用大模型在核心战争中模拟动态对抗演化,发现系统趋向通用策略。
Digital Red Queen: Adversarial Program Evolution in Core War with LLMs
- 通过持续更新目标的自对弈机制,让大模型演化对抗程序。
- 演化出的程序越来越通用,但行为多样性下降,趋同于通用策略。
- 适合关注对抗演化、自适应系统与安全攻防的研究者。
大型语言模型(LLMs)正被用于多个领域的问题求解,其过程受生物进化启发。然而,多数基于LLM的演化框架被视为静态优化问题,忽略了真实演化中开放式的对抗动态。本文研究了数字红皇后(Digital Red Queen, DRQ),一种简单的自对弈算法,通过持续适应变化的目标来体现所谓的“红皇后”动态。DRQ利用大模型演化类汇编程序,称为战士(warriors),这些战士在核心战争(Core War)这一图灵完备环境中竞争虚拟机控制权,该环境是人工生命研究的一部分,并与网络安全相关。每轮DRQ中,模型生成新战士以击败所有历史对手,形成一系列适应性战士序列。经过多轮演化,我们观察到战士相对于一组保留的人类战士变得越来越通用;同时,不同独立运行中的战士行为多样性降低,表明存在向通用行为策略收敛的压力,类似自然界中的趋同演化。这一结果凸显了从静态目标转向动态红皇后目标的潜在价值。本工作将核心战争定位为研究人工系统中对抗适应性的丰富可控沙盒,并评估基于大模型的演化方法。更广泛地说,DRQ的简洁与高效暗示,类似极简的自对弈方法可能在其他更具实用性的多智能体对抗领域(如真实世界网络安全或抗药性应对)中也具应用潜力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used to evolve solutions to problems in many domains, in a process inspired by biological evolution. However, unlike biological evolution, most LLM-evolution frameworks are formulated as static optimization problems, overlooking the open-ended adversarial dynamics that characterize real-world evolutionary processes. Here, we study Digital Red Queen (DRQ), a simple self-play algorithm that embraces these so-called "Red Queen" dynamics via continual adaptation to a changing objective. DRQ uses an LLM to evolve assembly-like programs, called warriors, which compete against each other for control of a virtual machine in the game of Core War, a Turing-complete environment studied in artificial life and connected to cybersecurity. In each round of DRQ, the model evolves a new warrior to defeat all previous ones, producing a sequence of adapted warriors. Over many rounds, we observe that warriors become increasingly general (relative to a set of held-out human warriors). Interestingly, warriors also become less behaviorally diverse across independent runs, indicating a convergence pressure toward a general-purpose behavioral strategy, much like convergent evolution in nature. This result highlights a potential value of shifting from static objectives to dynamic Red Queen objectives. Our work positions Core War as a rich, controllable sandbox for studying adversarial adaptation in artificial systems and for evaluating LLM-based evolution methods. More broadly, the simplicity and effectiveness of DRQ suggest that similarly minimal self-play approaches could prove useful in other more practical multi-agent adversarial domains, like real-world cybersecurity or combating drug resistance.
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