The field of neural architecture search and large language models is moving towards more efficient and effective methods. Researchers are exploring new approaches to improve the performance of these models, such as constrained iterative search and discrete representation learning. These innovations have the potential to significantly advance the field, enabling the development of more accurate and efficient models. Notable papers in this area include FACETS, which proposes a novel unified iterative NAS method, and Arch-LLM, which introduces a Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder to learn a discrete latent space for neural architectures. Other papers, such as ToRL and Evolutionary Prompt Optimization, demonstrate the potential of tool-integrated reinforcement learning and evolutionary algorithms to improve the performance of large language models.