PRAXIS: Learning Dynamics of Self-Improving Models with Symbolic Archives
Venkat MargapuriMustafa Teber
Oct 2026
Machine Learning
Abstract
Self-improving learning systems adapt data selection, optimization, and auxiliary symbolic components, inducing nonstationary objectives outside standard learning assumptions. We introduce \textsc{PRAXIS}, a co-evolutionary framework that models generators, learners, and symbolic archives as interacting dynamical processes. We prove that KL-constrained generator updates and controlled archive-weight movement bound one-step objective drift, that archive updates suppress a program relative to any fixed comparator with a persistent cumulative utility advantage under sub-Gaussian noise, and that stochastic gradient descent achieves an average-stationarity guarantee whose degradation is governed by cumulative objective drift. Experiments across visual robustness, relational graph reasoning, and algorithmic graph reasoning exhibit generator stabilization, decreasing learner loss, and archive concentration consistent with these theoretical mechanisms.
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