Definition
Plain language
A small random change to something that already works, used to search for improvements.
As stated in the literature
Perturbation operator in evolutionary search; here applied to previously rewarded generator programs to seed new candidate training sequences.
Also called: mutations, mutated
Why it matters: It is how automated search explores: without small random changes to things that already work, a system can only keep repeating what it has.
For example, taking a program that generates a counting sequence and changing one number in it, then seeing whether the new version produces something more useful.
Heard on the show
“They might run a test and see it pass or fail — but the actual execution, the call stack, the variable mutations, what the program is really doing — that's all invisible to them.”Episode 012 — Why AI Coding Agents Keep Trying to Debug Without a Debugger