arXiv AI By Jian Zhao, Haoren Luo, Yu Wang, Yuhan Cao, Pingyue Sheng, Tianxing He

Can Large Language Models Reinvent Foundational Algorithms?

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The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can reinvent foundational computer‑science algorithms by suppressing direct recall of target algorithms through unlearning techniques. Experiments show that LLMs fail to recover nearly half of the algorithms, and even without unlearning, recovery rates drop dramatically, indicating an overreliance on memorized knowledge. The study introduces a generative verifier to maintain reasoning strength and concludes that current LLMs have limited capacity for foundational algorithm innovation.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

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