Fu, Zhen Liu, Yuhan Liu, He Zhang, Nanning Zheng
arXiv AI
Jun 9

AlphaOPT: Formulating Optimization Programs with Self-Improving LLM Experience Library

arXiv:2510. 18428v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Optimization modeling underlies critical decision-making across industries, yet remains difficult to automate: natural-language problem descriptions must be translated into precise mathematical formulations and executable solver code.

By Minwei Kong, Ao Qu, Xiaotong Guo, Wenbin Ouyang, Chonghe Jiang, Han Zheng, Yining Ma, Dingyi Zhuang, Yuhan Tang, Junyi Li, Shenhao Wang, Haris Koutsopoulos, Hai Wang, Cathy Wu, Jinhua Zhao
arXiv AI
3d ago

Self-Evolving Harness on Multiple Tasks with the Agent as Its Own Optimizer

The paper introduces a self‑evolving harness framework where a frozen language‑model agent first solves tasks and then edits its own harness based on run records. Using a 49‑line seed harness, the evolved harness improves average scores on in‑distribution benchmarks by 4.48 points and on out‑of‑distribution benchmarks by 12.64 points, surpassing Codex on the former and matching it on the latter. Continued evolution on a specific out‑of‑distribution benchmark further raises performance, and the study analyzes emergent mechanisms such as output truncation and history compaction.

By Qiankai Xu
arXiv AI
Jul 20

Recursive Harness Self-Improvement

arXiv:2607. 15524v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Under model--harness co-evolution, harnesses are not merely inference-time scaffolds but data-generating components whose execution traces can shape future foundation models.

By Hyunin Lee, Jinglue Xu, Jeffrey Seely, Donghyun Lee, Matei Zaharia, Yujin Tang
arXiv AI
Jun 18

Breaking the Solver Bottleneck: Training Task Generators at the Learnable Frontier

arXiv:2606. 18284v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The limiting resource for training agents via reinforcement learning (RL) is increasingly frontier task supply: valid, solvable tasks just difficult enough to train the current model.

By Lorenz Wolf, Connor Watts, Roger Creus Castanyer, Geoffrey Bradway, Maxwill Lin, Augustine N. Mavor-Parker, Matthew Daborn-Sargent
arXiv AI
Aug 13

Behavior and Representation in Open-Weight Large Language Models for Combinatorial Optimization: From Feature Extraction to Algorithm Selection

arXiv:2512. 13374v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) open new perspectives for automation in optimization, yet little is known about whether their internal representations capture problem structure or algorithmic behavior.

By Francesca Da Ros, Luca Di Gaspero, Kevin Roitero