Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lim, Jing Yu, Shah, Rushi, Ikram, Zarif, Yu, Samson, Ma, Haozhe, Leong, Tze-Yun, Liu, Dianbo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19698
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911463471316992
author Lim, Jing Yu
Shah, Rushi
Ikram, Zarif
Yu, Samson
Ma, Haozhe
Leong, Tze-Yun
Liu, Dianbo
author_facet Lim, Jing Yu
Shah, Rushi
Ikram, Zarif
Yu, Samson
Ma, Haozhe
Leong, Tze-Yun
Liu, Dianbo
contents Recently, Model-Based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) have achieved super-human level performance on the Atari100k benchmark on average. However, we discover that conventional aggregates mask a major problem, Performance Asymmetry: MBRL agents dramatically outperform humans in certain tasks (Agent-Optimal tasks) while drastically underperform humans in other tasks (Human-Optimal tasks). Indeed, despite achieving SOTA in the overall mean Human-Normalized Scores (HNS), the SOTA agent scored the worst among baselines on Human-Optimal tasks, with a striking 21X performance gap between the Human-Optimal and Agent-Optimal subsets. To address this, we partition Atari100k evenly into Human-Optimal and Agent-Optimal subsets, and introduce a more balanced aggregate, Sym-HNS. Furthermore, we trace the striking Performance Asymmetry in the SOTA pixel diffusion world model to the curse of dimensionality and its prowess on high visual detail tasks (e.g. Breakout). To this end, we propose a novel latent end-to-end Joint Embedding DIffusion (JEDI) world model that achieves SOTA results in Sym-HNS, Human-Optimal tasks, and Breakout -- thus reversing the worsening Performance Asymmetry trend while improving computational efficiency and remaining competitive on the full Atari100k.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19698
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Performance Asymmetry in Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
Lim, Jing Yu
Shah, Rushi
Ikram, Zarif
Yu, Samson
Ma, Haozhe
Leong, Tze-Yun
Liu, Dianbo
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Recently, Model-Based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) have achieved super-human level performance on the Atari100k benchmark on average. However, we discover that conventional aggregates mask a major problem, Performance Asymmetry: MBRL agents dramatically outperform humans in certain tasks (Agent-Optimal tasks) while drastically underperform humans in other tasks (Human-Optimal tasks). Indeed, despite achieving SOTA in the overall mean Human-Normalized Scores (HNS), the SOTA agent scored the worst among baselines on Human-Optimal tasks, with a striking 21X performance gap between the Human-Optimal and Agent-Optimal subsets. To address this, we partition Atari100k evenly into Human-Optimal and Agent-Optimal subsets, and introduce a more balanced aggregate, Sym-HNS. Furthermore, we trace the striking Performance Asymmetry in the SOTA pixel diffusion world model to the curse of dimensionality and its prowess on high visual detail tasks (e.g. Breakout). To this end, we propose a novel latent end-to-end Joint Embedding DIffusion (JEDI) world model that achieves SOTA results in Sym-HNS, Human-Optimal tasks, and Breakout -- thus reversing the worsening Performance Asymmetry trend while improving computational efficiency and remaining competitive on the full Atari100k.
title Performance Asymmetry in Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19698