Frontier Tower AI Paper Reading Club - Week 10
Weekly paper: Deterministic vs. LLM-Controlled Orchestration for Legacy Code Modernization.
https://www.astrio.app/papers/deterministic-vs-llm-controlled-orchestration-for-legacy-code-modernization.pdf
Abstract: Modernizing legacy systems written in COBOL remains challenging due to scarce expertise, complex codebases, and strict correctness requirements. Recent large language model (LLM)-based approaches increasingly adopt agentic designs in which models control multi-step tool orchestration. However, it remains unclear whether LLM-controlled execution improves functional correctness, robustness, or efficiency in structured software engineering workflows. We present a controlled empirical study that isolates the role of execution control by comparing deterministic and LLM-controlled orchestration for COBOL-to-Python modernization. Using a unified framework, we hold models, prompts, tools, and inputs constant, varying only the execution control mechanism. We evaluate both approaches in terms of functional correctness, robustness under repeated execution, and computational efficiency. Our results show that deterministic orchestration achieves comparable functional correctness to LLM-controlled orchestration while improving worst-case robustness and reducing performance variability. It also reduces token consumption by up to 3.5x, resulting in substantially lower operational cost. These results indicate that, for structured code modernization tasks, explicit execution control can provide more stable and cost-efficient behavior than fully agentic orchestration without reducing correctness.
What are the group goals?
Stay on top of AI research, improve understanding of AI fundamentals and math.
Who is welcome? Everyone! Try to put in at least some time on the paper and come prepared with questions or things you'd like to discuss, but it's ok to just show up.
How will it work?
Ideally everyone shows up and has at least made one solid pass through the paper, and then we can spend 30-60 minutes as a group going over it.
This event is hosted at the Frontier Tower:
We are transforming a 16-floor tower in San Francisco into a self-governed vertical village—a hub for frontier technologies and creative arts. Tier-one labs presenting AI, Ethereum, biotech, neuroscience, longevity, robotics, makerspace, human flourishing, and arts & music. These floors will house innovators and creators pushing the boundaries of human potential in a post-AI-singularity world.
Apply here for founding citizenship: https://frontiertower.io/apply
Why should I become a citizen?
Be part of creating the first self-governed vertical village
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Website: https://frontiertower.io/
Need more reading? Visit https://frontiertower.notion.site/