arXiv:2608.14642cs.LG2026-08

让强化学习机器人每轮都守规矩,而非整体上看起来道德。

Training and Evaluating Ethical Reinforcement Learning Agents on Per-Episode Distributions

论文配图:Training and Evaluating Ethical Reinforcement Learning Agents on Per-Episode Distributions
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 在每轮独立评估中优化道德表现,避免坏事件被好行为掩盖。
  • 基于期望标量回报的算法每轮最多只允许1次违规(最差分位1.04次)。
  • 传统平均指标会掩盖严重问题,适合关注个体公平性的研究者必看。

强化学习代理在单一奖励信号下会利用设计奖励与真实意图之间的差距。当试图赋予代理伦理行为时,这尤为严重:代理可能整体表现良好,却将违规集中在少数几轮中,而环境中的伤害无法通过后续良好行为弥补。本文在开源生存基准Craftax中对比四种伦理训练方法:标量惩罚加终止、线性多目标权重扫描、自适应拉格朗日约束,以及基于期望标量回报(ESR)准则的每轮非补偿效用优化。所有方法均在统一检测协议下评估,不屏蔽任何违规。在平均回报与平均违规率的前沿上,四者无显著差异;但在每轮层面,区分明显。在相同平均回报下,ESR代理每轮最多约1次违规(最差分位1.04±0.07),拉格朗日方法超出预算(1.14±0.03),权重扫描最差轮次达2.20±0.20。观测增强对照实验表明,差异源于训练目标而非观察内容,且每轮保障并不牺牲平均性能。因此,当伦理违规不可跨轮平均时,训练与评估必须聚焦于每轮分布而非均值。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents trained on a single reward signal exploit the gap between the designed reward and the intended behavior. This is particularly a problem when we are trying to imbue ethical behavior into RL agents. An agent can look ethical on average while concentrating its violations in a few bad episodes, and a creature in the environment harmed in one episode is not restored by good conduct in another. We compare four ways of training ethical behavior in Craftax, an open-ended survival benchmark. The four are: scalar penalties with termination, a linear multi-objective weight sweep, an adaptive Lagrangian constraint, and a non-compensatory utility optimized per episode under the Expected Scalarized Returns (ESR) criterion. All are evaluated under a single detector-based protocol that counts every violation in every episode without censoring. On the frontier of mean return against mean violation rate, the four methods are indistinguishable; per episode they separate sharply. At matched mean return, the ESR agent holds its stated budget of one violation in effectively every episode (worst-decile 1.04 +/- 0.07 violations), the Lagrangian leaks past the same budget (1.14 +/- 0.03), and the weight sweep's worst episodes double it (2.20 +/- 0.20). An observation-augmentation control attributes the separation to the training objective rather than to what the agent observes, and the per-episode guarantee costs nothing on the mean frontier. When ethical violations do not average away across episodes, we argue both training and evaluation must target the per-episode distribution rather than the mean.

强化学习伦理对齐每轮评估可靠性

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