A Definition of Open-Ended Learning Problems for Goal-Conditioned Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sigaud, Olivier, Baldassarre, Gianluca, Colas, Cedric, Doncieux, Stephane, Duro, Richard, Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves, Perrin-Gilbert, Nicolas, Santucci, Vieri Giuliano
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Sigaud, Olivier
Baldassarre, Gianluca
Colas, Cedric
Doncieux, Stephane
Duro, Richard
Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves
Perrin-Gilbert, Nicolas
Santucci, Vieri Giuliano
author_facet Sigaud, Olivier
Baldassarre, Gianluca
Colas, Cedric
Doncieux, Stephane
Duro, Richard
Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves
Perrin-Gilbert, Nicolas
Santucci, Vieri Giuliano
contents A lot of recent machine learning research papers have ``open-ended learning'' in their title. But very few of them attempt to define what they mean when using the term. Even worse, when looking more closely there seems to be no consensus on what distinguishes open-ended learning from related concepts such as continual learning, lifelong learning or autotelic learning. In this paper, we contribute to fixing this situation. After illustrating the genealogy of the concept and more recent perspectives about what it truly means, we outline that open-ended learning is generally conceived as a composite notion encompassing a set of diverse properties. In contrast with previous approaches, we propose to isolate a key elementary property of open-ended processes, which is to produce elements from time to time (e.g., observations, options, reward functions, and goals), over an infinite horizon, that are considered novel from an observer's perspective. From there, we build the notion of open-ended learning problems and focus in particular on the subset of open-ended goal-conditioned reinforcement learning problems in which agents can learn a growing repertoire of goal-driven skills. Finally, we highlight the work that remains to be performed to fill the gap between our elementary definition and the more involved notions of open-ended learning that developmental AI researchers may have in mind.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_00344
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Definition of Open-Ended Learning Problems for Goal-Conditioned Agents
Sigaud, Olivier
Baldassarre, Gianluca
Colas, Cedric
Doncieux, Stephane
Duro, Richard
Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves
Perrin-Gilbert, Nicolas
Santucci, Vieri Giuliano
Artificial Intelligence
A lot of recent machine learning research papers have ``open-ended learning'' in their title. But very few of them attempt to define what they mean when using the term. Even worse, when looking more closely there seems to be no consensus on what distinguishes open-ended learning from related concepts such as continual learning, lifelong learning or autotelic learning. In this paper, we contribute to fixing this situation. After illustrating the genealogy of the concept and more recent perspectives about what it truly means, we outline that open-ended learning is generally conceived as a composite notion encompassing a set of diverse properties. In contrast with previous approaches, we propose to isolate a key elementary property of open-ended processes, which is to produce elements from time to time (e.g., observations, options, reward functions, and goals), over an infinite horizon, that are considered novel from an observer's perspective. From there, we build the notion of open-ended learning problems and focus in particular on the subset of open-ended goal-conditioned reinforcement learning problems in which agents can learn a growing repertoire of goal-driven skills. Finally, we highlight the work that remains to be performed to fill the gap between our elementary definition and the more involved notions of open-ended learning that developmental AI researchers may have in mind.
title A Definition of Open-Ended Learning Problems for Goal-Conditioned Agents
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.00344