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Hauptverfasser: Wu, Frank, Ren, Mengye
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06649
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author Wu, Frank
Ren, Mengye
author_facet Wu, Frank
Ren, Mengye
contents The Forward-Forward (FF) Algorithm is a recently proposed learning procedure for neural networks that employs two forward passes instead of the traditional forward and backward passes used in backpropagation. However, FF remains largely confined to supervised settings, leaving a gap at domains where learning signals can be yielded more naturally such as RL. In this work, inspired by FF's goodness function using layer activity statistics, we introduce Action-conditioned Root mean squared Q-Functions (ARQ), a novel value estimation method that applies a goodness function and action conditioning for local RL using temporal difference learning. Despite its simplicity and biological grounding, our approach achieves superior performance compared to state-of-the-art local backprop-free RL methods in the MinAtar and the DeepMind Control Suite benchmarks, while also outperforming algorithms trained with backpropagation on most tasks. Code can be found at https://github.com/agentic-learning-ai-lab/arq.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_06649
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Local Reinforcement Learning with Action-Conditioned Root Mean Squared Q-Functions
Wu, Frank
Ren, Mengye
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
The Forward-Forward (FF) Algorithm is a recently proposed learning procedure for neural networks that employs two forward passes instead of the traditional forward and backward passes used in backpropagation. However, FF remains largely confined to supervised settings, leaving a gap at domains where learning signals can be yielded more naturally such as RL. In this work, inspired by FF's goodness function using layer activity statistics, we introduce Action-conditioned Root mean squared Q-Functions (ARQ), a novel value estimation method that applies a goodness function and action conditioning for local RL using temporal difference learning. Despite its simplicity and biological grounding, our approach achieves superior performance compared to state-of-the-art local backprop-free RL methods in the MinAtar and the DeepMind Control Suite benchmarks, while also outperforming algorithms trained with backpropagation on most tasks. Code can be found at https://github.com/agentic-learning-ai-lab/arq.
title Local Reinforcement Learning with Action-Conditioned Root Mean Squared Q-Functions
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06649