Greedy Is a Strong Default: Agents as Iterative Optimizers

📰 ArXiv cs.AI

Using LLM agents as iterative optimizers can improve classical optimization algorithms by proposing informed candidates

advanced Published 31 Mar 2026
Action Steps
  1. Replace random proposal generators with LLM agents in classical optimization algorithms
  2. Evaluate the performance of LLM agents on discrete, mixed, and continuous tasks
  3. Analyze the effectiveness of LLM agents in proposing informed candidates
  4. Integrate LLM agents with classical optimization machinery to improve overall performance
Who Needs to Know This

ML researchers and AI engineers can benefit from this approach to improve optimization tasks, and software engineers can implement these methods in various applications

Key Insight

💡 LLM agents can be used as iterative optimizers to improve the performance of classical optimization algorithms

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💡 LLM agents can improve classical optimization algorithms by proposing informed candidates

Key Takeaways

Using LLM agents as iterative optimizers can improve classical optimization algorithms by proposing informed candidates

Full Article

Title: Greedy Is a Strong Default: Agents as Iterative Optimizers

Abstract:
arXiv:2603.27415v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Classical optimization algorithms--hill climbing, simulated annealing, population-based methods--generate candidate solutions via random perturbations. We replace the random proposal generator with an LLM agent that reasons about evaluation diagnostics to propose informed candidates, and ask: does the classical optimization machinery still help when the proposer is no longer random? We evaluate on four tasks spanning discrete, mixed, and continuous
Read full paper → ← Back to Reads

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