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FrontierOR: Benchmarking LLMs' Capacity for Efficient Algorithm Design in Large-Scale Optimization

arXiv:2605.25246v2 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for optimization modeling and solver-code generation, yet practical operations research and optimization problems often require a harder capability: designing scalable algorithms that exploit problem structure and outperform direct formulation-and-solve baselines. Existing benchmarks are limited to small or simplified examples far below real-world scale and complexity. We introduce FrontierOR, among the first benchmarks to systematically evaluate LLM-based efficient algorithm design for realistic large-scale optimization problems. FrontierOR includes 180 tasks derived from methodologically diverse papers published in top-tier operations research venues, each with standardized instances and a hidden, expert-verified evaluation suite. We evaluate seven LLMs spanning frontier, cost-effective, and open-source models both in one-shot and test-time evolution settings. The results reveal that frontier models still struggle to move from executable formulations to efficient optimization algorithms: the strongest one-shot model outperforms Gurobi in only 31% of cases in both solution quality and computational efficiency, and even strong coding agents with test-time evolution achieve only 50% on selected hard tasks. FrontierOR establishes a practical evaluation platform for LLM-based optimization algorithm design, which enables future LLMs and agents to be systematically tested on whether they can move beyond correct formulation toward a feasible, high-quality, and efficient algorithm.

OmniSapiens: A Foundation Model for Social Behavior Processing via Heterogeneity-Aware Relative Policy Optimization

arXiv:2602.10635v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Socially intelligent AI systems must entail reasoning across diverse human behavioral tasks, and generalization to new contexts. However, AI has yet to achieve this level of social intelligence. Existing models remain fundamentally constrained by the imbalanced learning dynamics induced by training on behavioral data. Namely, behavioral data is inherently heterogeneous, comprising diverse modalities and prediction targets that often produce uneven training signals across samples. To address this, we develop Omnisapiens-7B 2.0, a foundation model for social behavior processing that explicitly addresses learning from heterogeneous behavioral data. This is enabled through Heterogeneity-Aware Relative Policy Optimization, a novel reasoning RL method that explicitly rebalances learning signals across samples. The core insight is to approximate contribution signals to the policy update, using them to inform geometrically centered and intertially smoothed advantage modulation. Results demonstrate that Omnisapiens-7B 2.0 achieves the best and most consistent performance across 10 diverse behavioral tasks, while also attaining the best performance on all five held-out zero-shot generalization benchmarks, with gains of up to +12.02% and +9.37% respectively. Furthermore, Omnisapiens-7B 2.0 demonstrates more consistent and interpretable reasoning traces, supporting reliable real-world behavioral applications. Our model and codes can be found at https://github.com/MIT-MI/human_behavior_atlas.

CORAL: Towards Autonomous Multi-Agent Evolution for Open-Ended Discovery

arXiv:2604.01658v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM)-based evolution is a promising approach for open-ended discovery, where progress requires sustained search and knowledge accumulation. Existing methods still rely heavily on fixed heuristics and hard-coded exploration rules, which limit the autonomy of LLM agents. We present CORAL, the first framework for autonomous multi-agent evolution on open-ended problems. CORAL replaces rigid control with long-running agents that explore, reflect, and collaborate through shared persistent memory, asynchronous multi-agent execution, and heartbeat-based interventions. It also provides practical safeguards, including isolated workspaces, evaluator separation, resource management, and agent session and health management. Evaluated on diverse mathematical, algorithmic, and systems optimization tasks, CORAL sets new state-of-the-art results on 10 tasks, achieving 3-10 times higher improvement rates with far fewer evaluations than fixed evolutionary search baselines across tasks. On Anthropic's kernel engineering task, four co-evolving agents improve the best known score from 1363 to 1103 cycles. Mechanistic analyses further show how these gains arise from knowledge reuse and multi-agent exploration and communication. Together, these results suggest that greater agent autonomy and multi-agent evolution can substantially improve open-ended discovery. Code is available at https://github.com/Human-Agent-Society/CORAL.

AromaGen: Interactive Generation of Rich Olfactory Experiences with Multimodal Language Models

arXiv:2604.01650v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Smell's deep connection with food, memory, and social experience has long motivated researchers to bring olfaction into interactive systems. Yet most olfactory interfaces remain limited to fixed scent cartridges and pre-defined generation patterns, and the scarcity of large-scale olfactory datasets has further constrained AI-based approaches. We present AromaGen, an AI-powered wearable interface capable of real-time, general-purpose aroma generation from free-form text or visual inputs. AromaGen is powered by a multimodal LLM that leverages latent olfactory knowledge to map semantic inputs to structured mixtures of 12 carefully selected base odorants, released through a neck-worn dispenser. Users can iteratively refine generated aromas through natural language feedback via in-context learning. Through a controlled user study ($N = 26$), AromaGen matches human-composed mixtures in zero-shot generation and significantly surpasses them after iterative refinement, achieving a median similarity of 8/10 to real food aromas and reducing perceived artificiality to levels comparable to real food. AromaGen is a step towards real-world interactive aroma generation, opening new possibilities for communication, wellbeing, and immersive technologies.
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