Concept · 16 episode(s)

Iterative Refinement

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Definition

Iterative refinement has a model improve its output across multiple passes, often using its own critique or an external verifier as feedback. It often helps; it sometimes hurts (the model can talk itself out of correct answers); the wins are tied to whether the critique signal is reliable.

Episodes covering this

  1. 078
    Training a Markdown File: When LLM Self-Improvement Borrows the Discipline of Neural Net Training
    Yang, Gong, Huang et al. · Microsoft·28 min·May 25, 2026
  2. 076
    Same Model, Organized Differently: How an Agent Architecture Beat Frontier Systems at Research Math
    Zhao, Yuan, Choi et al. · Georgia Institute of Technology·22 min·May 25, 2026
  3. 075
    Growing Code and Proof Together: Verified Systems in Ten Hours Instead of a Year
    Agarwal, Krentsel, Liu et al. · UC Berkeley·28 min·May 25, 2026
  4. 072
    A Robot Made Graphene Without Help, And Caught Itself Hallucinating
    Shi, Zheng, Juan et al. · Princeton University·29 min·May 23, 2026
  5. 071
    When the Model Is Fine and the Plumbing Is Broken: Fixing Agents at the Interface
    Xu, Wen, Li · Peking University·23 min·May 22, 2026
  6. 067
    An AI Just Solved a 1996 Erdős Problem—and the Simplest Agent Won
    Tsoukalas, Kovsharov, Shirobokov et al. · Google DeepMind·31 min·May 22, 2026
  7. 065
    One Loop to Optimize Them All: A Universal API for LLM-Driven Discovery
    Agrawal, Lee, Tan et al. · UC Berkeley·27 min·May 22, 2026
  8. 064
    When Agent Memory Stops Being a Database and Starts Being a Skill
    Ye, Liu, Wang et al. · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign·30 min·May 22, 2026
  9. 053
    An AI Agent Swapped In Focal Loss And Beat A Human-Tuned Training Script
    Pepe, Lin, Magka et al. · FAIR at Meta·32 min·May 18, 2026
  10. 048
    How a 30B Open Model Reached Olympiad Gold With the Right Recipe
    Li, Zhan, Zhang et al. · Shanghai AI Laboratory / The Chinese University of Hong Kong·31 min·May 16, 2026
  11. 046
    When the AI Optimizer Edits the Grade Book: Why Harnessing Evolution Needs a Wall
    Zhang, Gu, Ruan et al. · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) / DeepWisdom·24 min·May 15, 2026
  12. 041
    When the Iteration Teaches the Model to Skip the Iteration
    Fein-Ashley, Rashidinejad · University of Southern California·30 min·May 13, 2026
  13. 034
    Catching Multi-Agent Deadlocks Before Deployment With a 40-Year-Old Tool
    Xia, Li, Ehsan et al. · Rutgers University·30 min·May 11, 2026
  14. 032
    A Sticky-Note for Every Layer: Letting Transformers Remember What They Were Just Thinking
    Aviss · Fifth Dimension·23 min·May 09, 2026
  15. 014
    Why a Constrained Pipeline Beat a Full Coding Agent at Finding Bugs 30-to-1
    Shafiuzzaman, Desai, Guo et al. · University of California·32 min·May 03, 2026
  16. 003
    How to Pick the Best of Sixteen Coding Agent Rollouts
    Kim, Yang, Niu et al. · Meta Superintelligence Labs / University of Washington·17 min·May 01, 2026

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