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The must-have book, for anyone that wants to have a profound understanding of deep reinforcement learning.
We all learn through trial and error. We avoid the things that cause us to experience pain and failure. We embrace and build on the things that give us reward and success. This common pattern is the foundation of deep reinforcement learning: building machine learning systems that explore and learn based on the responses of the environment.
Grokking Deep Reinforcement Learning introduces this powerful machine learning approach, using examples, illustrations, exercises, and crystal-clear teaching. You'll love the perfectly paced teaching and the clever, engaging writing style as you dig into this awesome exploration of reinforcement learning fundamentals, effective deep learning techniques, and practical applications in this emerging field.
About the Technology
Deep reinforcement learning is a form of machine learning in which AI agents learn optimal behavior on their own from raw sensory input. The system perceives the environment, interprets the results of its past decisions and uses this information to optimize its behavior for a maximum long-term return. It has been said that deep reinforcement learning, which is the use of deep learning and reinforcement learning techniques to solve decision-making problems, is the solution to the full artificial intelligence problem.Deep reinforcement learning famously contributed to the success of AlphaGo and all its successors (AlphaGo, AlphaGo Zero, and AlphaZero, etc), which recently beat the world’s best human player in the world’s most difficult board game. But that is not the only thing you can do with deep reinforcement learning. These are some of the most notable applications:
Learn to play ATARI games just by looking at the raw image.
Learn to trade and manage portfolios effectively.
Learn low-level control policies for a variety of real-world models.
Discover tactics and collaborative behavior for improved campaign performance.
From low-level control, to high-level tactical actions, deep reinforcement learning can solve large, complex decision-making problems.
But deep reinforcement learning is an emerging approach, so the best ideas are still yours to discover. We can’t wait to see how you apply deep reinforcement learning to solve some of the most challenging problems in the world.
About the book
Grokking Deep Reinforcement Learning is a beautifully balanced approach to teaching, offering numerous large and small examples, annotated diagrams and code, engaging exercises, and skillfully crafted writing. You'll explore, discover, and learn as you lock in the ins and outs of reinforcement learning, neural networks, and AI agents. You will go from small grid world environments and some of the foundational algorithms to some of the most challenging environments out there today and cutting-edge techniques to solve these environments.
Exciting, fun, and maybe even a little dangerous. Let's get started!
Table of Contents takes you straight to the bookdetailed table of contents
1 Introduction to deep reinforcement learning
1.1 What is deep reinforcement learning?
1.1.1 Deep reinforcement learning is a machine learning approach to artificial intelligence
1.1.2 Deep reinforcement learning is concerned with creating computer programs
1.1.3 Deep reinforcement learning agents can solve problems that require intelligence
1.1.4 Deep reinforcement learning agents improve their behavior through trial-and-error learning
1.1.5 Deep reinforcement learning agents learn from sequential feedback
1.1.6 Deep reinforcement learning agents learn from evaluative feedback
1.1.7 Deep reinforcement learning agents learn from sampled feedback
1.1.8 Deep reinforcement learning agents utilize powerful non-linear function approximation
1.2 The past, present, and future of deep reinforcement learning
1.2.1 Recent history of artificial intelligence and deep reinforcement learning
1.2.2 Artificial intelligence winters
1.2.3 The current state of artificial intelligence
1.2.4 Progress in deep reinforcement learning
1.2.5 Opportunities ahead
1.3 The suitability of deep reinforcement learning
1.3.1 What are the pros and cons?
1.3.2 Deep reinforcement learning’s strengths
1.3.3 Deep reinforcement learning’s weaknesses
1.4 Setting clear two-way expectations
1.4.1 What to expect from the book?
1.4.2 How to get the most out of this book?
1.4.3 Deep reinforcement learning development environment
1.5 Summary
2 Mathematical foundations of reinforcement earning
2.1 Components of reinforcement learning
2.1.1 Examples of problems, agents, and environments
2.1.2 The agent: The decision-maker
2.1.3 The environment: Everything else
2.1.4 Agent-environment interaction cycle
2.2 MDPs: The engine of the environment
2.2.1 States: Specific configurations of the environment
2.2.2 Actions: A mechanism to influence the environment
2.2.3 Transition function: Consequences of agent actions
2.2.4 Reward signal: Carrots and sticks
2.2.5 Horizon: Time changes what’s optimal
2.2.6 Discount: The future is uncertain, value it less
2.2.7 Extensions to MDPs
2.2.8 Putting it all together
2.3 Summary
3 Balancing immediate and long-term goals
3.1 The objective of a decision-making agent
3.1.1 Policies: Per-state action prescriptions
3.1.1 State-value function: What to expect from here?
3.1.2 Action-value function: What to expect from here if I do this?
3.1.3 Action-advantage function: How much better if I do that?
3.1.4 Optimality
3.2 Planning optimal sequences of actions
3.2.1 Policy Evaluation: Rating policies
3.2.2 Policy Improvement: Using ratings to get better
3.2.3 Policy Iteration: Improving upon improved behaviors
3.2.4 Value Iteration: Improving behaviors early
3.3 Summary
4 Balancing the gathering and utilization of information
4.1 The challenge of interpreting evaluative feedback
4.1.1 Bandits: Single state decision problems
4.1.2 Regret: The cost of exploration
4.1.3 Approaches to solving MAB environments
4.1.4 Greedy: Always exploit
4.1.5 Random: Always explore
4.1.6 Epsilon-Greedy: Almost always greedy and sometimes random
4.1.7 Decaying Epsilon-Greedy: First maximize exploration, then exploitation
4.1.8 Optimistic Initialization: Start off believing it’s a wonderful world
4.2 Strategic exploration
4.2.1 SoftMax: Select actions randomly in proportion to their estimates
4.2.2 UCB: It’s not about just optimism; it’s about realistic optimism
4.2.3 Thompson Sampling: Balancing reward and risk
4.3 Summary
5 Evaluating agents' behaviors
5.1 Learning to estimate the value of policies
5.1.1 First-visit Monte-Carlo: Improving estimates after each episode
5.1.2 Every-visit Monte-Carlo: A different way of handling state visits
5.1.3 Temporal-Difference Learning: Improving estimates after each step
5.2 Learning to estimate from multiple steps
5.2.1 N-step TD Learning: Improving estimates after a couple of steps
5.2.2 Forward-view TD(λ): Improving estimates of all visited states
5.2.3 TD(λ): Improving estimates of all visited states after each step
5.3 Summary
6 Improving agents' behaviors
6.1 The anatomy of reinforcement learning agents
6.1.1 Most agents gather experience samples
6.1.2 Most agents estimate something
6.1.3 Most agents improve a policy
6.1.4 Generalized Policy Iteration
6.2 Learning to improve policies of behavior
6.2.1 Monte-Carlo Control: policies after each episode
6.2.2 Sarsa: Improving policies after each step
6.3 Decoupling behavior from learning
6.3.1 Q-Learning: Learning to act optimally, even if we choose not to
6.3.2 Double Q-Learning: a max of estimates for an estimate of a max
6.4 Summary
7 Achieving goals more effectively and efficiently
7.1 Learning to improve policies using robust targets
7.1.1 Sarsa(λ): Improving policies after each step based on multi-step estimates
7.1.2 Watkins’s Q(λ): Decoupling behavior from learning, again
7.2 Agents that interact, learn and plan
7.2.1 Dyna-Q: Learning sample models
7.2.2 Trajectory Sampling: Making plans for the immediate future
7.3 Summary
8 Introduction to value-based deep reinforcement learning
8.1 The kind of feedback deep reinforcement learning agents use
8.2 Deep reinforcement learning agents deal with sequential feedback
8.2.1 But, if it is not sequential, what is it?
8.2.2 Deep reinforcement learning agents deal with evaluative feedback
8.2.3 But, if it is not evaluative, what is it?
8.2.4 Deep reinforcement learning agents deal with sampled feedback
8.2.5 But, if it is not sampled, what is it?
8.3 Introduction to function approximation for reinforcement learning
8.3.1 Reinforcement learning problems can have high-dimensional state and action spaces
8.3.2 Reinforcement learning problems can have continuous state and action spaces
8.3.3 There are advantages when using function approximation
8.4 NFQ: The first attempt to value-based deep reinforcement learning
8.4.1 First decision point: Selecting a value function to approximate
8.4.2 Second decision point: Selecting a neural network architecture
8.4.3 Third decision point: Selecting what to optimize
8.4.4 Fourth decision point: Selecting the targets for policy evaluation
8.4.5 Fifth decision point: Selecting an exploration strategy
8.4.6 Sixth decision point: Selecting a loss function
8.4.7 Seventh decision point: Selecting an optimization method
8.4.8 Things that could (and do) go wrong
8.5 Summary
9 More stable value-based methods
9.1 DQN: Making reinforcement learning more like supervised learning
9.1.1 Common problems in value-based deep reinforcement learning
9.1.2 Using target networks
9.1.3 Using larger networks
9.1.4 Using experience replay
9.1.5 Using other exploration strategies
9.2 Double DQN: Mitigating the overestimation of action-value functions
9.2.1 The problem of overestimation, take two
9.2.2 Separating action selection and action evaluation
9.2.3 A solution
9.2.4 A more practical solution
9.2.5 A more forgiving loss function
9.2.6 Things we can still improve on
9.3 Summary
10 Sample-efficient value-based methods
10.1 Dueling DDQN: A reinforcement-learning-aware neural network architecture
10.1.1 Reinforcement learning is not a supervised learning problem
10.1.2 Nuances of value-based deep reinforcement learning methods
10.1.3 Advantage of using advantages
10.1.4 A reinforcement-learning-aware architecture
10.1.5 Building a dueling network
10.1.6 Reconstructing the action-value function
10.1.7 Continuously updating the target network
10.1.8 What does the dueling network bring to the table?
10.2 PER: Prioritizing the replay of meaningful experiences
10.2.1 A smarter way to replay experiences
10.2.2 Then, what is a good measure of "important" experiences?
10.2.3 Greedy prioritization by TD error
10.2.4 Sampling prioritized experiences stochastically
10.2.5 Proportional prioritization
10.2.6 Rank-based prioritization
10.2.7 Prioritization bias
10.3 Summary
11 Policy-gradient and actor-critic methods
11.1 REINFORCE: Outcome-based policy learning
11.1.1 Introduction to policy-gradient methods
11.1.2 Advantages of policy-gradient methods
11.1.3 Learning policies directly
11.1.4 Reducing the variance of the policy gradient
11.2 VPG: Learning a value function
11.2.1 Further reducing the variance of the policy gradient
11.2.2 Learning a value function
11.2.3 Encouraging exploration
11.3 A3C: Parallel policy updates
11.3.1 Using actor-workers
11.3.2 Using n-step estimates
11.3.3 Non-blocking model updates
11.4 GAE: Robust advantage estimation
11.4.1 Generalized advantage estimation
11.5 A2C: Synchronous policy updates
11.5.1 Weight-sharing model
11.5.2 Restoring order in policy updates
11.6 Summary
12 Advanced actor-critic methods
12.1 DDPG: Approximating a deterministic policy
12.1.1 DDPG uses lots of tricks from DQN
12.1.2 Learning a deterministic policy
12.1.3 Exploration with deterministic policies
12.2 TD3: State-of-the-art improvements over DDPG
12.2.1 Double learning in DDPG
12.2.2 Smoothing the targets used for policy updates
12.2.3 Delaying updates
12.3 SAC: Maximizing the expected return and entropy
12.3.1 Adding the entropy to the Bellman equations
12.3.2 Learning the action-value function
12.3.3 Learning the policy
12.3.4 Automatically tuning the entropy coefficient
12.4 PPO: Restricting optimization steps
12.4.1 Using the same actor-critic architecture as A2C
12.4.2 Batching experiences
12.4.3 Clipping the policy updates
12.4.4 Clipping the value function updates
12.5 Summary
13 Towards artificial general intelligence
13.1 What was covered, and what notably wasn’t?
13.1.1 Markov Decision Processes
13.1.2 Planning methods
13.1.3 Bandit methods
13.1.4 Tabular reinforcement learning
13.1.5 Value-based deep reinforcement learning
13.1.6 Policy-based and actor-critic deep reinforcement learning
13.1.7 Advanced actor-critic techniques
13.1.8 Model-based deep reinforcement learning
13.1.9 Derivative-free optimization methods
13.2 More advanced concepts towards AGI
13.2.1 What is AGI, again?
13.2.2 Advanced exploration strategies
13.2.3 Inverse reinforcement learning
13.2.4 Transfer learning
13.2.5 Multi-task learning
13.2.6 Curriculum learning
13.2.7 Meta learning
13.2.8 Hierarchical reinforcement learning
13.2.9 Multi-agent reinforcement learning
13.2.10 Explainable AI, Safety, Fairness, and Ethical Standards
13.3 What happens next?
13.3.1 How to use DRL to solve custom problems?
13.3.2 Going forward
13.3.3 Get yourself out there! Now!
13.4 Summary
What's inside
- Foundational reinforcement learning concepts and methods
- The most popular deep reinforcement learning agents solving complex environments
- Cutting-edge agents that emulate human-like behavior and techniques for artificial general intelligence
About the reader
Written for developers with some understanding of deep learning. Experience with reinforcement learning is not required. Perfect for readers of Deep Learning in Python or Grokking Deep Learning.About the author
Miguel Morales works on reinforcement learning at Lockheed Martin, Missiles and Fire Control, Autonomous Systems, in Denver, CO. He is a part-time Instructional Associate at Georgia Institute of Technology for the course in Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making. Miguel has worked for Udacity as a Machine Learning Project Reviewer, a Self-driving Car Nanodegree Mentor, and a Deep Reinforcement Learning Nanodegree Content Developer. He graduated from Georgia Tech with a Master’s degree in Computer Science specializing in Interactive Intelligence.placing your order...
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