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Research · May 14, 2025

AlphaEvolve

DeepMind paired a language model with an automatic checker and evolutionary selection, and the system found a way to multiply 4×4 complex matrices in 48 multiplications instead of 49.

Why it matters

A record standing since 1969 fell, and it was not a person who took it but a program that writes and discards programs.

Strassen's 1969 method gave 49 multiplications, and for half a century nobody did better. Here a language model generates variants of code, an automatic evaluator checks them, and the best become the basis for the next generation of variants. The checker is the key: it makes the model's guesses safe, because what is wrong simply does not pass. The system was also applied to engineering problems inside Google, scheduling load across data centres and simplifying circuits, where it gave a measurable gain. Ernest Davis of New York University noted on 2 June 2025 that the 48 multiplications are complex ones: a complex multiplication takes three real multiplications, so for real matrices the method needs somewhere between 50 and 144 real multiplications, which in his view diminishes its practical significance.

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May 14, 2025
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Sources gathered automatically · September 18, 2026
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evt-0327

Announcement of 14 May 2025.

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