用可读程序解析神经组合优化的决策逻辑,让黑箱变透明。
Interpreting Neural Combinatorial Optimization via Evolving Programmatic Bottlenecks

- 通过大模型自动生成可读程序库,每步动作由程序瓶颈控制。
- 在多个任务上保持原模型95%以上性能,且能揭示优化阶段变化。
- 适合想理解智能决策过程的研究者和工程部署人员。
神经组合优化(NCO)表现强劲,但其黑箱特性阻碍了实际应用与科学诊断。传统可解释性工具如概念瓶颈模型(CBMs)难以应对NCO动态、状态依赖的决策特性,且缺乏合适的概念词汇定义。为此,我们提出首个面向NCO的可解释框架——演化程序瓶颈(Evolving Programmatic Bottlenecks, EPB),将黑箱NCO模型提炼为人类可读的程序组合。EPB利用大语言模型(LLM)自主演化程序库,每个程序的每步动作分布作为瓶颈。该框架分两阶段迭代:第一阶段固定程序库容量,采用混合文本-数值梯度下降法,分别更新学生路由网络的数值梯度与程序的文本梯度;第二阶段通过故障导向扩展与冗余剪枝动态调整库容量。大量实验表明,EPB在多种任务中可保持原始模型95%以上的性能,并揭示了NCO行为随优化阶段的变化规律,其决策可近似为经典启发式算法的组合。本工作推动了可解释神经组合优化的发展,确立了EPB作为序列决策模型解释工具的潜力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) achieves strong performance, yet its black-box nature remains a key roadblock to deployment and scientific diagnosis. Standard interpretability tools, such as Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs), are ill-equipped for NCO, whose decisions are dynamic, state-dependent, and lack proper concept vocabulary definition. To close this gap, we introduce Evolving Programmatic Bottlenecks (EPB), to our knowledge, the first framework for interpreting NCO policies by distilling black-box NCO models into human-readable program portfolios. EPB employs an LLM to autonomously evolve a bank of programs, where each program's per-step action distribution serves as the bottleneck. EPB works through an iterative framework: Block I fixes program bank capacity and introduces a hybrid textual-numerical gradient descent scheme that couples numerical gradients for student router updates and textual gradients for LLM-based program revision; Block II dynamically adapts bank capacity via fault-targeted expansion and redundancy pruning. Extensive experiments demonstrate EPB's effectiveness and broad applicability, where the distilled program portfolios largely match original performance. EPB also reveals that NCO behavior shifts across optimization stages and can be approximated as a composition of classic heuristic variants. Our work advances interpretable NCO and establishes EPB as a promising tool for interpreting sequential decision-making models.
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