Multi-Objective Hierarchical Optimization with Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Schwanke, Andrej, Ivanov, Lyubomir, Salinas, David, Hutter, Frank, Zela, Arber
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Schwanke, Andrej
Ivanov, Lyubomir
Salinas, David
Hutter, Frank
Zela, Arber
author_facet Schwanke, Andrej
Ivanov, Lyubomir
Salinas, David
Hutter, Frank
Zela, Arber
contents Despite their widespread adoption in various domains, especially due to their powerful reasoning capabilities, Large Language Models (LLMs) are not the off-the-shelf choice to drive multi-objective optimization yet. Conventional strategies rank high in benchmarks due to their intrinsic capabilities to handle numerical inputs and careful modelling choices that balance exploration and Pareto-front exploitation, as well as handle multiple (conflicting) objectives. In this paper, we close this gap by leveraging LLMs as surrogate models and candidate samplers inside a structured hierarchical search strategy. By adaptively partitioning the input space into disjoint hyperrectangular regions and ranking them with a composite score function, we restrict the generative process of the LLM to specific, high-potential sub-spaces, hence making the problem easier to solve as the LLM doesn't have to reason about the global structure of the problem, but only locally instead. We show that under standard regularity assumptions, our algorithm generates candidate solutions that converge to the true Pareto set in Hausdorff distance. Empirically, it consistently outperforms the global LLM-based multi-objective optimizer and is on par with standard evolutionary and Bayesian optimization algorithm on synthetic and real-world benchmarks.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_13892
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Multi-Objective Hierarchical Optimization with Large Language Models
Schwanke, Andrej
Ivanov, Lyubomir
Salinas, David
Hutter, Frank
Zela, Arber
Machine Learning
Despite their widespread adoption in various domains, especially due to their powerful reasoning capabilities, Large Language Models (LLMs) are not the off-the-shelf choice to drive multi-objective optimization yet. Conventional strategies rank high in benchmarks due to their intrinsic capabilities to handle numerical inputs and careful modelling choices that balance exploration and Pareto-front exploitation, as well as handle multiple (conflicting) objectives. In this paper, we close this gap by leveraging LLMs as surrogate models and candidate samplers inside a structured hierarchical search strategy. By adaptively partitioning the input space into disjoint hyperrectangular regions and ranking them with a composite score function, we restrict the generative process of the LLM to specific, high-potential sub-spaces, hence making the problem easier to solve as the LLM doesn't have to reason about the global structure of the problem, but only locally instead. We show that under standard regularity assumptions, our algorithm generates candidate solutions that converge to the true Pareto set in Hausdorff distance. Empirically, it consistently outperforms the global LLM-based multi-objective optimizer and is on par with standard evolutionary and Bayesian optimization algorithm on synthetic and real-world benchmarks.
title Multi-Objective Hierarchical Optimization with Large Language Models
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13892