Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) aims to infer an agent's preferences (represented as a reward function $R$) from their behaviour (represented as a policy $\pi$). To do this, we need a behavioural model of how $\pi$ relates to $R$. In the current literature, the most common behavioural models are optimality, Boltzmann-rationality, and causal entropy maximisation. However, the true relationship between a human's preferences and their behaviour is much more complex than any of these behavioural models. This means that the behavioural models are misspecified, which raises the concern that they may lead to systematic errors if applied to real data. In this paper, we analyse how sensitive the IRL problem is to misspecification of the behavioural model. Specifically, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions that completely characterise how the observed data may differ from the assumed behavioural model without incurring an error above a given threshold. In addition to this, we also characterise the conditions under which a behavioural model is robust to small perturbations of the observed policy, and we analyse how robust many behavioural models are to misspecification of their parameter values (such as e.g.\ the discount rate). Our analysis suggests that the IRL problem is highly sensitive to misspecification, in the sense that very mild misspecification can lead to very large errors in the inferred reward function.
Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a powerful method for controlling dynamic systems, but its learning mechanism can lead to unpredictable actions that undermine the safety of critical systems. Here, we propose RL with Adaptive Control Regularization (RL-ACR) that ensures RL safety by combining the RL policy with a control regularizer that hard-codes safety constraints over forecasted system behaviors. The adaptability is achieved by using a learnable "focus" weight trained to maximize the cumulative reward of the policy combination. As the RL policy improves through off-policy learning, the focus weight improves the initial sub-optimum strategy by gradually relying more on the RL policy. We demonstrate the effectiveness of RL-ACR in a critical medical control application and further investigate its performance in four classic control environments.
Adversarial inverse reinforcement learning (AIRL) stands as a cornerstone approach in imitation learning, yet it frequently faces criticisms from prior studies. In this paper, we rethink AIRL and respond to these criticisms. Criticism 1 lies in Inadequate Policy Imitation. We show that substituting the built-in algorithm with soft actor-critic (SAC) during policy updating (requires multi-iterations) significantly enhances the efficiency of policy imitation. Criticism 2 lies in Limited Performance in Transferable Reward Recovery Despite SAC Integration. While we find that SAC indeed exhibits a significant improvement in policy imitation, it introduces drawbacks to transferable reward recovery. We prove that the SAC algorithm itself is not feasible to disentangle the reward function comprehensively during the AIRL training process, and propose a hybrid framework, PPO-AIRL + SAC, for a satisfactory transfer effect. Criticism 3 lies in Unsatisfactory Proof from the Perspective of Potential Equilibrium. We reanalyze it from an algebraic theory perspective.
We develop a thermodynamic theory for machine learning (ML) systems. Similar to physical thermodynamic systems which are characterized by energy and entropy, ML systems possess these characteristics as well. This comparison inspire us to integrate the concept of temperature into ML systems grounded in the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, and establish a basic thermodynamic framework for machine learning systems with non-Boltzmann distributions. We introduce the concept of states within a ML system, identify two typical types of state, and interpret model training and refresh as a process of state phase transition. We consider that the initial potential energy of a ML system is described by the model's loss functions, and the energy adheres to the principle of minimum potential energy. For a variety of energy forms and parameter initialization methods, we derive the temperature of systems during the phase transition both analytically and asymptotically, highlighting temperature as a vital indicator of system data distribution and ML training complexity. Moreover, we perceive deep neural networks as complex heat engines with both global temperature and local temperatures in each layer. The concept of work efficiency is introduced within neural networks, which mainly depends on the neural activation functions. We then classify neural networks based on their work efficiency, and describe neural networks as two types of heat engines.
Machine learning (ML) models are nowadays used in complex applications in various domains, such as medicine, bioinformatics, and other sciences. Due to their black box nature, however, it may sometimes be hard to understand and trust the results they provide. This has increased the demand for reliable visualization tools related to enhancing trust in ML models, which has become a prominent topic of research in the visualization community over the past decades. To provide an overview and present the frontiers of current research on the topic, we present a State-of-the-Art Report (STAR) on enhancing trust in ML models with the use of interactive visualization. We define and describe the background of the topic, introduce a categorization for visualization techniques that aim to accomplish this goal, and discuss insights and opportunities for future research directions. Among our contributions is a categorization of trust against different facets of interactive ML, expanded and improved from previous research. Our results are investigated from different analytical perspectives: (a) providing a statistical overview, (b) summarizing key findings, (c) performing topic analyses, and (d) exploring the data sets used in the individual papers, all with the support of an interactive web-based survey browser. We intend this survey to be beneficial for visualization researchers whose interests involve making ML models more trustworthy, as well as researchers and practitioners from other disciplines in their search for effective visualization techniques suitable for solving their tasks with confidence and conveying meaning to their data.
As the complexity of machine learning (ML) models increases and their application in different (and critical) domains grows, there is a strong demand for more interpretable and trustworthy ML. A direct, model-agnostic, way to interpret such models is to train surrogate models-such as rule sets and decision trees-that sufficiently approximate the original ones while being simpler and easier-to-explain. Yet, rule sets can become very lengthy, with many if-else statements, and decision tree depth grows rapidly when accurately emulating complex ML models. In such cases, both approaches can fail to meet their core goal-providing users with model interpretability. To tackle this, we propose DeforestVis, a visual analytics tool that offers summarization of the behaviour of complex ML models by providing surrogate decision stumps (one-level decision trees) generated with the Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost) technique. DeforestVis helps users to explore the complexity versus fidelity trade-off by incrementally generating more stumps, creating attribute-based explanations with weighted stumps to justify decision making, and analysing the impact of rule overriding on training instance allocation between one or more stumps. An independent test set allows users to monitor the effectiveness of manual rule changes and form hypotheses based on case-by-case analyses. We show the applicability and usefulness of DeforestVis with two use cases and expert interviews with data analysts and model developers.
In machine learning (ML), ensemble methods such as bagging, boosting, and stacking are widely-established approaches that regularly achieve top-notch predictive performance. Stacking (also called "stacked generalization") is an ensemble method that combines heterogeneous base models, arranged in at least one layer, and then employs another metamodel to summarize the predictions of those models. Although it may be a highly-effective approach for increasing the predictive performance of ML, generating a stack of models from scratch can be a cumbersome trial-and-error process. This challenge stems from the enormous space of available solutions, with different sets of data instances and features that could be used for training, several algorithms to choose from, and instantiations of these algorithms using diverse parameters (i.e., models) that perform differently according to various metrics. In this work, we present a knowledge generation model, which supports ensemble learning with the use of visualization, and a visual analytics system for stacked generalization. Our system, StackGenVis, assists users in dynamically adapting performance metrics, managing data instances, selecting the most important features for a given data set, choosing a set of top-performant and diverse algorithms, and measuring the predictive performance. In consequence, our proposed tool helps users to decide between distinct models and to reduce the complexity of the resulting stack by removing overpromising and underperforming models. The applicability and effectiveness of StackGenVis are demonstrated with two use cases: a real-world healthcare data set and a collection of data related to sentiment/stance detection in texts. Finally, the tool has been evaluated through interviews with three ML experts.
The fusion of causal models with deep learning introducing increasingly intricate data sets, such as the causal associations within images or between textual components, has surfaced as a focal research area. Nonetheless, the broadening of original causal concepts and theories to such complex, non-statistical data has been met with serious challenges. In response, our study proposes redefinitions of causal data into three distinct categories from the standpoint of causal structure and representation: definite data, semi-definite data, and indefinite data. Definite data chiefly pertains to statistical data used in conventional causal scenarios, while semi-definite data refers to a spectrum of data formats germane to deep learning, including time-series, images, text, and others. Indefinite data is an emergent research sphere inferred from the progression of data forms by us. To comprehensively present these three data paradigms, we elaborate on their formal definitions, differences manifested in datasets, resolution pathways, and development of research. We summarize key tasks and achievements pertaining to definite and semi-definite data from myriad research undertakings, present a roadmap for indefinite data, beginning with its current research conundrums. Lastly, we classify and scrutinize the key datasets presently utilized within these three paradigms.
We introduce DeepNash, an autonomous agent capable of learning to play the imperfect information game Stratego from scratch, up to a human expert level. Stratego is one of the few iconic board games that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has not yet mastered. This popular game has an enormous game tree on the order of $10^{535}$ nodes, i.e., $10^{175}$ times larger than that of Go. It has the additional complexity of requiring decision-making under imperfect information, similar to Texas hold'em poker, which has a significantly smaller game tree (on the order of $10^{164}$ nodes). Decisions in Stratego are made over a large number of discrete actions with no obvious link between action and outcome. Episodes are long, with often hundreds of moves before a player wins, and situations in Stratego can not easily be broken down into manageably-sized sub-problems as in poker. For these reasons, Stratego has been a grand challenge for the field of AI for decades, and existing AI methods barely reach an amateur level of play. DeepNash uses a game-theoretic, model-free deep reinforcement learning method, without search, that learns to master Stratego via self-play. The Regularised Nash Dynamics (R-NaD) algorithm, a key component of DeepNash, converges to an approximate Nash equilibrium, instead of 'cycling' around it, by directly modifying the underlying multi-agent learning dynamics. DeepNash beats existing state-of-the-art AI methods in Stratego and achieved a yearly (2022) and all-time top-3 rank on the Gravon games platform, competing with human expert players.
In contrast to batch learning where all training data is available at once, continual learning represents a family of methods that accumulate knowledge and learn continuously with data available in sequential order. Similar to the human learning process with the ability of learning, fusing, and accumulating new knowledge coming at different time steps, continual learning is considered to have high practical significance. Hence, continual learning has been studied in various artificial intelligence tasks. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of the recent progress of continual learning in computer vision. In particular, the works are grouped by their representative techniques, including regularization, knowledge distillation, memory, generative replay, parameter isolation, and a combination of the above techniques. For each category of these techniques, both its characteristics and applications in computer vision are presented. At the end of this overview, several subareas, where continuous knowledge accumulation is potentially helpful while continual learning has not been well studied, are discussed.
Neural machine translation (NMT) is a deep learning based approach for machine translation, which yields the state-of-the-art translation performance in scenarios where large-scale parallel corpora are available. Although the high-quality and domain-specific translation is crucial in the real world, domain-specific corpora are usually scarce or nonexistent, and thus vanilla NMT performs poorly in such scenarios. Domain adaptation that leverages both out-of-domain parallel corpora as well as monolingual corpora for in-domain translation, is very important for domain-specific translation. In this paper, we give a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art domain adaptation techniques for NMT.