arXiv AI By Jackie Baek

LLMs Can Design Near-Optimal OR Algorithms

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The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can design effective algorithms for well-specified operations research (OR) problems, focusing on inventory control, queueing network control, and assortment optimization. Two usage levels are examined: (1) the model receives a single problem instance and outputs a solution, and (2) the model receives only a problem class description and returns a general algorithm mapping instance parameters to solutions. Using a single untuned prompt and a Python sandbox, the strongest tested model, gpt-5.6-sol, matches or surpasses existing methods on nearly all evaluated instances, even when the algorithm is fixed before seeing evaluation cases, and performance improves markedly across models released within eight months.

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