Transformer Semantic Genetic Programming for Symbolic Regression

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Anthes, Philipp, Sobania, Dominik, Rothlauf, Franz
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Anthes, Philipp
Sobania, Dominik
Rothlauf, Franz
author_facet Anthes, Philipp
Sobania, Dominik
Rothlauf, Franz
contents In standard genetic programming (stdGP), solutions are varied by modifying their syntax, with uncertain effects on their semantics. Geometric-semantic genetic programming (GSGP), a popular variant of GP, effectively searches the semantic solution space using variation operations based on linear combinations, although it results in significantly larger solutions. This paper presents Transformer Semantic Genetic Programming (TSGP), a novel and flexible semantic approach that uses a generative transformer model as search operator. The transformer is trained on synthetic test problems and learns semantic similarities between solutions. Once the model is trained, it can be used to create offspring solutions with high semantic similarity also for unseen and unknown problems. Experiments on several symbolic regression problems show that TSGP generates solutions with comparable or even significantly better prediction quality than stdGP, SLIM_GSGP, DSR, and DAE-GP. Like SLIM_GSGP, TSGP is able to create new solutions that are semantically similar without creating solutions of large size. An analysis of the search dynamic reveals that the solutions generated by TSGP are semantically more similar than the solutions generated by the benchmark approaches allowing a better exploration of the semantic solution space.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_18479
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Transformer Semantic Genetic Programming for Symbolic Regression
Anthes, Philipp
Sobania, Dominik
Rothlauf, Franz
Neural and Evolutionary Computing
In standard genetic programming (stdGP), solutions are varied by modifying their syntax, with uncertain effects on their semantics. Geometric-semantic genetic programming (GSGP), a popular variant of GP, effectively searches the semantic solution space using variation operations based on linear combinations, although it results in significantly larger solutions. This paper presents Transformer Semantic Genetic Programming (TSGP), a novel and flexible semantic approach that uses a generative transformer model as search operator. The transformer is trained on synthetic test problems and learns semantic similarities between solutions. Once the model is trained, it can be used to create offspring solutions with high semantic similarity also for unseen and unknown problems. Experiments on several symbolic regression problems show that TSGP generates solutions with comparable or even significantly better prediction quality than stdGP, SLIM_GSGP, DSR, and DAE-GP. Like SLIM_GSGP, TSGP is able to create new solutions that are semantically similar without creating solutions of large size. An analysis of the search dynamic reveals that the solutions generated by TSGP are semantically more similar than the solutions generated by the benchmark approaches allowing a better exploration of the semantic solution space.
title Transformer Semantic Genetic Programming for Symbolic Regression
topic Neural and Evolutionary Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18479