Surrogate Fitness Metrics for Interpretable Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Altmann, Philipp, Davignon, Céline, Zorn, Maximilian, Ritz, Fabian, Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia, Gabor, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Altmann, Philipp
Davignon, Céline
Zorn, Maximilian
Ritz, Fabian
Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia
Gabor, Thomas
author_facet Altmann, Philipp
Davignon, Céline
Zorn, Maximilian
Ritz, Fabian
Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia
Gabor, Thomas
contents We employ an evolutionary optimization framework that perturbs initial states to generate informative and diverse policy demonstrations. A joint surrogate fitness function guides the optimization by combining local diversity, behavioral certainty, and global population diversity. To assess demonstration quality, we apply a set of evaluation metrics, including the reward-based optimality gap, fidelity interquartile means (IQMs), fitness composition analysis, and trajectory visualizations. Hyperparameter sensitivity is also examined to better understand the dynamics of trajectory optimization. Our findings demonstrate that optimizing trajectory selection via surrogate fitness metrics significantly improves interpretability of RL policies in both discrete and continuous environments. In gridworld domains, evaluations reveal significantly enhanced demonstration fidelities compared to random and ablated baselines. In continuous control, the proposed framework offers valuable insights, particularly for early-stage policies, while fidelity-based optimization proves more effective for mature policies. By refining and systematically analyzing surrogate fitness functions, this study advances the interpretability of RL models. The proposed improvements provide deeper insights into RL decision-making, benefiting applications in safety-critical and explainability-focused domains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_14645
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Surrogate Fitness Metrics for Interpretable Reinforcement Learning
Altmann, Philipp
Davignon, Céline
Zorn, Maximilian
Ritz, Fabian
Linnhoff-Popien, Claudia
Gabor, Thomas
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
We employ an evolutionary optimization framework that perturbs initial states to generate informative and diverse policy demonstrations. A joint surrogate fitness function guides the optimization by combining local diversity, behavioral certainty, and global population diversity. To assess demonstration quality, we apply a set of evaluation metrics, including the reward-based optimality gap, fidelity interquartile means (IQMs), fitness composition analysis, and trajectory visualizations. Hyperparameter sensitivity is also examined to better understand the dynamics of trajectory optimization. Our findings demonstrate that optimizing trajectory selection via surrogate fitness metrics significantly improves interpretability of RL policies in both discrete and continuous environments. In gridworld domains, evaluations reveal significantly enhanced demonstration fidelities compared to random and ablated baselines. In continuous control, the proposed framework offers valuable insights, particularly for early-stage policies, while fidelity-based optimization proves more effective for mature policies. By refining and systematically analyzing surrogate fitness functions, this study advances the interpretability of RL models. The proposed improvements provide deeper insights into RL decision-making, benefiting applications in safety-critical and explainability-focused domains.
title Surrogate Fitness Metrics for Interpretable Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14645