{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Daily Paper Cast","title":"Darwin Family: MRI-Trust-Weighted Evolutionary Merging for Training-Free Scaling of Language-Model Reasoning","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1402,"description":"\n 🤗 Upvotes: 44 | cs.NE, cs.AI\n\n Authors:\n Taebong Kim, Youngsik Hong, Minsik Kim, Sunyoung Choi, Jaewon Jang, Junghoon Shin, Minseo Kim\n\n Title:\n Darwin Family: MRI-Trust-Weighted Evolutionary Merging for Training-Free Scaling of Language-Model Reasoning\n\n Arxiv:\n http://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14386v1\n\n Abstract:\n We present Darwin Family, a framework for training-free evolutionary merging of large language models via gradient-free weight-space recombination. We ask whether frontier-level reasoning performance can be improved without additional training, by reorganizing latent capabilities already encoded in existing checkpoints. Darwin introduces three key ideas: (i) a 14-dimensional adaptive merge genome enabling fine-grained component- and block-level recombination; (ii) MRI-Trust Fusion, which adaptively balances diagnostic layer-importance signals with evolutionary search through a learnable trust parameter; and (iii) an Architecture Mapper that enables cross-architecture breeding between heterogeneous model families. Empirically, the flagship Darwin-27B-Opus achieves 86.9% on GPQA Diamond, ranking #6 among 1,252 evaluated models, and outperforming its fully trained foundation model without any gradient-based training. Across scales from 4B to 35B parameters, Darwin models consistently improve over their parents, support recursive multi-generation evolution, and enable a training-free evolutionary merge that combines Transformer- and Mamba-based components. Together, the Darwin Family demonstrates that diagnostic-guided evolutionary merging is a practical and reproducible alternative to costly post-training pipelines for reasoning-centric language models.\n ","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/8lOVNnuwhrA3rxrDMv7Osu4j_t1-jORooO6NfGcQhcw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS81Zjg1/YzRhODczMDU4MmE4/OGMwN2FiNDlmYzI2/MDliMi5qcGVn.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}