通过分阶段自模仿学习,让大模型智能体更高效地探索与利用策略。
Learn the Ropes, Then Trust the Wins: Self-imitation with Progressive Exploration for Agentic Reinforcement Learning
- 用渐进式自模仿机制控制策略熵,平衡探索与利用。
- 在多个任务上提升成功率最高达20.7%,仅增加少量计算开销。
- 适合需要长周期决策的智能体强化学习研究者使用。
强化学习是提升大语言模型在长周期、稀疏奖励任务中策略性工具使用能力的主要范式,但面临探索-利用权衡的根本挑战。现有方法依赖策略熵来刺激探索,但机械的熵最大化易导致强化学习不稳定,因多轮分布偏移。本文提出SPEAR,一种用于训练智能体大模型的自模仿学习(SIL)方案。它扩展了基础SIL——通过回放缓冲区存储优质经验以进行离线策略更新——并逐步调节各阶段的策略熵。具体而言,所提出的课程调度协调内在奖励设计与自模仿机制:1)初期频繁使用工具以加速探索;2)收敛后强化对成功策略的利用。同时结合工业级强化学习优化技巧,构建强基线Dr.BoT以验证效果。在ALFWorld和WebShop中,SPEAR使GRPO/GiGPO/Dr.BoT的成功率分别提升最多16.1%/5.1%/8.6%和20.7%/11.8%/13.9%;在AIME24和AIME25中,使Dr.BoT提升最多3.8%和6.1%。这些提升仅带来10%-25%的理论复杂度增长,实际运行开销可忽略,展现出SPEAR良好的即插即用扩展性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reinforcement learning (RL) is the dominant paradigm for sharpening strategic tool use capabilities of LLMs on long-horizon, sparsely-rewarded agent tasks, yet it faces a fundamental challenge of exploration-exploitation trade-off. Existing studies stimulate exploration through the lens of policy entropy, but such mechanical entropy maximization is prone to RL instability due to the multi-turn distribution shifting. In this paper, we target the progressive exploration-exploitation balance under the guidance of the agent's own experiences without succumbing to either entropy collapsing or runaway divergence. We propose SPEAR, a self-imitation learning (SIL) recipe for training agentic LLMs. It extends the vanilla SIL, where a replay buffer stores good experience for off-policy update, by gradually steering the policy entropy across stages. Specifically, the proposed curriculum scheduling harmonizes intrinsic reward shaping and self-imitation to 1) expedite exploration via frequent tool interactions at the beginning, and 2) strengthen exploitation of successful tactics upon convergence towards familiarity with the environment. We also combine bag-of-tricks of industrial RL optimizations for a strong baseline Dr.BoT to demonstrate our effectiveness. In ALFWorld and WebShop, SPEAR increases the success rates of GRPO/GiGPO/Dr.BoT by up to 16.1%/5.1%/8.6% and 20.7%/11.8%/13.9%, respectively. In AIME24 and AIME25, SPEAR boosts Dr.BoT by up to 3.8% and 6.1%, respectively. Such gains incur only 10%-25% extra theoretical complexity and negligible runtime overhead in practice, demonstrating the plug-and-play scalability of SPEAR.
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