69,641 research outputs found
Deep Neuroevolution of Recurrent and Discrete World Models
Neural architectures inspired by our own human cognitive system, such as the
recently introduced world models, have been shown to outperform traditional
deep reinforcement learning (RL) methods in a variety of different domains.
Instead of the relatively simple architectures employed in most RL experiments,
world models rely on multiple different neural components that are responsible
for visual information processing, memory, and decision-making. However, so far
the components of these models have to be trained separately and through a
variety of specialized training methods. This paper demonstrates the surprising
finding that models with the same precise parts can be instead efficiently
trained end-to-end through a genetic algorithm (GA), reaching a comparable
performance to the original world model by solving a challenging car racing
task. An analysis of the evolved visual and memory system indicates that they
include a similar effective representation to the system trained through
gradient descent. Additionally, in contrast to gradient descent methods that
struggle with discrete variables, GAs also work directly with such
representations, opening up opportunities for classical planning in latent
space. This paper adds additional evidence on the effectiveness of deep
neuroevolution for tasks that require the intricate orchestration of multiple
components in complex heterogeneous architectures
A Minimal Architecture for General Cognition
A minimalistic cognitive architecture called MANIC is presented. The MANIC
architecture requires only three function approximating models, and one state
machine. Even with so few major components, it is theoretically sufficient to
achieve functional equivalence with all other cognitive architectures, and can
be practically trained. Instead of seeking to transfer architectural
inspiration from biology into artificial intelligence, MANIC seeks to minimize
novelty and follow the most well-established constructs that have evolved
within various sub-fields of data science. From this perspective, MANIC offers
an alternate approach to a long-standing objective of artificial intelligence.
This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the MANIC architecture.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, conference, Proceedings of the 2015 International
Joint Conference on Neural Network
Deep Learning: Our Miraculous Year 1990-1991
In 2020, we will celebrate that many of the basic ideas behind the deep
learning revolution were published three decades ago within fewer than 12
months in our "Annus Mirabilis" or "Miraculous Year" 1990-1991 at TU Munich.
Back then, few people were interested, but a quarter century later, neural
networks based on these ideas were on over 3 billion devices such as
smartphones, and used many billions of times per day, consuming a significant
fraction of the world's compute.Comment: 37 pages, 188 references, based on work of 4 Oct 201
Safe Mutations for Deep and Recurrent Neural Networks through Output Gradients
While neuroevolution (evolving neural networks) has a successful track record
across a variety of domains from reinforcement learning to artificial life, it
is rarely applied to large, deep neural networks. A central reason is that
while random mutation generally works in low dimensions, a random perturbation
of thousands or millions of weights is likely to break existing functionality,
providing no learning signal even if some individual weight changes were
beneficial. This paper proposes a solution by introducing a family of safe
mutation (SM) operators that aim within the mutation operator itself to find a
degree of change that does not alter network behavior too much, but still
facilitates exploration. Importantly, these SM operators do not require any
additional interactions with the environment. The most effective SM variant
capitalizes on the intriguing opportunity to scale the degree of mutation of
each individual weight according to the sensitivity of the network's outputs to
that weight, which requires computing the gradient of outputs with respect to
the weights (instead of the gradient of error, as in conventional deep
learning). This safe mutation through gradients (SM-G) operator dramatically
increases the ability of a simple genetic algorithm-based neuroevolution method
to find solutions in high-dimensional domains that require deep and/or
recurrent neural networks (which tend to be particularly brittle to mutation),
including domains that require processing raw pixels. By improving our ability
to evolve deep neural networks, this new safer approach to mutation expands the
scope of domains amenable to neuroevolution
Does money matter in inflation forecasting?.
This paper provides the most fully comprehensive evidence to date on whether or not monetary aggregates are valuable for forecasting US inflation in the early to mid 2000s. We explore a wide range of different definitions of money, including different methods of aggregation and different collections of included monetary assets. In our forecasting experiment we use two non-linear techniques, namely, recurrent neural networks and kernel recursive least squares regression - techniques that are new to macroeconomics. Recurrent neural networks operate with potentially unbounded input memory, while the kernel regression technique is a finite memory predictor. The two methodologies compete to find the best fitting US inflation forecasting models and are then compared to forecasts from a naive random walk model. The best models were non-linear autoregressive models based on kernel methods. Our findings do not provide much support for the usefulness of monetary aggregates in forecasting inflation
An Online Decision-Theoretic Pipeline for Responder Dispatch
The problem of dispatching emergency responders to service traffic accidents,
fire, distress calls and crimes plagues urban areas across the globe. While
such problems have been extensively looked at, most approaches are offline.
Such methodologies fail to capture the dynamically changing environments under
which critical emergency response occurs, and therefore, fail to be implemented
in practice. Any holistic approach towards creating a pipeline for effective
emergency response must also look at other challenges that it subsumes -
predicting when and where incidents happen and understanding the changing
environmental dynamics. We describe a system that collectively deals with all
these problems in an online manner, meaning that the models get updated with
streaming data sources. We highlight why such an approach is crucial to the
effectiveness of emergency response, and present an algorithmic framework that
can compute promising actions for a given decision-theoretic model for
responder dispatch. We argue that carefully crafted heuristic measures can
balance the trade-off between computational time and the quality of solutions
achieved and highlight why such an approach is more scalable and tractable than
traditional approaches. We also present an online mechanism for incident
prediction, as well as an approach based on recurrent neural networks for
learning and predicting environmental features that affect responder dispatch.
We compare our methodology with prior state-of-the-art and existing dispatch
strategies in the field, which show that our approach results in a reduction in
response time with a drastic reduction in computational time.Comment: Appeared in ICCPS 201
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