> AlphaEvolve is an optimization tool from Google. It differs from traditional tools because the search is guided by an LLM, whose job is to mutate a program wr

> AlphaEvolve is an optimization tool from Google. It differs from traditional tools because the search is guided by an LLM, whose job is to mutate a program written in a normal programming language (they used Python). To clarify, AlphaEvolve is an evolutionary algorithm which uses a neural network (in this case an LLM), which is based on gradient descent, for mutation. Evolutionary algorithms are generally a less efficient form of optimization compared to gradient descent. But evolutionary algorithms can be applied more widely, e.g. to discrete problems which aren't directly differentiable, like the optimization of Python code. AlphaEvolve combines the two optimization approaches by replacing random mutation with the output of a gradient-based model.