58 research outputs found
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Towards Informed Exploration for Deep Reinforcement Learning
In this thesis, we discuss various techniques for improving exploration for deep reinforcement learning. We begin with a brief review of reinforcement learning (RL) and the fundamental v.s. exploitation trade-off. Then we review how deep RL has improved upon classical and summarize six categories of the latest exploration methods for deep RL, in the order increasing usage of prior information. We then explore representative works in three categories discuss their strengths and weaknesses. The first category, represented by Soft Q-learning, uses regularization to encourage exploration. The second category, represented by count-based via hashing, maps states to hash codes for counting and assigns higher exploration to less-encountered states. The third category utilizes hierarchy and is represented by modular architecture for RL agents to play StarCraft II. Finally, we conclude that exploration by prior knowledge is a promising research direction and suggest topics of potentially impact
Learning from Ambiguous Demonstrations with Self-Explanation Guided Reinforcement Learning
Our work aims at efficiently leveraging ambiguous demonstrations for the
training of a reinforcement learning (RL) agent. An ambiguous demonstration can
usually be interpreted in multiple ways, which severely hinders the RL-Agent
from learning stably and efficiently. Since an optimal demonstration may also
suffer from being ambiguous, previous works that combine RL and learning from
demonstration (RLfD works) may not work well. Inspired by how humans handle
such situations, we propose to use self-explanation (an agent generates
explanations for itself) to recognize valuable high-level relational features
as an interpretation of why a successful trajectory is successful. This way,
the agent can provide some guidance for its RL learning. Our main contribution
is to propose the Self-Explanation for RL from Demonstrations (SERLfD)
framework, which can overcome the limitations of traditional RLfD works. Our
experimental results show that an RLfD model can be improved by using our
SERLfD framework in terms of training stability and performance
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End-to-end deep reinforcement learning in computer systems
Abstract
The growing complexity of data processing systems has long led systems designers to imagine systems (e.g. databases, schedulers) which can self-configure and adapt based on environmental cues. In this context, reinforcement learning (RL) methods have since their inception appealed to systems developers. They promise to acquire complex decision policies from raw feedback signals. Despite their conceptual popularity, RL methods are scarcely found in real-world data processing systems. Recently, RL has seen explosive growth in interest due to high profile successes when utilising large neural networks (deep reinforcement learning). Newly emerging machine learning frameworks and powerful hardware accelerators have given rise to a plethora of new potential applications.
In this dissertation, I first argue that in order to design and execute deep RL algorithms efficiently, novel software abstractions are required which can accommodate the distinct computational patterns of communication-intensive and fast-evolving algorithms. I propose an architecture which decouples logical algorithm construction from local and distributed execution semantics. I further present RLgraph, my proof-of-concept implementation of this architecture. In RLgraph, algorithm developers can explore novel designs by constructing a high-level data flow graph through combination of logical components. This dataflow graph is independent of specific backend frameworks or notions of execution, and is only later mapped to execution semantics via a staged build process. RLgraph enables high-performing algorithm implementations while maintaining flexibility for rapid prototyping.
Second, I investigate reasons for the scarcity of RL applications in systems themselves. I argue that progress in applied RL is hindered by a lack of tools for task model design which bridge the gap between systems and algorithms, and also by missing shared standards for evaluation of model capabilities. I introduce Wield, a first-of-its-kind tool for incremental model design in applied RL. Wield provides a small set of primitives which decouple systems interfaces and deployment-specific configuration from representation. Core to Wield is a novel instructive experiment protocol called progressive randomisation which helps practitioners to incrementally evaluate different dimensions of non-determinism. I demonstrate how Wield and progressive randomisation can be used to reproduce and assess prior work, and to guide implementation of novel RL applications
Boosting Offline Reinforcement Learning with Action Preference Query
Training practical agents usually involve offline and online reinforcement
learning (RL) to balance the policy's performance and interaction costs. In
particular, online fine-tuning has become a commonly used method to correct the
erroneous estimates of out-of-distribution data learned in the offline training
phase. However, even limited online interactions can be inaccessible or
catastrophic for high-stake scenarios like healthcare and autonomous driving.
In this work, we introduce an interaction-free training scheme dubbed
Offline-with-Action-Preferences (OAP). The main insight is that, compared to
online fine-tuning, querying the preferences between pre-collected and learned
actions can be equally or even more helpful to the erroneous estimate problem.
By adaptively encouraging or suppressing policy constraint according to action
preferences, OAP could distinguish overestimation from beneficial policy
improvement and thus attains a more accurate evaluation of unseen data.
Theoretically, we prove a lower bound of the behavior policy's performance
improvement brought by OAP. Moreover, comprehensive experiments on the D4RL
benchmark and state-of-the-art algorithms demonstrate that OAP yields higher
(29% on average) scores, especially on challenging AntMaze tasks (98% higher).Comment: International Conference on Machine Learning 202
Pretraining in Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Survey
The past few years have seen rapid progress in combining reinforcement
learning (RL) with deep learning. Various breakthroughs ranging from games to
robotics have spurred the interest in designing sophisticated RL algorithms and
systems. However, the prevailing workflow in RL is to learn tabula rasa, which
may incur computational inefficiency. This precludes continuous deployment of
RL algorithms and potentially excludes researchers without large-scale
computing resources. In many other areas of machine learning, the pretraining
paradigm has shown to be effective in acquiring transferable knowledge, which
can be utilized for a variety of downstream tasks. Recently, we saw a surge of
interest in Pretraining for Deep RL with promising results. However, much of
the research has been based on different experimental settings. Due to the
nature of RL, pretraining in this field is faced with unique challenges and
hence requires new design principles. In this survey, we seek to systematically
review existing works in pretraining for deep reinforcement learning, provide a
taxonomy of these methods, discuss each sub-field, and bring attention to open
problems and future directions
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