No Arabic abstract
Deep Learning has been recently recognized as one of the feasible solutions to effectively address combinatorial optimization problems, which are often considered important yet challenging in various research domains. In this work, we first present how to adopt Deep Learning for real-time task scheduling through our preliminary work upon fixed priority global scheduling (FPGS) problems. We then briefly discuss possible generalizations of Deep Learning adoption for several realistic and complicated FPGS scenarios, e.g., scheduling tasks with dependency, mixed-criticality task scheduling. We believe that there are many opportunities for leveraging advanced Deep Learning technologies to improve the quality of scheduling in various system configurations and problem scenarios.
With the rapid development of deep learning, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) began to appear in the field of resource scheduling in recent years. Based on the previous research on DRL in the literature, we introduce online resource scheduling algorithm DeepRM2 and the offline resource scheduling algorithm DeepRM_Off. Compared with the state-of-the-art DRL algorithm DeepRM and heuristic algorithms, our proposed algorithms have faster convergence speed and better scheduling efficiency with regarding to average slowdown time, job completion time and rewards.
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved several high profile successes in difficult decision-making problems. However, these algorithms typically require a huge amount of data before they reach reasonable performance. In fact, their performance during learning can be extremely poor. This may be acceptable for a simulator, but it severely limits the applicability of deep RL to many real-world tasks, where the agent must learn in the real environment. In this paper we study a setting where the agent may access data from previous control of the system. We present an algorithm, Deep Q-learning from Demonstrations (DQfD), that leverages small sets of demonstration data to massively accelerate the learning process even from relatively small amounts of demonstration data and is able to automatically assess the necessary ratio of demonstration data while learning thanks to a prioritized replay mechanism. DQfD works by combining temporal difference updates with supervised classification of the demonstrators actions. We show that DQfD has better initial performance than Prioritized Dueling Double Deep Q-Networks (PDD DQN) as it starts with better scores on the first million steps on 41 of 42 games and on average it takes PDD DQN 83 million steps to catch up to DQfDs performance. DQfD learns to out-perform the best demonstration given in 14 of 42 games. In addition, DQfD leverages human demonstrations to achieve state-of-the-art results for 11 games. Finally, we show that DQfD performs better than three related algorithms for incorporating demonstration data into DQN.
We develop a new theoretical framework to analyze the generalization error of deep learning, and derive a new fast learning rate for two representative algorithms: empirical risk minimization and Bayesian deep learning. The series of theoretical analyses of deep learning has revealed its high expressive power and universal approximation capability. Although these analyses are highly nonparametric, existing generalization error analyses have been developed mainly in a fixed dimensional parametric model. To compensate this gap, we develop an infinite dimensional model that is based on an integral form as performed in the analysis of the universal approximation capability. This allows us to define a reproducing kernel Hilbert space corresponding to each layer. Our point of view is to deal with the ordinary finite dimensional deep neural network as a finite approximation of the infinite dimensional one. The approximation error is evaluated by the degree of freedom of the reproducing kernel Hilbert space in each layer. To estimate a good finite dimensional model, we consider both of empirical risk minimization and Bayesian deep learning. We derive its generalization error bound and it is shown that there appears bias-variance trade-off in terms of the number of parameters of the finite dimensional approximation. We show that the optimal width of the internal layers can be determined through the degree of freedom and the convergence rate can be faster than $O(1/sqrt{n})$ rate which has been shown in the existing studies.
Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and Deep Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) have achieved significant success across a wide range of domains, such as game AI, autonomous vehicles, robotics and finance. However, DRL and deep MARL agents are widely known to be sample-inefficient and millions of interactions are usually needed even for relatively simple game settings, thus preventing the wide application in real-industry scenarios. One bottleneck challenge behind is the well-known exploration problem, i.e., how to efficiently explore the unknown environments and collect informative experiences that could benefit the policy learning most. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive survey on existing exploration methods in DRL and deep MARL for the purpose of providing understandings and insights on the critical problems and solutions. We first identify several key challenges to achieve efficient exploration, which most of the exploration methods aim at addressing. Then we provide a systematic survey of existing approaches by classifying them into two major categories: uncertainty-oriented exploration and intrinsic motivation-oriented exploration. The essence of uncertainty-oriented exploration is to leverage the quantification of the epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty to derive efficient exploration. By contrast, intrinsic motivation-oriented exploration methods usually incorporate different reward agnostic information for intrinsic exploration guidance. Beyond the above two main branches, we also conclude other exploration methods which adopt sophisticated techniques but are difficult to be classified into the above two categories. In addition, we provide a comprehensive empirical comparison of exploration methods for DRL on a set of commonly used benchmarks. Finally, we summarize the open problems of exploration in DRL and deep MARL and point out a few future directions.
We present a framework for analysing agent incentives using causal influence diagrams. We establish that a well-known criterion for value of information is complete. We propose a new graphical criterion for value of control, establishing its soundness and completeness. We also introduce two new concepts for incentive analysis: response incentives indicate which changes in the environment affect an optimal decision, while instrumental control incentives establish whether an agent can influence its utility via a variable X. For both new concepts, we provide sound and complete graphical criteria. We show by example how these results can help with evaluating the safety and fairness of an AI system.