Do Embodied Agents Dream of Pixelated Sheep?: Embodied Decision Making using Language Guided World Modelling

Kolby Nottingham, Prithviraj Ammanabrolu, Alane Suhr, Yejin Choi, Hannaneh Hajishirzi, Sameer Singh, Roy Fox

Keywords: embodied ai, reinforcement learning, natural language processing, exploration, large language models, modularity

TL;DR: We use large language models to predict subgoals for improving exploration while remaining robust to prediction quality.

Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) agents typically learn tabula rasa, without prior knowledge of the world, which makes learning complex tasks with sparse rewards difficult. If initialized with knowledge of high-level subgoals and transitions between subgoals, RL agents could utilize this Abstract World Model (AWM) for planning and exploration. We propose using few-shot large language models (LLMs) to hypothesize an AWM, that is tested and verified during exploration, to improve sample efficiency in embodied RL agents. Our DECKARD agent applies LLM-guided exploration to item crafting in Minecraft in two phases: (1) the Dream phase where the agent uses an LLM to decompose a task into a sequence of subgoals, the hypothesized AWM; and (2) the Wake phase where the agent learns a modular policy for each subgoal and verifies or corrects the hypothesized AWM on the basis of its experiences. Our method of hypothesizing an AWM with LLMs and then verifying the AWM based on agent experience not only increases sample efficiency over contemporary methods by an order of magnitude but is also robust to and corrects errors in the LLM, successfully blending noisy internet-scale information from LLMs with knowledge grounded in environment dynamics.

Track: Technical Paper

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Community Implementations: [ 1 code implementation](https://www.catalyzex.com/paper/do-embodied-agents-dream-of-pixelated-sheep/code)