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Thermodynamical AI method improves evolving code and descriptions

T-GADE: Thermodynamical Generative-AI-Driven Evolution of LLM Artifacts

Abstract: Integrating evolutionary computation and large language models (LLMs) requires control of population diversity as well as generative capability. Among LLM outputs, those with explicit structure, such as a description paired with code, are structured artifacts; we use artifact for short. We propose T-GADE, which evolves these artifacts by extending thermodynamical genetic algorithms through LLM-based genetic operators and artifact-level diversity evaluation. A common free-energy objective supports generational and steady-state updates, with Fermi-type occupancy excluding repeated genotypes and Bose-type occupancy permitting them. We establish exact one-member removal and conditions for recovering the zero-temperature survival rule of Evolution of Heuristics (EoH). On the online bin-packing task studied in the EoH paper, excess measures relative bin-count overhead above a volume lower bound. Training excess uses search instances; transfer excess uses instances with another bin capacity. Generational Bose-type T-GADE at $T=0.003$ reduced median training excess by approximately 29%, from 1.152% to 0.815%, over 20 runs per configuration (two-sided Mann-Whitney $p=0.042$, Cliff's $δ=0.378$). Validation selection among its two highest-ranked final candidates reached the same median transfer excess as EoH, 0.496%. These results demonstrate the utility of thermodynamical selection and validation-based use of retained artifacts.

Thu 10 SeptArtificial IntelligenceNeural and Evolutionary Computing
The gist
Combining evolutionary computing with large language models (LLMs) can create better sets of structured outputs like paired descriptions and code. The authors propose a method called T-GADE that uses a physics-inspired selection process to evolve these paired artifacts while keeping diversity in the population. They tested this approach on a bin-packing problem and showed it reduces waste compared to previous methods. Their results confirm that this thermodynamics-based selection helps find better solutions and reuse good results.
Open 2609.12286v1