On the Effects of Fine-tuning Language Models for Text-Based Reinforcement Learning

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Main Authors: Gruppi, Mauricio, Dan, Soham, Murugesan, Keerthiram, Chaudhury, Subhajit
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Gruppi, Mauricio
Dan, Soham
Murugesan, Keerthiram
Chaudhury, Subhajit
author_facet Gruppi, Mauricio
Dan, Soham
Murugesan, Keerthiram
Chaudhury, Subhajit
contents Text-based reinforcement learning involves an agent interacting with a fictional environment using observed text and admissible actions in natural language to complete a task. Previous works have shown that agents can succeed in text-based interactive environments even in the complete absence of semantic understanding or other linguistic capabilities. The success of these agents in playing such games suggests that semantic understanding may not be important for the task. This raises an important question about the benefits of LMs in guiding the agents through the game states. In this work, we show that rich semantic understanding leads to efficient training of text-based RL agents. Moreover, we describe the occurrence of semantic degeneration as a consequence of inappropriate fine-tuning of language models in text-based reinforcement learning (TBRL). Specifically, we describe the shift in the semantic representation of words in the LM, as well as how it affects the performance of the agent in tasks that are semantically similar to the training games. We believe these results may help develop better strategies to fine-tune agents in text-based RL scenarios.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_10174
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Effects of Fine-tuning Language Models for Text-Based Reinforcement Learning
Gruppi, Mauricio
Dan, Soham
Murugesan, Keerthiram
Chaudhury, Subhajit
Computation and Language
Text-based reinforcement learning involves an agent interacting with a fictional environment using observed text and admissible actions in natural language to complete a task. Previous works have shown that agents can succeed in text-based interactive environments even in the complete absence of semantic understanding or other linguistic capabilities. The success of these agents in playing such games suggests that semantic understanding may not be important for the task. This raises an important question about the benefits of LMs in guiding the agents through the game states. In this work, we show that rich semantic understanding leads to efficient training of text-based RL agents. Moreover, we describe the occurrence of semantic degeneration as a consequence of inappropriate fine-tuning of language models in text-based reinforcement learning (TBRL). Specifically, we describe the shift in the semantic representation of words in the LM, as well as how it affects the performance of the agent in tasks that are semantically similar to the training games. We believe these results may help develop better strategies to fine-tune agents in text-based RL scenarios.
title On the Effects of Fine-tuning Language Models for Text-Based Reinforcement Learning
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10174