Circuit Lower Bounds for the p-Spin Optimization Problem
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We consider the problem of finding a near ground state of a p-spin model with Rademacher couplings by means of a low-depth circuit. As a direct extension of the authors' recent work [GJW20], we establish that any poly-size n-output circuit that produces a spin assignment with objective value within a certain constant factor of optimality, must have depth at least log n=(2 log log n) as n grows. This is stronger than the known state of the art bounds of the form (log n=(k(n) log log n)) for similar combinatorial optimization problems, where k(n) depends on the optimality value. For example, for the largest clique problem k(n) corresponds to the square of the size of the clique [Ros10]. At the same time our results are not quite comparable since in our case the circuits are required to produce a solution itself rather than solving the associated decision problem. As in our earlier work [GJW20], the approach is based on the overlap gap property (OGP) exhibited by random p-spin models, but the derivation of the circuit lower bound relies further on standard facts from Fourier analysis on the Boolean cube, in particular the Linial-Mansour-Nisan Theorem. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first instance when methods from spin glass theory have ramifications for circuit complexity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.021 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".