arXiv:2409.04792cs.LGcs.AI2024-09NeurIPS被引 23

提出新方法降低深度强化学习中的值与策略波动,提升训练稳定性。

Improving Deep Reinforcement Learning by Reducing the Chain Effect of Value and Policy Churn

  • 从函数逼近视角揭示值与策略更新的连锁波动机制
  • 实验证明该波动导致学习偏差,影响多种算法性能
  • 通用插件式方法CHAIN可显著减少波动并提升效果

深度神经网络为强化学习提供强大的函数逼近能力,以应对大规模决策问题。然而,由于训练过程的非平稳性,这些逼近器引入了挑战:输出预测会因每次批量更新而发生‘波动’,即使状态未被包含在当前批次中也会产生不可控变化。尽管这种波动存在于训练每个步骤中,其成因及影响仍缺乏深入研究。本文从函数逼近下的广义策略迭代视角刻画波动现象,发现存在值估计与策略改进之间的连锁效应,导致两者波动相互放大并持续偏移学习动态。我们进一步分析该效应在不同设置下的具体表现:基于值的方法中贪婪动作偏离、近端策略优化中的信任区域违反,以及基于演员-评论家方法中的双重偏差。为此,我们提出一种通用方法——链效应抑制(CHAIN),可无缝集成至多数现有深度强化学习算法中。实验表明,该方法在在线与离线、基于值与基于策略的RL场景,以及扩展性设置下均有效降低波动并提升学习性能。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Deep neural networks provide Reinforcement Learning (RL) powerful function approximators to address large-scale decision-making problems. However, these approximators introduce challenges due to the non-stationary nature of RL training. One source of the challenges in RL is that output predictions can churn, leading to uncontrolled changes after each batch update for states not included in the batch. Although such a churn phenomenon exists in each step of network training, how churn occurs and impacts RL remains under-explored. In this work, we start by characterizing churn in a view of Generalized Policy Iteration with function approximation, and we discover a chain effect of churn that leads to a cycle where the churns in value estimation and policy improvement compound and bias the learning dynamics throughout the iteration. Further, we concretize the study and focus on the learning issues caused by the chain effect in different settings, including greedy action deviation in value-based methods, trust region violation in proximal policy optimization, and dual bias of policy value in actor-critic methods. We then propose a method to reduce the chain effect across different settings, called Churn Approximated ReductIoN (CHAIN), which can be easily plugged into most existing DRL algorithms. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in both reducing churn and improving learning performance across online and offline, value-based and policy-based RL settings, as well as a scaling setting.

强化学习深度学习策略优化训练稳定

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