arXiv:2505.21119cs.LGcs.AI2025-05被引 1

用简单方法估算强化学习中价值函数的不确定性,效果媲美复杂集成模型。

Universal Value-Function Uncertainties

  • 通过在线网络与固定目标网络的预测误差衡量价值不确定性。
  • 在多任务离线强化学习中性能接近大型集成模型,计算开销更低。
  • 适用于需要安全决策和高效探索的强化学习场景。

估计价值函数的认知不确定性是强化学习中的关键挑战,涉及高效探索、安全决策和离线强化学习。尽管深度集成方法能稳健量化不确定性,但计算开销大;单模型方法虽计算友好,却常依赖启发式策略,且需额外传播机制处理短期不确定性。本文提出通用价值函数不确定性(UVU),其思想类似随机网络蒸馏(RND),通过在线学习器与固定随机初始化目标网络间的平方预测误差来量化不确定性。与RND不同,UVU误差反映的是政策相关的未来价值不确定性,因其训练过程:在线网络使用时序差分学习,合成奖励由固定目标网络提供。我们基于神经正切核(NTK)理论进行深入分析,证明在无限网络宽度极限下,UVU误差精确等价于独立通用价值函数集合的方差。实验表明,UVU在复杂多任务离线强化学习设置中性能媲美大型集成模型,同时具备简洁性与显著计算优势。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Estimating epistemic uncertainty in value functions is a crucial challenge for many aspects of reinforcement learning (RL), including efficient exploration, safe decision-making, and offline RL. While deep ensembles provide a robust method for quantifying value uncertainty, they come with significant computational overhead. Single-model methods, while computationally favorable, often rely on heuristics and typically require additional propagation mechanisms for myopic uncertainty estimates. In this work we introduce universal value-function uncertainties (UVU), which, similar in spirit to random network distillation (RND), quantify uncertainty as squared prediction errors between an online learner and a fixed, randomly initialized target network. Unlike RND, UVU errors reflect policy-conditional value uncertainty, incorporating the future uncertainties any given policy may encounter. This is due to the training procedure employed in UVU: the online network is trained using temporal difference learning with a synthetic reward derived from the fixed, randomly initialized target network. We provide an extensive theoretical analysis of our approach using neural tangent kernel (NTK) theory and show that in the limit of infinite network width, UVU errors are exactly equivalent to the variance of an ensemble of independent universal value functions. Empirically, we show that UVU achieves equal performance to large ensembles on challenging multi-task offline RL settings, while offering simplicity and substantial computational savings.

强化学习不确定性估计价值函数离线RL

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。