Frontis-MA1: Training an AI4AI Model towards Recursive Self-Improvement in Machine Learning Engineering
2026-07-30 • Computation and Language
Computation and Language
AI summaryⓘ
The authors developed OpenMLE, a system to help AI improve itself by working on machine learning engineering tasks. They trained a large AI model, Frontis-MA1, to learn four key program-improving actions (Draft, Improve, Debug, Crossover) using real task feedback. This setup helps the AI evolve and improve code over long tasks, performing better than some advanced baseline models on benchmarks. Their work shows that the combined learning and evolutionary approach can transfer to new tasks, and they share their system and models for others to use and build on.
Recursive Self-ImprovementMachine Learning EngineeringReinforcement LearningEvolutionary ComputationPost-TrainingProgram SynthesisBenchmarkingFine-TuningLong-Horizon SearchMeta-Learning
Authors
Junlin Yang, Che Jiang, Yu Fu, Tianwei Luo, Can Ren, Weizhi Wang, Kaikai Zhao, Hongyi Liu, Yuxin Zuo, Yuru Wang, Yuchen Fan, Kai Tian, Zhenzhao Yuan, Xiaojian Lin, Li Sheng, Rushi Qiang, Guoli Jia, Xingtai Lv, Ermo Hua, Dianqiao Lei, Youbang Sun, Ning Ding, Bowen Zhou, Kaiyan Zhang
Abstract
Recursive self-improvement (RSI) requires AI systems that improve the process of building AI (i.e., AI4AI); machine learning engineering (MLE) offers a concrete, executable testbed for studying this capability. We introduce OpenMLE, an open full-stack system for RSI research in MLE, spanning verifiable task environments with execution feedback (OpenMLE-Gym), operator learning (OpenMLE-RL), and long-horizon search (OpenMLE-Evo). On this stack we post-train Frontis-MA1 (35B) as a meta-evolution agent for MLE, aligning post-training and inference around four atomic program-evolution operators (Draft, Improve, Debug, Crossover): the same operators are trained via execution-grounded SFT and RL on data deduplicated against all evaluation benchmarks, then composed into long-horizon search, coupling learning and evolution in a single loop. On MLE-Bench Lite under a 12-hour per-task budget on one RTX 4090 capped at 12 GB VRAM, Frontis-MA1 (35B) improves Medal Average from 39.39% to 60.61% over its base model with OpenMLE-Evo, and reaches 71.21% with OpenMLE-Evo-Max (benchmark-independent experience priors and asynchronous search), exceeding GPT-5.5 + Codex and approaching GPT-5.6 Sol and the 2.8T Kimi K3. On held-out NatureBench Lite, both components transfer: with the framework fixed, swapping in the trained model raises Match-SOTA from 50% to 70%; with the model fixed, swapping in OpenMLE-Evo raises it from 20% to 50%. We release the model weights and the full OpenMLE stack to enable reproducible research on executable AI4AI toward RSI. Code: https://github.com/FrontisAI/OpenRSI