Search
Towards Explaining Monte-Carlo Tree Search by Using Its Enhancements
Kowalski, Jakub, Winands, Mark H. M., Wiśniewski, Maksymilian, Reda, Stanisław, Wilbik, Anna
--Typically, research on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) focuses on black-box models within the context of a general policy in a known, specific domain. This paper advocates for the need for knowledge-agnostic explainability applied to the subfield of XAI called Explainable Search, which focuses on explaining the choices made by intelligent search techniques. It proposes Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) enhancements as a solution to obtaining additional data and providing higher-quality explanations while remaining knowledge-free, and analyzes the most popular enhancements in terms of the specific types of explainability they introduce. So far, no other research has considered the explainability of MCTS enhancements. We present a proof-of-concept that demonstrates the advantages of utilizing enhancements.
AlphaEvolve: A coding agent for scientific and algorithmic discovery
Novikov, Alexander, Vũ, Ngân, Eisenberger, Marvin, Dupont, Emilien, Huang, Po-Sen, Wagner, Adam Zsolt, Shirobokov, Sergey, Kozlovskii, Borislav, Ruiz, Francisco J. R., Mehrabian, Abbas, Kumar, M. Pawan, See, Abigail, Chaudhuri, Swarat, Holland, George, Davies, Alex, Nowozin, Sebastian, Kohli, Pushmeet, Balog, Matej
In this white paper, we present AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary coding agent that substantially enhances capabilities of state-of-the-art LLMs on highly challenging tasks such as tackling open scientific problems or optimizing critical pieces of computational infrastructure. AlphaEvolve orchestrates an autonomous pipeline of LLMs, whose task is to improve an algorithm by making direct changes to the code. Using an evolutionary approach, continuously receiving feedback from one or more evaluators, AlphaEvolve iteratively improves the algorithm, potentially leading to new scientific and practical discoveries. We demonstrate the broad applicability of this approach by applying it to a number of important computational problems. When applied to optimizing critical components of large-scale computational stacks at Google, AlphaEvolve developed a more efficient scheduling algorithm for data centers, found a functionally equivalent simplification in the circuit design of hardware accelerators, and accelerated the training of the LLM underpinning AlphaEvolve itself. Furthermore, AlphaEvolve discovered novel, provably correct algorithms that surpass state-of-the-art solutions on a spectrum of problems in mathematics and computer science, significantly expanding the scope of prior automated discovery methods (Romera-Paredes et al., 2023). Notably, AlphaEvolve developed a search algorithm that found a procedure to multiply two $4 \times 4$ complex-valued matrices using $48$ scalar multiplications; offering the first improvement, after 56 years, over Strassen's algorithm in this setting. We believe AlphaEvolve and coding agents like it can have a significant impact in improving solutions of problems across many areas of science and computation.
MiniMax-M1: Scaling Test-Time Compute Efficiently with Lightning Attention
MiniMax, null, :, null, Chen, Aili, Li, Aonian, Gong, Bangwei, Jiang, Binyang, Fei, Bo, Yang, Bo, Shan, Boji, Yu, Changqing, Wang, Chao, Zhu, Cheng, Xiao, Chengjun, Du, Chengyu, Zhang, Chi, Qiao, Chu, Zhang, Chunhao, Du, Chunhui, Guo, Congchao, Chen, Da, Ding, Deming, Sun, Dianjun, Li, Dong, Jiao, Enwei, Zhou, Haigang, Zhang, Haimo, Ding, Han, Sun, Haohai, Feng, Haoyu, Cai, Huaiguang, Zhu, Haichao, Sun, Jian, Zhuang, Jiaqi, Cai, Jiaren, Song, Jiayuan, Zhu, Jin, Li, Jingyang, Tian, Jinhao, Liu, Jinli, Xu, Junhao, Yan, Junjie, Liu, Junteng, He, Junxian, Feng, Kaiyi, Yang, Ke, Xiao, Kecheng, Han, Le, Wang, Leyang, Yu, Lianfei, Feng, Liheng, Li, Lin, Zheng, Lin, Du, Linge, Yang, Lingyu, Zeng, Lunbin, Yu, Minghui, Tao, Mingliang, Chi, Mingyuan, Zhang, Mozhi, Lin, Mujie, Hu, Nan, Di, Nongyu, Gao, Peng, Li, Pengfei, Zhao, Pengyu, Ren, Qibing, Xu, Qidi, Li, Qile, Wang, Qin, Tian, Rong, Leng, Ruitao, Chen, Shaoxiang, Chen, Shaoyu, Shi, Shengmin, Weng, Shitong, Guan, Shuchang, Yu, Shuqi, Li, Sichen, Zhu, Songquan, Li, Tengfei, Cai, Tianchi, Liang, Tianrun, Cheng, Weiyu, Kong, Weize, Li, Wenkai, Chen, Xiancai, Song, Xiangjun, Luo, Xiao, Su, Xiao, Li, Xiaobo, Han, Xiaodong, Hou, Xinzhu, Lu, Xuan, Zou, Xun, Shen, Xuyang, Gong, Yan, Ma, Yan, Wang, Yang, Shi, Yiqi, Zhong, Yiran, Duan, Yonghong, Fu, Yongxiang, Hu, Yongyi, Gao, Yu, Fan, Yuanxiang, Yang, Yufeng, Li, Yuhao, Hu, Yulin, Huang, Yunan, Li, Yunji, Xu, Yunzhi, Mao, Yuxin, Shi, Yuxuan, Wenren, Yuze, Li, Zehan, Li, Zelin, Tian, Zhanxu, Zhu, Zhengmao, Fan, Zhenhua, Wu, Zhenzhen, Xu, Zhichao, Yu, Zhihang, Lyu, Zhiheng, Jiang, Zhuo, Gao, Zibo, Wu, Zijia, Song, Zijian, Sun, Zijun
We introduce MiniMax-M1, the world's first open-weight, large-scale hybrid-attention reasoning model. MiniMax-M1 is powered by a hybrid Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture combined with a lightning attention mechanism. The model is developed based on our previous MiniMax-Text-01 model, which contains a total of 456 billion parameters with 45.9 billion parameters activated per token. The M1 model natively supports a context length of 1 million tokens, 8x the context size of DeepSeek R1. Furthermore, the lightning attention mechanism in MiniMax-M1 enables efficient scaling of test-time compute. These properties make M1 particularly suitable for complex tasks that require processing long inputs and thinking extensively. MiniMax-M1 is trained using large-scale reinforcement learning (RL) on diverse problems including sandbox-based, real-world software engineering environments. In addition to M1's inherent efficiency advantage for RL training, we propose CISPO, a novel RL algorithm to further enhance RL efficiency. CISPO clips importance sampling weights rather than token updates, outperforming other competitive RL variants. Combining hybrid-attention and CISPO enables MiniMax-M1's full RL training on 512 H800 GPUs to complete in only three weeks, with a rental cost of just $534,700. We release two versions of MiniMax-M1 models with 40K and 80K thinking budgets respectively, where the 40K model represents an intermediate phase of the 80K training. Experiments on standard benchmarks show that our models are comparable or superior to strong open-weight models such as the original DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-235B, with particular strengths in complex software engineering, tool utilization, and long-context tasks. We publicly release MiniMax-M1 at https://github.com/MiniMax-AI/MiniMax-M1.
Generalized Proof-Number Monte-Carlo Tree Search
Kowalski, Jakub, Soemers, Dennis J. N. J., Kosakowski, Szymon, Winands, Mark H. M.
This paper presents Generalized Proof-Number Monte-Carlo Tree Search: a generalization of recently proposed combinations of Proof-Number Search (PNS) with Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), which use (dis)proof numbers to bias UCB1-based Selection strategies towards parts of the search that are expected to be easily (dis)proven. We propose three core modifications of prior combinations of PNS with MCTS. First, we track proof numbers per player. This reduces code complexity in the sense that we no longer need disproof numbers, and generalizes the technique to be applicable to games with more than two players. Second, we propose and extensively evaluate different methods of using proof numbers to bias the selection strategy, achieving strong performance with strategies that are simpler to implement and compute. Third, we merge our technique with Score Bounded MCTS, enabling the algorithm to prove and leverage upper and lower bounds on scores - as opposed to only proving wins or not-wins. Experiments demonstrate substantial performance increases, reaching the range of 80% for 8 out of the 11 tested board games.
Delayed Expansion AGT: Kinodynamic Planning with Application to Tractor-Trailer Parking
Zheng, Dongliang, Wang, Yebin, Di Cairano, Stefano, Tsiotras, Panagiotis
Kinodynamic planning of articulated vehicles in cluttered environments faces additional challenges arising from high-dimensional state space and complex system dynamics. Built upon [1],[2], this work proposes the DE-AGT algorithm that grows a tree using pre-computed motion primitives (MPs) and A* heuristics. The first feature of DE-AGT is a delayed expansion of MPs. In particular, the MPs are divided into different modes, which are ranked online. With the MP classification and prioritization, DE-AGT expands the most promising mode of MPs first, which eliminates unnecessary computation and finds solutions faster. To obtain the cost-to-go heuristic for nonholonomic articulated vehicles, we rely on supervised learning and train neural networks for fast and accurate cost-to-go prediction. The learned heuristic is used for online mode ranking and node selection. Another feature of DE-AGT is the improved goal-reaching. Exactly reaching a goal state usually requires a constant connection checking with the goal by solving steering problems -- non-trivial and time-consuming for articulated vehicles. The proposed termination scheme overcomes this challenge by tightly integrating a light-weight trajectory tracking controller with the search process. DE-AGT is implemented for autonomous parking of a general car-like tractor with 3-trailer. Simulation results show an average of 10x acceleration compared to a previous method.
Reviving DSP for Advanced Theorem Proving in the Era of Reasoning Models
Cao, Chenrui, Song, Liangcheng, Li, Zenan, Le, Xinyi, Zhang, Xian, Xue, Hui, Yang, Fan
Recent advancements, such as DeepSeek-Prover-V2-671B and Kimina-Prover-Preview-72B, demonstrate a prevailing trend in leveraging reinforcement learning (RL)-based large-scale training for automated theorem proving. Surprisingly, we discover that even without any training, careful neuro-symbolic coordination of existing off-the-shelf reasoning models and tactic step provers can achieve comparable performance. This paper introduces \textbf{DSP+}, an improved version of the Draft, Sketch, and Prove framework, featuring a \emph{fine-grained and integrated} neuro-symbolic enhancement for each phase: (1) In the draft phase, we prompt reasoning models to generate concise natural-language subgoals to benefit the sketch phase, removing thinking tokens and references to human-written proofs; (2) In the sketch phase, subgoals are autoformalized with hypotheses to benefit the proving phase, and sketch lines containing syntactic errors are masked according to predefined rules; (3) In the proving phase, we tightly integrate symbolic search methods like Aesop with step provers to establish proofs for the sketch subgoals. Experimental results show that, without any additional model training or fine-tuning, DSP+ solves 80.7\%, 32.8\%, and 24 out of 644 problems from miniF2F, ProofNet, and PutnamBench, respectively, while requiring fewer budgets compared to state-of-the-arts. DSP+ proves \texttt{imo\_2019\_p1}, an IMO problem in miniF2F that is not solved by any prior work. Additionally, DSP+ generates proof patterns comprehensible by human experts, facilitating the identification of formalization errors; For example, eight wrongly formalized statements in miniF2F are discovered. Our results highlight the potential of classical reasoning patterns besides the RL-based training. All components will be open-sourced.
TreeRL: LLM Reinforcement Learning with On-Policy Tree Search
Hou, Zhenyu, Hu, Ziniu, Li, Yujiang, Lu, Rui, Tang, Jie, Dong, Yuxiao
Reinforcement learning (RL) with tree search has demonstrated superior performance in traditional reasoning tasks. Compared to conventional independent chain sampling strategies with outcome supervision, tree search enables better exploration of the reasoning space and provides dense, on-policy process rewards during RL training but remains under-explored in On-Policy LLM RL. We propose TreeRL, a reinforcement learning framework that directly incorporates on-policy tree search for RL training. Our approach includes intermediate supervision and eliminates the need for a separate reward model training. Existing approaches typically train a separate process reward model, which can suffer from distribution mismatch and reward hacking. We also introduce a cost-effective tree search approach that achieves higher search efficiency under the same generation token budget by strategically branching from high-uncertainty intermediate steps rather than using random branching. Experiments on challenging math and code reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that TreeRL achieves superior performance compared to traditional ChainRL, highlighting the potential of tree search for LLM. TreeRL is open-sourced at https://github.com/THUDM/TreeRL.
STRCMP: Integrating Graph Structural Priors with Language Models for Combinatorial Optimization
Li, Xijun, Yang, Jiexiang, Wang, Jinghao, Peng, Bo, Yao, Jianguo, Guan, Haibing
Combinatorial optimization (CO) problems, central to operation research and theoretical computer science, present significant computational challenges due to their NP-hard nature. While large language models (LLMs) have emerged as promising tools for CO--either by directly generating solutions or synthesizing solver-specific codes--existing approaches often neglect critical structural priors inherent to CO problems, leading to suboptimality and iterative inefficiency. Inspired by human experts' success in leveraging CO structures for algorithm design, we propose STRCMP, a novel structure-aware LLM-based algorithm discovery framework that systematically integrates structure priors to enhance solution quality and solving efficiency. Our framework combines a graph neural network (GNN) for extracting structural embeddings from CO instances with an LLM conditioned on these embeddings to identify high-performing algorithms in the form of solver-specific codes. This composite architecture ensures syntactic correctness, preserves problem topology, and aligns with natural language objectives, while an evolutionary refinement process iteratively optimizes generated algorithm. Extensive evaluations across Mixed Integer Linear Programming and Boolean Satisfiability problems, using nine benchmark datasets, demonstrate that our proposed STRCMP outperforms five strong neural and LLM-based methods by a large margin, in terms of both solution optimality and computational efficiency. The code and learned model will be publicly available upon the acceptance of the paper.
Computational Complexity of Statistics: New Insights from Low-Degree Polynomials
Imagine trying to find a hidden k -vertex clique (fully connected subgraph) within an otherwise random n -vertex graph (network). While it is possible to find a hidden clique of size k log n by brute-force search, all known "fast" (polynomial-time) algorithms only work if the clique is much larger: k n . Is this an inherent limitation of fast algorithms or should we continue looking for a better one? Similar questions of computational complexity arise in many other statistical settings, such as community detection, clustering, and sparse PCA. While we lack the tools to prove definitively that fast algorithms require k n, this survey describes one sense in which we can prove this threshold is fundamental: all algorithms based on low-degree polynomials -- for instance, counting triangles in the graph would be a degree-3 polynomial -- provably fail (in an appropriate sense) when k n . Furthermore, these low-degree algorithms tend to capture the best tools in our algorithmic toolkit for problems of this style, so finding a fast algorithm for k n would seem to require a major breakthrough or may simply be impossible. This provides a lens for predicting and explaining the limitations of fast algorithms across many different settings.
Technical Report with Proofs for A Full Picture in Conformance Checking: Efficiently Summarizing All Optimal Alignments
Bär, Philipp, Wynn, Moe T., Leemans, Sander J. J.
Repeated application of the reduction rules to δ is terminating. None of (R1-R3) increases the size of this set again. We prove local confluency for every pair of rules where the left sides overlap. We only inspect moves where there can be overlapping rules, i.e., (R2,R3) and (R2,R2). Canonicity follows from both propositions together with Newman's Lemma [1].