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Main Authors: Chhan, David, Novoseller, Ellen, Lawhern, Vernon J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10941
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author Chhan, David
Novoseller, Ellen
Lawhern, Vernon J.
author_facet Chhan, David
Novoseller, Ellen
Lawhern, Vernon J.
contents Preference-based reinforcement learning (RL) provides a framework to train AI agents using human feedback through preferences over pairs of behaviors, enabling agents to learn desired behaviors when it is difficult to specify a numerical reward function. While this paradigm leverages human feedback, it typically treats the feedback as given by a single human user. However, different users may desire multiple AI behaviors and modes of interaction. Meanwhile, incorporating preference feedback from crowds (i.e. ensembles of users) in a robust manner remains a challenge, and the problem of training RL agents using feedback from multiple human users remains understudied. In this work, we introduce a conceptual framework, Crowd-PrefRL, that integrates preference-based RL approaches with techniques from unsupervised crowdsourcing to enable training of autonomous system behaviors from crowdsourced feedback. We show preliminary results suggesting that Crowd-PrefRL can learn reward functions and agent policies from preference feedback provided by crowds of unknown expertise and reliability. We also show that in most cases, agents trained with Crowd-PrefRL outperform agents trained with majority-vote preferences or preferences from any individual user, especially when the spread of user error rates among the crowd is large. Results further suggest that our method can identify the presence of minority viewpoints within the crowd in an unsupervised manner.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_10941
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Crowd-PrefRL: Preference-Based Reward Learning from Crowds
Chhan, David
Novoseller, Ellen
Lawhern, Vernon J.
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
Social and Information Networks
Preference-based reinforcement learning (RL) provides a framework to train AI agents using human feedback through preferences over pairs of behaviors, enabling agents to learn desired behaviors when it is difficult to specify a numerical reward function. While this paradigm leverages human feedback, it typically treats the feedback as given by a single human user. However, different users may desire multiple AI behaviors and modes of interaction. Meanwhile, incorporating preference feedback from crowds (i.e. ensembles of users) in a robust manner remains a challenge, and the problem of training RL agents using feedback from multiple human users remains understudied. In this work, we introduce a conceptual framework, Crowd-PrefRL, that integrates preference-based RL approaches with techniques from unsupervised crowdsourcing to enable training of autonomous system behaviors from crowdsourced feedback. We show preliminary results suggesting that Crowd-PrefRL can learn reward functions and agent policies from preference feedback provided by crowds of unknown expertise and reliability. We also show that in most cases, agents trained with Crowd-PrefRL outperform agents trained with majority-vote preferences or preferences from any individual user, especially when the spread of user error rates among the crowd is large. Results further suggest that our method can identify the presence of minority viewpoints within the crowd in an unsupervised manner.
title Crowd-PrefRL: Preference-Based Reward Learning from Crowds
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10941