Beyond Numeric Rewards: In-Context Dueling Bandits with LLM Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Xia, Fanzeng, Liu, Hao, Yue, Yisong, Li, Tongxin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Xia, Fanzeng
Liu, Hao
Yue, Yisong
Li, Tongxin
author_facet Xia, Fanzeng
Liu, Hao
Yue, Yisong
Li, Tongxin
contents In-Context Reinforcement Learning (ICRL) is a frontier paradigm to solve Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems in the foundation model era. While ICRL capabilities have been demonstrated in transformers through task-specific training, the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) out-of-the-box remains largely unexplored. This paper investigates whether LLMs can generalize cross-domain to perform ICRL under the problem of Dueling Bandits (DB), a stateless preference-based RL setting. We find that the top-performing LLMs exhibit a notable zero-shot capacity for relative decision-making, which translates to low short-term weak regret across all DB environment instances by quickly including the best arm in duels. However, an optimality gap still exists between LLMs and classic DB algorithms in terms of strong regret. LLMs struggle to converge and consistently exploit even when explicitly prompted to do so, and are sensitive to prompt variations. To bridge this gap, we propose an agentic flow framework: LLM with Enhanced Algorithmic Dueling (LEAD), which integrates off-the-shelf DB algorithm support with LLM agents through fine-grained adaptive interplay. We show that LEAD has theoretical guarantees inherited from classic DB algorithms on both weak and strong regret. We validate its efficacy and robustness even with noisy and adversarial prompts. The design of such an agentic framework sheds light on how to enhance the trustworthiness of general-purpose LLMs generalized to in-context decision-making tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_01887
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Numeric Rewards: In-Context Dueling Bandits with LLM Agents
Xia, Fanzeng
Liu, Hao
Yue, Yisong
Li, Tongxin
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
In-Context Reinforcement Learning (ICRL) is a frontier paradigm to solve Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems in the foundation model era. While ICRL capabilities have been demonstrated in transformers through task-specific training, the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) out-of-the-box remains largely unexplored. This paper investigates whether LLMs can generalize cross-domain to perform ICRL under the problem of Dueling Bandits (DB), a stateless preference-based RL setting. We find that the top-performing LLMs exhibit a notable zero-shot capacity for relative decision-making, which translates to low short-term weak regret across all DB environment instances by quickly including the best arm in duels. However, an optimality gap still exists between LLMs and classic DB algorithms in terms of strong regret. LLMs struggle to converge and consistently exploit even when explicitly prompted to do so, and are sensitive to prompt variations. To bridge this gap, we propose an agentic flow framework: LLM with Enhanced Algorithmic Dueling (LEAD), which integrates off-the-shelf DB algorithm support with LLM agents through fine-grained adaptive interplay. We show that LEAD has theoretical guarantees inherited from classic DB algorithms on both weak and strong regret. We validate its efficacy and robustness even with noisy and adversarial prompts. The design of such an agentic framework sheds light on how to enhance the trustworthiness of general-purpose LLMs generalized to in-context decision-making tasks.
title Beyond Numeric Rewards: In-Context Dueling Bandits with LLM Agents
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.01887