In-context Reinforcement Learning with Algorithm Distillation

Michael Laskin, Luyu Wang, Junhyuk Oh, Emilio Parisotto, Stephen Spencer, Richie Steigerwald, DJ Strouse, Steven Stenberg Hansen, Angelos Filos, Ethan Brooks, maxime gazeau, Himanshu Sahni, Satinder Singh, Volodymyr Mnih

Keywords: Reinforcement Learning, Transformers, Learning to Learn, Large Language Models

TL;DR: We present Algorithm Distillation, a method that outputs an in-context RL algorithm by treating learning to reinforcement learn as a sequential prediction problem.

Abstract: We propose Algorithm Distillation (AD), a method for distilling reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms into neural networks by modeling their training histories with a causal sequence model. Algorithm Distillation treats learning to reinforcement learn as an across-episode sequential prediction problem. A dataset of learning histories is generated by a source RL algorithm, and then a causal transformer is trained by autoregressively predicting actions given their preceding learning histories as context. Unlike sequential policy prediction architectures that distill post-learning or expert sequences, AD is able to improve its policy entirely in-context without updating its network parameters. We demonstrate that AD can reinforcement learn in-context in a variety of environments with sparse rewards, combinatorial task structure, and pixel-based observations, and find that AD learns a more data-efficient RL algorithm than the one that generated the source data.

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Please Choose The Closest Area That Your Submission Falls Into: Reinforcement Learning (eg, decision and control, planning, hierarchical RL, robotics)