论文标题
深层离线RL中隐式正则化的经验研究
An Empirical Study of Implicit Regularization in Deep Offline RL
论文作者
论文摘要
深神经网络是离线增强学习中最常用的功能近似值。先前的工作表明,接受TD学习和梯度下降训练的神经网可以表现出隐式正则化,可以通过这些网络的参数化不足来表征。具体而言,已经观察到在训练期间倒数第二个特征层的等级,也称为\ textit {有效等级}。反过来,这种崩溃被认为是为了降低模型在学习的后期阶段进一步适应的能力,从而导致最终表现降低。有效等级和绩效之间的这种关联使离线RL的有效等级引人注目,主要用于离线政策评估。在这项工作中,我们对三个离线RL数据集的有效等级与绩效之间的关系进行了仔细的实证研究:Bsuite,Atari和DeepMind Lab。我们观察到,直接关联仅在受限的设置中存在,并且在更广泛的超参数扫描中消失。另外,我们从经验上确定了三个学习的阶段,这些阶段解释了隐式正则化对学习动力学的影响,并发现单独进行引导不足以解释有效等级的崩溃。此外,我们表明其他几个因素可能会混淆有效的等级与绩效之间的关系,并得出结论,在简单假设下研究这种关联可能会产生高度误导。
Deep neural networks are the most commonly used function approximators in offline reinforcement learning. Prior works have shown that neural nets trained with TD-learning and gradient descent can exhibit implicit regularization that can be characterized by under-parameterization of these networks. Specifically, the rank of the penultimate feature layer, also called \textit{effective rank}, has been observed to drastically collapse during the training. In turn, this collapse has been argued to reduce the model's ability to further adapt in later stages of learning, leading to the diminished final performance. Such an association between the effective rank and performance makes effective rank compelling for offline RL, primarily for offline policy evaluation. In this work, we conduct a careful empirical study on the relation between effective rank and performance on three offline RL datasets : bsuite, Atari, and DeepMind lab. We observe that a direct association exists only in restricted settings and disappears in the more extensive hyperparameter sweeps. Also, we empirically identify three phases of learning that explain the impact of implicit regularization on the learning dynamics and found that bootstrapping alone is insufficient to explain the collapse of the effective rank. Further, we show that several other factors could confound the relationship between effective rank and performance and conclude that studying this association under simplistic assumptions could be highly misleading.