Less is more -- the Dispatcher/ Executor principle for multi-task Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Riedmiller, Martin, Gesmundo, Andrea, Hertweck, Tim, Hafner, Roland
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Riedmiller, Martin
Gesmundo, Andrea
Hertweck, Tim
Hafner, Roland
author_facet Riedmiller, Martin
Gesmundo, Andrea
Hertweck, Tim
Hafner, Roland
contents Humans instinctively know how to neglect details when it comes to solve complex decision making problems in environments with unforeseeable variations. This abstraction process seems to be a vital property for most biological systems and helps to 'abstract away' unnecessary details and boost generalisation. In this work we introduce the dispatcher/ executor principle for the design of multi-task Reinforcement Learning controllers. It suggests to partition the controller in two entities, one that understands the task (the dispatcher) and one that computes the controls for the specific device (the executor) - and to connect these two by a strongly regularizing communication channel. The core rationale behind this position paper is that changes in structure and design principles can improve generalisation properties and drastically enforce data-efficiency. It is in some sense a 'yes, and ...' response to the current trend of using large neural networks trained on vast amounts of data and bet on emerging generalisation properties. While we agree on the power of scaling - in the sense of Sutton's 'bitter lesson' - we will give some evidence, that considering structure and adding design principles can be a valuable and critical component in particular when data is not abundant and infinite, but is a precious resource.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_09120
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Less is more -- the Dispatcher/ Executor principle for multi-task Reinforcement Learning
Riedmiller, Martin
Gesmundo, Andrea
Hertweck, Tim
Hafner, Roland
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Humans instinctively know how to neglect details when it comes to solve complex decision making problems in environments with unforeseeable variations. This abstraction process seems to be a vital property for most biological systems and helps to 'abstract away' unnecessary details and boost generalisation. In this work we introduce the dispatcher/ executor principle for the design of multi-task Reinforcement Learning controllers. It suggests to partition the controller in two entities, one that understands the task (the dispatcher) and one that computes the controls for the specific device (the executor) - and to connect these two by a strongly regularizing communication channel. The core rationale behind this position paper is that changes in structure and design principles can improve generalisation properties and drastically enforce data-efficiency. It is in some sense a 'yes, and ...' response to the current trend of using large neural networks trained on vast amounts of data and bet on emerging generalisation properties. While we agree on the power of scaling - in the sense of Sutton's 'bitter lesson' - we will give some evidence, that considering structure and adding design principles can be a valuable and critical component in particular when data is not abundant and infinite, but is a precious resource.
title Less is more -- the Dispatcher/ Executor principle for multi-task Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09120