用大模型生成环境动态假设,提升强化学习初始化效果
ProDVI: Programmatic Dynamics Priors for Value Network Initialization

- 让大模型生成可执行代码模拟环境动态,用于预训练价值网络
- 在多个基准任务上显著提升无模型强化学习的样本效率
- 无需真实数据或仿真器,适合缺乏先验资源的RL场景
深度强化学习(RL)样本效率低,原因之一是智能体从零开始训练。现有方法依赖预收集数据、高保真仿真器或元学习,但这些资源常难获取。本文提出程序化动态先验(ProDVI),利用大语言模型中的常识和领域知识,在不依赖外部资源的情况下初始化RL智能体。具体地,ProDVI通过提示代码生成模型产生可执行的Python函数,编码对环境动态的粗略假设;这些函数生成合成转移数据,并构建辅助动态预测目标,用于在演员-评论家框架中预训练价值网络的状态-动作编码器。学习到的表征在在线强化学习前即具备动态感知的归纳偏置。值得注意的是,生成的程序仅用于表示预训练,不要求精确模拟目标环境;即使不准确,也能通过真实交互数据与奖励进行在线修正。在OpenAI Gym和DeepMind Control Suite任务上的实验表明,ProDVI能有效提升无模型强化学习算法的样本效率。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) is notoriously sample inefficient. One contributing factor is that RL agents are typically initialized from scratch, forcing them to acquire task-relevant knowledge through online interaction. Existing approaches obtain informative initializations through pre-collected datasets, high-fidelity simulators, or meta-learning over related tasks, but these prerequisites may be difficult to access or even unavailable. In this paper, we propose Programmatic Dynamics Priors for Value Network Initialization (ProDVI), a framework that leverages the commonsense and domain knowledge encoded in large language models to initialize RL agents without relying on these resources. Specifically, ProDVI prompts a code-generating language model to produce executable Python functions that encode coarse hypotheses about environment dynamics. These functions are then used to generate synthetic transitions. Based on these transitions, we construct an auxiliary dynamics prediction objective to pretrain the state-action encoder of the value network in an actor-critic framework. The learned representation provides dynamics-aware inductive biases before online RL begins. Importantly, the generated programs are used only for representation pretraining and are not required to faithfully simulate the target environment. While the generated programs may be inaccurate, their induced initialization can be corrected through online learning from real transitions and rewards. Experiments on OpenAI Gym and DeepMind Control Suite tasks show that ProDVI can effectively improve the sample efficiency of model-free RL algorithms.
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