Implicit Curriculum in Procgen Made Explicit

Published: 25 Sept 2024, Last Modified: 06 Nov 2024NeurIPS 2024 spotlightEveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY 4.0
Keywords: Reinforcement Learning, Curriculum Learning, Procedurally Generated Environment
TL;DR: We find an implicit curriculum in Procgen and introduce C-Procgen for controlled context learning research.
Abstract: Procedurally generated environments such as Procgen Benchmark provide a testbed for evaluating the agent's ability to robustly learn a relevant skill, by situating the agent in ever-changing levels. The diverse levels associated with varying contexts are naturally connected to curriculum learning. Existing works mainly focus on arranging the levels to explicitly form a curriculum. In this work, we take a close look at the learning process itself under the multi-level training in Procgen. Interestingly, the learning process exhibits a gradual shift from easy contexts to hard contexts, suggesting an implicit curriculum in multi-level training. Our analysis is made possible through C-Procgen, a benchmark we build upon Procgen that enables explicit control of the contexts. We believe our findings will foster a deeper understanding of learning in diverse contexts, and our benchmark will benefit future research in curriculum reinforcement learning.
Primary Area: Reinforcement learning
Submission Number: 4408
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