让AI主动设计优化算法,减少试错,效率更高。
AHD Agent: Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Automatic Heuristic Design

- AI自主决定生成规则或调用工具获取环境信息
- 在8个领域任务中,40亿参数模型超越更大模型表现
- 适合想实现自动算法设计的研究者和工程师
自动启发式设计(AHD)为解决NP-hard组合优化问题提供了新路径。近期研究显示,将大语言模型(LLMs)融入精心设计的框架(即LLM-AHD),可自主发现高性能启发式规则。但现有框架通常将LLM视为固定流程中的被动生成器,上下文由人工设计且有限,难以捕捉状态依赖信息(如特定失败模式),导致探索效率低下。为此,我们提出AHD Agent,一种集成工具的多轮交互框架,使LLM能主动判断是否生成启发式规则或调用工具从求解环境中检索目标证据。为有效训练此动态决策代理,我们引入一种新型智能体强化学习(agentic RL)系统,结合创新的环境合成管道,优化小型模型的通用化AHD能力。在八个不同领域、包括四个保留任务上的实验表明,我们的40亿参数代理在远少于评估次数的情况下,达到或超越现有最优基线,表现优于更大模型。模型与推理扩展分析进一步揭示,AHD Agent为真正自主启发式设计提供了可行路径。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Automatic heuristic design (AHD) has emerged as a promising paradigm for solving NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems (COPs). Recent works show that large language models (LLMs), when integrated into well-designed frameworks (i.e., LLM-AHD), can autonomously discover high-performing heuristics. However, existing LLM-AHD frameworks typically treat LLMs as passive generators within fixed workflows, where the model generates heuristics from manually designed, limited context. Such context may fail to capture state-dependent information (e.g., specific failure modes), leading to inefficient trial-and-error exploration. To overcome these limitations, we propose AHD Agent, a novel tool-integrated, multi-turn framework that empowers LLMs to proactively decide whether to generate heuristics or invoke tools to retrieve targeted evidence from the solving environment. To effectively train such a dynamic decision-making agent, we introduce an agentic reinforcement learning (RL) system, which leverages a novel environment synthesis pipeline to optimize a compact model's generalizable AHD capabilities. Experiments across eight diverse domains, including four held-out tasks, demonstrate that our 4B-parameter agent matches or surpasses state-of-the-art baselines using much larger models, while requiring significantly fewer evaluations. Model and inference scaling analysis further reveals that AHD Agent offers an effective trajectory toward truly autonomous heuristic design.
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