Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

DeepMind: AlphaEvolve was seeded with human baselines for data center scheduling

Matej Balog · No Priors Ep. 120 | With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog · Jun 26, 2025 · at 13:07

Google DeepMind research scientist Matej Balog explains how their evolutionary AI coding system, AlphaEvolve, was configured to discover data center scheduling algorithms.

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“Another option you can take is actually we have already worked on this problem for a really long time. Here is a very strong initial solution that we can provide to the system and you can start from here. And that's what we did for the application to discovering new algorithms for scheduling jobs in a data center.”

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More from Matej Balog

Assertion Supported
Balog: AlphaTensor was the first AI to discover superhuman matrix multiplication algorithms
“And kind of the first breakthrough we had in this space was in twenty-twenty-two when we released a system called Alpha Tensor. And so that was a system that was an AI system using reinforcement learning. That for a very specific, but a fundamental computation…”
Matej Balog Jun 26, 2025 ▶ 1:52 No Priors Ep. 120 | With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog
Assertion Supported
Balog: AlphaEvolve improves Google data center efficiency, hardware design, and software
“So, so we show that AlphaEvolve can improve the efficiency of the data center. It can contribute to hardware design, and it can contribute to improving the efficiency of most important pieces of software that that are being run inside Google.”
Matej Balog Jun 26, 2025 ▶ 40:49 No Priors Ep. 120 | With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog
Assertion Supported
Balog: AlphaEvolve algorithms are already deployed in Google's infrastructure
“Alpha Evolve is an AI coding agent that is able to discover new algorithms that are able to make new discoveries on open scientific problems. And at the same time, those algorithms can be so practical that they are already deployed in keep Key parts of Google'…”
Matej Balog Jun 26, 2025 ▶ 0:57 No Priors Ep. 120 | With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog
Insight
Balog: Inspectable AI-generated code is safer than black-box neural networks
“It's hugely valuable that the artifact you get out of Alpha Evolve is a piece of code, and then you deploy that piece of code. And so before you do that experts, engineers who have worked on that system can visually inspect that piece of code, understand it, a…”
Matej Balog Jun 26, 2025 ▶ 36:51 No Priors Ep. 120 | With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog
Disclosure
Balog: DeepMind benchmarked AlphaEvolve against heavily optimized Google infrastructure problems
“The problems we chose to apply Alpha Evolve to in the first instance both on the scientific side and the practical side, We deliberately chose problems which have been worked on for a very long time by the very best people. So on the, you know, on the scientif…”
Matej Balog Jun 26, 2025 ▶ 10:04 No Priors Ep. 120 | With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog
Disclosure
Balog: AlphaEvolve focuses on math and CS due to automated evaluators
“In Alpha Evolve, we've Primarily focused on mathematics and computer science, because these are the domains where it's the easiest to get these automated evaluation functions. Like you often get them basically for free.”
Matej Balog Jun 26, 2025 ▶ 29:09 No Priors Ep. 120 | With Google DeepMind’s Pushmeet Kohli and Matej Balog
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