When AI Rewrites Its Own Code to Win: Agent of Change

Large Language Models have a notorious blind spot: long-term strategic planning. They can write a brilliant sentence, but can they execute a brilliant 10-turn game-winning strategy?

This episode unpacks a groundbreaking experiment that forces LLMs to level up or lose. We journey into the complex world of Settlers of Catan — a perfect testbed of resource management, luck, and tactical foresight—to explore a stunning new paper, "Agents of Change."

Forget simple prompting. This is about AI that iteratively analyzes its failures, rewrites its own instructions, and even learns to code its own logic from scratch to become a better player. You'll discover how a team of specialized AI agents—an Analyzer, a Researcher, a Coder, and a Player—can collaborate to evolve.

This isn't just about winning a board game. It's a glimpse into the next paradigm of AI, where models transform from passive tools into active, self-improving designers. Listen to understand the frontier of autonomous agents, the surprising limitations that still exist, and what it means when an AI learns to become an agent of its own change.

In this episode, you will discover:

• (01:00) The Core Challenge: Why LLMs are masters of language but novices at long-term strategy.

• (04:48) The Perfect Testbed: What makes Settlers of Catan the ultimate arena for testing strategic AI.

• (09:03) Level 1 & 2 Agents: Establishing the baseline—from raw input to human-guided prompts.

• (12:42) Level 3 - The PromptEvolver: The AI that learns to coach itself, achieving a stunning 95% performance leap.

• (17:13) Level 4 - The AgentEvolver: The AI that goes a step further, rewriting its own game-playing code to improve.

• (24:23) The Jaw-Dropping Finding: How an AI agent learned to code and master a game's programming interface with zero prior documentation.

• (32:49) The Final Verdict: Are these self-evolving agents ready to dominate, or does expert human design still hold the edge?

• (36:05) Why This Changes Everything: The shift from AI as a tool to AI as a self-directed designer of its own intelligence.