Learning optimization modelling from cheap solver outcomes instead of process supervision let a model transfer across Gurobi, OR-Tools and COPT
AspireAI community · arXiv
Automating optimization modelling with LLMs usually means either agentic pipelines over closed models with high inference latency, or fine-tuning smaller models on costly process supervision that overfits to one solver API. OMSO instead treats a mathematical programming solver as a deterministic interactive environment, so the model generates solver-specific code, executes it in a sandboxed harness, and turns execution outcomes into scalar rewards in a closed-loop generate-execute-feedback-update cycle, with no process-level supervision and cross-solver transfer achieved by switching the environment rather than rebuilding datasets. On NL4OPT, MAMO, IndustryOR and OptiBench across Gurobi, OR-Tools and COPT the authors report that OMSO matches or outperforms process-supervised SFT and supports zero-shot transfer, direct RL and SFT-cold-started RL. The claimed benefit is modelling quality beyond mere solver-API usage, which is assessed by the authors' own semantic-correctness criteria.
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Two sparse-autoencoder analyses have resisted scaling: matching semantically similar features across layers, and compressing large feature circuits into interpretable supernodes. This paper argues both are the same underlying problem, estimating semantic distances between SAE features that sit on different activation manifolds. Its representation treats each feature not as a single decoder vector but as an activation-weighted distribution over the hidden states expressing it, projects those distributions into a shared reference space, and compares them with Wasserstein distance. The representation is proved invariant to activation rescaling and stable under perturbation, and recovers true matches under finite-sample margin conditions. Empirically it outperformed decoder-vector and LLM-based baselines and captured subtle functional distinctions between related features, and it compressed large feature circuits into interpretable supernodes automatically. The limitation is that this is interpretability tooling: the paper demonstrates better feature matching and circuit compression, not that downstream interpretability claims become more accurate.