Interpreting Emergent Planning in Model-Free Reinforcement Learning

Thomas Bush, Stephen Chung, Usman Anwar, Adrià Garriga-Alonso, David Krueger

Keywords: reinforcement learning, interpretability, planning, probes, model-free, mechanistic interpretability, sokoban

TL;DR: We introduce and utilise a concept-based methodology to provide the first non-behavioural evidence that model-free agents can learn to plan

Abstract: We present the first mechanistic evidence that model-free reinforcement learning agents can learn to plan. This is achieved by applying a methodology based on concept-based interpretability to a model-free agent in Sokoban -- a commonly used benchmark for studying planning. Specifically, we demonstrate that DRC, a generic model-free agent introduced by [Guez et al. (2019)](https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.03559), uses learned concept representations to internally formulate plans that both predict the long-term effects of actions on the environment and influence action selection. Our methodology involves: (1) probing for planning-relevant concepts, (2) investigating plan formation within the agent's representations, and (3) verifying that discovered plans (in the agent's representations) have a causal effect on the agent's behavior through interventions. We also show that the emergence of these plans coincides with the emergence of a planning-like property: the ability to benefit from additional test-time compute. Finally, we perform a qualitative analysis of the planning algorithm learned by the agent and discover a strong resemblance to parallelized bidirectional search. Our findings advance understanding of the internal mechanisms underlying planning behavior in agents, which is important given the recent trend of emergent planning and reasoning capabilities in LLMs through RL.

Primary Area: interpretability and explainable AI

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Submission Number: 11267