arXiv AI

When Is an LLM Worth It for Hyperparameter Optimization? A Budget-Matched Study on Tabular Data Finds the Warm-Start Is a Default Configuration, Not the Model

arXiv:2606. 21641v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been proposed as hyperparameter-optimization (HPO) advisors that "warm-start" search from prior knowledge, proposing strong configurations in very few evaluations.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 25

ASAP: Agent-System Co-Design for Wall-Clock-Centered Auto HPO Research for ML Experiments

arXiv:2606. 25207v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Hyperparameter Optimization (HPO) is essential for maximizing machine learning model performance, and its core challenge is sample efficiency: finding strong configurations within a limited budget.

By Taicheng Guo, Haomin Zhuang, Kehan Guo, Yujun Zhou, Nitesh V. Chawla, Olaf Wiest, Xiangliang Zhang
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 28

Agents Don't Paginate: First-Chunk Selection for LLM Tool Responses

The paper investigates why large‑language‑model coding agents rarely request a second chunk of tool output, focusing on the precision‑at‑1 rate ($p_1$) of the gold item appearing first in the first chunk. In a benchmark of 500 software‑engineering tasks, the authors compare six value functions and find that increasing $p_1$ does not systematically improve downstream accuracy; the agent can recover the correct answer from any position within the chunk. Adding file‑metadata signals to a keyword scorer actually reduces $p_1$, while a parameter‑free keyword scorer improves $p_1$ but still fails to boost overall accuracy.

By Tatiana Petrova, Andrei Mazniak, Radu State
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Sep 3

ESPO: Error-Structured Prompt Optimization via Diagnose, Diversify, and Stabilize

ESPO (Error-Structured Prompt Optimization) addresses prompt bloat in evolutionary prompt optimizers by separating optimization into Diagnose, Propose, and Select phases. It clusters training errors, generates diverse candidates, and applies bootstrap stability selection, achieving a 3.76‑point accuracy gain over GEPA on seven NLP benchmarks while producing 47% shorter prompts. Cross‑model tests on four additional student models confirm ESPO’s superior average accuracy, notably improving Qwen3 GSM8K from 15.00% to 91.40%.

arXiv AI
Aug 20

Pairwise Ranking Outperforms Single-Action RL for Offline Explanation Selection: A Practical Lesson

The paper presents a cost‑effective approach for industrial explainable‑recommendation systems by decoupling explanation generation from selection. Candidate explanations are pre‑generated using six prompt styles and two commodity LLMs, then a lightweight CPU‑resident selector (e.g., LambdaRank) chooses the best one at request time, achieving sub‑100 ms latency without GPUs. Experiments on a 2,958‑pair Google Local subset and a 300‑pair MovieLens‑1M split show that pairwise ranking methods outperform single‑action RL baselines, while KG‑path selectors achieve near‑perfect user satisfaction scores.

By Tanay Chowdhury, Saeideh Shahrokh Esfahani
arXiv AI
4d ago

OptiCom : A Unified Framework for State-Conditioned Composition in LLM-Driven Optimization

OptiCom introduces a unified framework for state-conditioned composition in large language model (LLM)-driven optimization. It models LLM optimizers within a shared configuration space (artifact, query, operator, evaluation, memory, strategy) and uses an Optimization Controller to dynamically compose mechanisms while a Strategy Adapter refines long-term preferences. Experiments on 32 benchmark groups show OptiCom outperforms 14 configurations, achieving the top score in 23 groups.

By Chenxing Wei, Sichen Liu, Lizhao Liu, Ningyuan Sun, Chen Bingzhou, Ying He, Bo Jiang, Fei Yu, Yao Shu
arXiv AI
Sep 4

ESPO: Error-Structured Prompt Optimization via Diagnose, Diversify, and Stabilize

ESPO (Error-Structured Prompt Optimization) addresses prompt bloat in evolutionary prompt optimizers by splitting the optimization process into Diagnose, Propose, and Select phases. It clusters training errors into structural patterns, generates diverse candidate prompts through four complementary strategies, and applies bootstrap stability selection. Across seven NLP benchmarks, ESPO improves average accuracy by +3.76 pp over GEPA, produces prompts 47 % shorter, and achieves higher accuracy on four additional student models, with the largest gain on Qwen3 GSM8K.

By Lihao Liu, Peng Tang, Kunwar Yashraj Singh, Shabnam Ghadar
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 19

Pairwise Ranking Outperforms Single-Action RL for Offline Explanation Selection: A Practical Lesson

The paper presents a cost‑effective approach for industrial explainable‑recommendation systems by decoupling explanation generation from selection. Explanations are pre‑generated using six prompt styles and two commodity LLMs, then a lightweight CPU‑resident selector (e.g., LambdaRank) chooses the best one at request time, achieving sub‑100 ms latency without GPUs. Experiments on a 2,958‑pair Google Local subset and a 300‑pair MovieLens‑1M split show that pairwise ranking outperforms single‑action RL methods, while KG‑path selectors achieve near‑perfect unique‑output rates, and the overall end‑to‑end build cost is around $15 on commodity hardware.