让强化学习看清环境因果,避免捷径陷阱
Better Decisions through the Right Causal World Model
- 从观测中提取物体中心状态,用符号回归建模因果动态
- 在Pong和Freeway中实现高精度因果模型,提升泛化能力
- 结合大模型标注变量,适合追求可解释决策的RL研究者
强化学习(RL)代理在多种环境中表现出色,能直接从感官输入中发现有效策略。然而,这些代理常利用训练数据中的虚假相关性,导致行为脆弱,难以推广到新或微调环境。为此,我们提出因果物体中心模型提取工具(COMET),一种新算法,用于学习精确且可解释的因果世界模型(CWM)。COMET首先从观测中提取物体中心的状态描述,并识别与物体属性相关的环境内部状态。通过符号回归,它建模物体中心的转移过程,并推导出控制物体动态的因果关系。COMET进一步引入大语言模型(LLMs)进行语义推理,标注因果变量以增强可解释性。借助这些能力,COMET构建出与环境真实因果结构一致的CWM,使代理能够聚焦于任务相关特征。所提取的CWM减少了捷径风险,促进在动态场景中更优的规划与决策。我们在Atari环境如Pong和Freeway中验证了COMET的准确性和鲁棒性,凸显其在连接物体中心推理与因果推断方面的潜力。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reinforcement learning (RL) agents have shown remarkable performances in various environments, where they can discover effective policies directly from sensory inputs. However, these agents often exploit spurious correlations in the training data, resulting in brittle behaviours that fail to generalize to new or slightly modified environments. To address this, we introduce the Causal Object-centric Model Extraction Tool (COMET), a novel algorithm designed to learn the exact interpretable causal world models (CWMs). COMET first extracts object-centric state descriptions from observations and identifies the environment's internal states related to the depicted objects' properties. Using symbolic regression, it models object-centric transitions and derives causal relationships governing object dynamics. COMET further incorporates large language models (LLMs) for semantic inference, annotating causal variables to enhance interpretability. By leveraging these capabilities, COMET constructs CWMs that align with the true causal structure of the environment, enabling agents to focus on task-relevant features. The extracted CWMs mitigate the danger of shortcuts, permitting the development of RL systems capable of better planning and decision-making across dynamic scenarios. Our results, validated in Atari environments such as Pong and Freeway, demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of COMET, highlighting its potential to bridge the gap between object-centric reasoning and causal inference in reinforcement learning.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。