Loading Now

Summary of Linear Function Approximation As a Computationally Efficient Method to Solve Classical Reinforcement Learning Challenges, by Hari Srikanth


Linear Function Approximation as a Computationally Efficient Method to Solve Classical Reinforcement Learning Challenges

by Hari Srikanth

First submitted to arxiv on: 27 May 2024

Categories

  • Main: Machine Learning (cs.LG)
  • Secondary: None

     Abstract of paper      PDF of paper


GrooveSquid.com Paper Summaries

GrooveSquid.com’s goal is to make artificial intelligence research accessible by summarizing AI papers in simpler terms. Each summary below covers the same AI paper, written at different levels of difficulty. The medium difficulty and low difficulty versions are original summaries written by GrooveSquid.com, while the high difficulty version is the paper’s original abstract. Feel free to learn from the version that suits you best!

Summary difficulty Written by Summary
High Paper authors High Difficulty Summary
Read the original abstract here
Medium GrooveSquid.com (original content) Medium Difficulty Summary
This paper explores the effectiveness of Neural Network-based approximations of the Value function in Policy-Based methods, specifically Trust Regional Policy Optimization (TRPO) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). While these methods excel in complex environments, they may not be necessary in simpler settings where a computationally less-expensive Value approximation method could suffice. The authors present an implementation of Natural Actor Critic algorithms with actor updates through Natural Policy Gradient methods, arguing that this approach can outperform TRPO and PPO in low-dimensional problems. They demonstrate the superiority of their algorithm over these complex neural network architectures on Reinforcement Learning benchmarks Cart Pole and Acrobot.
Low GrooveSquid.com (original content) Low Difficulty Summary
This paper looks at how computers learn to make decisions by trying different actions in a situation. It compares two ways that computers use to decide what action is best: using really smart computer programs called Neural Networks, or using simpler methods. The scientists found that for problems that aren’t too hard, the simpler methods work just as well and are much faster. They tested their ideas on two games, Cart Pole and Acrobot, and showed that their simple method was better than the more complicated one.

Keywords

* Artificial intelligence  * Neural network  * Optimization  * Reinforcement learning