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arXiv · 2207.13699

Modelling non-reinforced preferences using selective attention

Noor Sajid·Panagiotis Tigas·Zafeirios Fountas·Qinghai Guo·Alexey Zakharov·Lancelot Da Costa
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Abstract

How can artificial agents learn non-reinforced preferences to continuously adapt their behaviour to a changing environment? We decompose this question into two challenges: ($i$) encoding diverse memories and ($ii$) selectively attending to these for preference formation. Our proposed \emph{no}n-\emph{re}inforced preference learning mechanism using selective attention, \textsc{Nore}, addresses both by leveraging the agent's world model to collect a diverse set of experiences which are interleaved with imagined roll-outs to encode memories. These memories are selectively attended to, using attention and gating blocks, to update agent's preferences. We validate \textsc{Nore} in a modified OpenAI Gym FrozenLake environment (without any external signal) with and without volatility under a fixed model of the environment -- and compare its behaviour to \textsc{Pepper}, a Hebbian preference learning mechanism. We demonstrate that \textsc{Nore} provides a straightforward framework to induce exploratory preferences in the absence of external signals.

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Noor Sajid, Panagiotis Tigas, Zafeirios Fountas, Qinghai Guo, Alexey Zakharov, Lancelot Da Costa. 2022-07-25. Modelling non-reinforced preferences using selective attention. https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.13699

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