让奖励函数自动进化,实现智能体自主对齐与优化。
Differentiable Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning
- 用可微分的元优化器动态组合原子奖励组件,生成最优奖励结构。
- 在多个推理任务中超越现有方法,尤其在分布外泛化上提升显著。
- 适合研究自动化奖励设计、智能体自我优化的学者和工程师。
构建有效的奖励信号仍是强化学习中的核心挑战,尤其在复杂推理任务中。现有自动奖励优化方法多依赖无导数的搜索启发式,将奖励函数视为黑箱,无法利用奖励结构修改与策略性能之间的因果关系。本文提出可微分进化强化学习(DERL),一种用于自主发现最优奖励结构的双层框架。DERL采用元优化器,通过组合结构化的原子基元演化奖励函数,以引导内层策略。与以往黑箱方法不同,DERL通过内层验证性能计算的策略梯度更新元优化器,使元优化过程具有可微性,从而逐步学习出“元梯度”以指导任务成功,提供密集且可行动的反馈。我们在多种推理领域验证了DERL:具身智能体(ALFWorld)、科学模拟(ScienceWorld)和数学推理(GSM8K, MATH)。结果表明,DERL在智能体基准上达到当前最优性能,显著优于非可微基线,尤其是在分布外泛化方面。轨迹分析证实,DERL捕捉到了任务的内在因果结构,实现了完全自主、自我改进的智能体对齐。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Crafting effective reward signals remains a central challenge in Reinforcement Learning (RL), especially for complex reasoning tasks. Existing automated reward optimization methods typically rely on derivative-free search heuristics that treat the reward function as a black box, failing to exploit the causal dynamics between reward structure modifications and policy performance. We introduce Differentiable Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning (DERL), a bi-level framework for the autonomous discovery of optimal reward structures. DERL employs a Meta-Optimizer that evolves a reward function through the composition of structured atomic primitives to guide an inner-loop policy. Unlike prior black-box methods, DERL introduces differentiability into the meta-optimization process by updating the Meta-Optimizer using policy gradients derived from inner-loop validation performance. This allows for the progressive learning of a "meta-gradient" for task success, providing the system with dense, actionable feedback. We validate DERL across diverse reasoning domains: embodied agent (ALFWorld), scientific simulation (ScienceWorld), and mathematical reasoning (GSM8K, MATH). Results show that DERL achieves state-of-the-art performance on agent benchmarks, substantially outperforming non-differentiable baselines-especially in out-of-distribution generalization. Trajectory analyses confirm that DERL captures the intrinsic causal structure of tasks, enabling fully autonomous, self-improving agent alignment.
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