Autoresearch is a bad name. We’re going to call it Idea Descent.
9:24 AM · Jul 2, 2026 · 7.9K Views
Microsoft Research's Dimitris Papailiopoulos renames his automated research project to Idea Descent in a no-detail tease
Lucas Beyer called the project hyperopt on steroids
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Sentiment
Many users welcomed renaming the autoresearch project to Idea Descent because the metaphor matches how thinking actually works, while some criticized it as implying ideas of declining quality.
Pos
71.4%
Neg
28.6%
7 comments with sentiment.
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Lucas Beyer (bl16)@giffmana
@DimitrisPapail I just call it hyperopt on steroids
Dimitris Papailiopoulos@DimitrisPapail
Autoresearch is a bad name. We’re going to call it Idea Descent.
5hViews 1.1KLikes 19Bookmarks 1
Luca Ambrogioni@LucaAmb
@DimitrisPapail Ideas aren't differentiabile
5hViews 170Likes 2
Dimitris Papailiopoulos@DimitrisPapail
@LucaAmb Nothing stored on a computer truly is.
4hViews 96Likes 2
XY Han@XYHan_
@DimitrisPapail Could also flip the sign and call it Idea Ascent for better marketing. 🚀
6hViews 22Likes 1
Dimitris Papailiopoulos@DimitrisPapail
STaY tUnEd
Dimitris Papailiopoulos@DimitrisPapail
Autoresearch is a bad name. We’re going to call it Idea Descent.
6hViews 662Likes 2Bookmarks 0
Avi@a12348885
@DimitrisPapail For me it will be Idea Ascent!
5hViews 48Likes 1
Aakash Kumar Nain@A_K_Nain
@giffmana @DimitrisPapail i agree that for the current state it is the right term.
4hViews 35Likes 1
Dimitris Papailiopoulos@DimitrisPapail
@XYHan_ I like rolling down hills better than climbing them
6hViews 21Likes 1
Henry Dowling@henrytdowling
@DimitrisPapail That feels like overly specific though? Isn't part of autoresearch an evolutionary search on ideas?
4hViews 19Likes 1
Dani Alami@Daniel_Alami
@DimitrisPapail Hill Climber!
5hViews 42
birs_tech@Birs_tech
@DimitrisPapail claude gradient descent
5hViews 34
juxiliu789@juxiliu789
@DimitrisPapail Big Bang of Ideas
5hViews 27
Siddharth Suresh@siddsuresh97
@DimitrisPapail Decent idea
6hViews 6Likes 1
Luca Ambrogioni@LucaAmb
@DimitrisPapail Nothing is truly anything, so what?
Modern AI works because of differentiability of the models
4hViews 17
Melio@MelioHL
@DimitrisPapail not mad at the pivot, idea descent sounds like how my brain actually works before finding alpha
6hViews 7
Tishkirap@parikupa
@DimitrisPapail Sounds like a sequence of ideas that monotonically decreases in quality. Please put a negative in the loss function and call it idea ascent instead
3hViews 4