AI Co-Scientist for Ranking: Discovering Novel Search Ranking Models alongside LLM-based AI Agents with Cloud Computing Access

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wu, Liwei, Hsieh, Cho-Jui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wu, Liwei
Hsieh, Cho-Jui
author_facet Wu, Liwei
Hsieh, Cho-Jui
contents Recent advances in AI agents for software engineering and scientific discovery have demonstrated remarkable capabilities, yet their application to developing novel ranking models in commercial search engines remains unexplored. In this paper, we present an AI Co-Scientist framework that automates the full search ranking research pipeline: from idea generation to code implementation and GPU training job scheduling with expert in the loop. Our approach strategically employs single-LLM agents for routine tasks while leveraging multi-LLM consensus agents (GPT 5.2, Gemini Pro 3, and Claude Opus 4.5) for challenging phases such as results analysis and idea generation. To our knowledge, this is the first study in the ranking community to utilize an AI Co-Scientist framework for algorithmic research. We demonstrate that this framework discovered a novel technique for handling sequence features, with all model enhancements produced automatically, yielding substantial offline performance improvements. Our findings suggest that AI systems can discover ranking architectures comparable to those developed by human experts while significantly reducing routine research workloads.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_22376
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AI Co-Scientist for Ranking: Discovering Novel Search Ranking Models alongside LLM-based AI Agents with Cloud Computing Access
Wu, Liwei
Hsieh, Cho-Jui
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Recent advances in AI agents for software engineering and scientific discovery have demonstrated remarkable capabilities, yet their application to developing novel ranking models in commercial search engines remains unexplored. In this paper, we present an AI Co-Scientist framework that automates the full search ranking research pipeline: from idea generation to code implementation and GPU training job scheduling with expert in the loop. Our approach strategically employs single-LLM agents for routine tasks while leveraging multi-LLM consensus agents (GPT 5.2, Gemini Pro 3, and Claude Opus 4.5) for challenging phases such as results analysis and idea generation. To our knowledge, this is the first study in the ranking community to utilize an AI Co-Scientist framework for algorithmic research. We demonstrate that this framework discovered a novel technique for handling sequence features, with all model enhancements produced automatically, yielding substantial offline performance improvements. Our findings suggest that AI systems can discover ranking architectures comparable to those developed by human experts while significantly reducing routine research workloads.
title AI Co-Scientist for Ranking: Discovering Novel Search Ranking Models alongside LLM-based AI Agents with Cloud Computing Access
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22376