evolution

Definition

Used two ways. In survey titles it means historical change — how a family of methods developed over time. In evolutionary algorithms it names a concrete optimisation strategy: generate variations, score them, keep the good ones, repeat. That second sense is gradient-free, which is why it keeps reappearing for things you cannot differentiate through, such as prompts, architectures, and discrete program structure.

Explainers using this term

• Paper Walkthrough — Beyond Retrieval: LatentStream Turns Retrieved Video Into Latent MemoryBeyond Retrieval: Progressive Latent Memory Evolution for Streaming Video Understanding
• Paper Walkthrough: PaperGym — Turning One Paper Into a Graded Training Environment for Research PlansPaperGym: Rubric-Centered Evolution for Research-Plan Generation
• Paper Walkthrough — J-Zero: Growing the Challenger, the Solver, and the Judge Together from Zero DataJ-Zero: Unified Challenger--Solver--Judge Co-Evolution from Zero Data