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AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms

deepmind.google

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Re: AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms

#51

Post by proof_by_vibes »

mattlondon wrote: post #36
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #3

Software engineering will be completely solved. Even systems like v0 are astounding in their ability to generate code, and are very primitive to whats coming. I get downvoted on HN for this opinion, but its truly going to happen. Any system that can produce code, test the code, and iterate if needed will eventually outperform humans. Add in the reinforcement learning, where they can run the code, and train the model…

"Coding" might be solved, but there is more to software engineering than just churning out code - i.e. what should we build? What are the requirements? Are they right? Whats the other dependencies we want to use - AWS or GCP for example? Why those and not others - whats the reason? How does this impact our users and how they use the system? What level of backwards/forwards compatibility do we want? How do we handle r…

Testing in general is quickly being outmoded by formal verification. From my own gut, I see software engineering pivoting into consulting—wherein the deliverables are something akin to domain-specific languages that are tailored to a client's business needs.

Re: AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms

#52

Post by chpatrick »

lawlessone wrote: post #46
boshalfoshal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will indeed kill the leetcode interview - because once it replaces human SWEs you don't really need to give leetcode-style brainteasers to any human anymore.

You never needed to.

Not defending it but I think it was more of a test if you have the dedication (and general smarts) to grind them for a few months than software engineering skills.

Similar to hiring good students from famous universities even if most of CS isn't that applicable to day to day programming work, just because it's a signal that they're smart and managed to get through a difficult course.

Re: AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms

#53

Post by nevertoolate »

sannysanoff wrote: post #9
nevertoolate wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not that you get downvoted because they don’t understand you, it is because you sell your opinion as fact, like an apostle. For example what does it mean that software engineering is solved?

it's known idiom, it means: optimal algorithm is found; like in "tic tac toe is solved problem".

If I squint I can see some connection between Go (game) and (Software) Engineering (field).

Re: AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms

#54

Post by DGAP »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #3

Software engineering will be completely solved. Even systems like v0 are astounding in their ability to generate code, and are very primitive to whats coming. I get downvoted on HN for this opinion, but its truly going to happen. Any system that can produce code, test the code, and iterate if needed will eventually outperform humans. Add in the reinforcement learning, where they can run the code, and train the model…

There's cope in the comments about possibility of some software adjacent jobs remaining, which is possible, but the idea of a large number of high paying software jobs remaining by 2030 is a fantasy. Time to learn to be a plumber.

Re: AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms

#57

Post by quantumHazer »

Cool, but don't get me wrong, isn't this essentially similar to Google's Co-Scientist, where multiple models are in a loop, passing context back and forth validating things? At its core, it's still a system of LLMs, which is impressive in execution but not fundamentally new.

LLMs are undoubtedly useful at tasks like code "optimisation" and detecting patterns or redundancies that humans might overlook, but this announcement feels like another polished, hypey blog post from Google.

What's also becoming increasingly confusing is their use of the "Alpha" branding. Originally, it was for breakthroughs like AlphaGo or AlphaFold, where there was a clear leap in performance and methodology. Now it's being applied to systems that, while sophisticated, don't really rise to the same level of impact.

edit: I missed the evaluator in my description, but an evaluation method is applied also in Co-Scientist:

"The AI co-scientist leverages test-time compute scaling to iteratively reason, evolve, and improve outputs. Key reasoning steps include self-play–based scientific debate for novel hypothesis generation, ranking tournaments for hypothesis comparison, and an "evolution" process for quality improvement."[0]

[0]: https://research.google/blog/accelerating-scientific-breakth...

Re: AlphaEvolve: A Gemini-powered coding agent for designing advanced algorithms

#59

Post by mistrial9 »

quantumHazer wrote: post #57

Cool, but don't get me wrong, isn't this essentially similar to Google's Co-Scientist, where multiple models are in a loop, passing context back and forth validating things? At its core, it's still a system of LLMs, which is impressive in execution but not fundamentally new. LLMs are undoubtedly useful at tasks like code "optimisation" and detecting patterns or redundancies that humans might overlook, but this announ…

pardon "Google's Co-Scientist" ? There are multiple projects called that?
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