Safe Harness Self-Evolution: A Theoretical Analysis of Feasibility and Limits

2026-09-08

AI Summary

本文分析了安全自我进化机制的可行性与限制，通过生成、认证和选择等步骤确保改进同时控制任务变化，为设计更安全的自我进化机制提供理论基础。

Abstract

Harness self-evolution is the process by which an agent modifies its prompts, tools, code, or orchestration in response to task feedback while keeping the underlying language model frozen, with changes persisting across subsequent tasks. We provide a systematic theoretical analysis of the feasibility and limits of safe harness self-evolution, connecting modification generation, finite-data certification and selection, safe adoption, and behavior after an update. Under a fixed user-task distribution, we establish conditions guaranteeing overall expected-reward improvement while controlling changes on retained tasks, characterize the probability of generating qualified modifications, and derive finite-data bounds for safe selection and adoption. Our analysis shows that generation and certification impose distinct constraints: current task performance does not determine the probability of generating qualified modifications, and generating more candidates need not improve the guarantee of a successful update when evaluation is limiting. Stagnation may therefore arise even when improvement opportunities remain. We further show that worst-case evaluation cost for recognizing genuine improvements diverges as expected reward approaches its upper bound. Across successive updates, certified improvement guarantees accumulate over a finite run, but a successful update does not by itself guarantee that further improvement remains possible. These results provide a basis for diagnosing bottlenecks and designing safer self-evolution mechanisms.

Problem

• Harness Self-Evolution
• Feasibility
• Limits
• Safety
• Theoretical Analysis

Innovation

• harness self-evolution
• finite-data certification
• safe adoption
• expected-reward improvement
• modification generation