We propose to deal with sequential processes where only partial observations are available by learning a latent representation space on which policies may be accurately learned.
Efficient approaches have been proposed to extract high-level representations using deep-learning @cite_1 but few studies have proposed extension to deal with sequential processes. A formal analysis has been proposed in @cite_6 . Models concerning partially observable sequential processes have been proposed in the context of controlling tasks problems. For example, @cite_5 and @cite_0 present models using recurrent neural networks (RNN) to learn a controller for a given task. In these approaches, informative representations are constructed by the RNN, but these representations are driven by the task to solve. Some unsupervised approaches have been recently proposed. In that case, a representation learning model is learned over the observations, without needing to define a reward function. The policy is learned afterward using these representations, by usually using classical RL algorithms. For instance, @cite_4 propose a model based on a recurrent auto-associative memory with history of arbitrary depth, while @cite_3 present an extension of RNN for unsupervised learning. In comparison to these models, our transductive approach is simultaenously based on unsupervised trajectories, and also allows us to choose which action to take even if observations are missing, by learning a dynamic model in the latent space.
@cite_4 @cite_1 @cite_6 @cite_3 @cite_0 @cite_5
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This paper addresses the general problem of reinforcement learning (RL) in partially observable environments. In 2013, our large RL recurrent neural networks (RNNs) learned from scratch to drive simulated cars from high-dimensional video input. However, real brains are more powerful in many ways. In particular, they learn a predictive model of their initially unknown environment, and somehow use it for abstract (e.g., hierarchical) planning and reasoning. Guided by algorithmic information theory, we describe RNN-based AIs (RNNAIs) designed to do the same. Such an RNNAI can be trained on never-ending sequences of tasks, some of them provided by the user, others invented by the RNNAI itself in a curious, playful fashion, to improve its RNN-based world model. Unlike our previous model-building RNN-based RL machines dating back to 1990, the RNNAI learns to actively query its model for abstract reasoning and planning and decision making, essentially "learning to think." The basic ideas of this report can be applied to many other cases where one RNN-like system exploits the algorithmic information content of another. They are taken from a grant proposal submitted in Fall 2014, and also explain concepts such as "mirror neurons." Experimental results will be described in separate papers. Models based on deep convolutional networks have dominated recent image interpretation tasks; we investigate whether models which are also recurrent, or "temporally deep", are effective for tasks involving sequences, visual and otherwise. We develop a novel recurrent convolutional architecture suitable for large-scale visual learning which is end-to-end trainable, and demonstrate the value of these models on benchmark video recognition tasks, image description and retrieval problems, and video narration challenges. In contrast to current models which assume a fixed spatio-temporal receptive field or simple temporal averaging for sequential processing, recurrent convolutional models are "doubly deep"' in that they can be compositional in spatial and temporal "layers". Such models may have advantages when target concepts are complex and or training data are limited. Learning long-term dependencies is possible when nonlinearities are incorporated into the network state updates. Long-term RNN models are appealing in that they directly can map variable-length inputs (e.g., video frames) to variable length outputs (e.g., natural language text) and can model complex temporal dynamics; yet they can be optimized with backpropagation. Our recurrent long-term models are directly connected to modern visual convnet models and can be jointly trained to simultaneously learn temporal dynamics and convolutional perceptual representations. Our results show such models have distinct advantages over state-of-the-art models for recognition or generation which are separately defined and or optimized. Models based on deep convolutional networks have dominated recent image interpretation tasks; we investigate whether models which are also recurrent, or “temporally deep”, are effective for tasks involving sequences, visual and otherwise. We develop a novel recurrent convolutional architecture suitable for large-scale visual learning which is end-to-end trainable, and demonstrate the value of these models on benchmark video recognition tasks, image description and retrieval problems, and video narration challenges. In contrast to current models which assume a fixed spatio-temporal receptive field or simple temporal averaging for sequential processing, recurrent convolutional models are “doubly deep” in that they can be compositional in spatial and temporal “layers”. Such models may have advantages when target concepts are complex and or training data are limited. Learning long-term dependencies is possible when nonlinearities are incorporated into the network state updates. Long-term RNN models are appealing in that they directly can map variable-length inputs (e.g., video frames) to variable length outputs (e.g., natural language text) and can model complex temporal dynamics; yet they can be optimized with backpropagation. Our recurrent long-term models are directly connected to modern visual convnet models and can be jointly trained to simultaneously learn temporal dynamics and convolutional perceptual representations. Our results show such models have distinct advantages over state-of-the-art models for recognition or generation which are separately defined and or optimized. Continual Learning in artificial neural networks suffers from interference and forgetting when different tasks are learned sequentially. This paper introduces the Active Long Term Memory Networks (A-LTM), a model of sequential multi-task deep learning that is able to maintain previously learned association between sensory input and behavioral output while acquiring knew knowledge. A-LTM exploits the non-convex nature of deep neural networks and actively maintains knowledge of previously learned, inactive tasks using a distillation loss. Distortions of the learned input-output map are penalized but hidden layers are free to transverse towards new local optima that are more favorable for the multi-task objective. We re-frame the McClelland's seminal Hippocampal theory with respect to Catastrophic Inference (CI) behavior exhibited by modern deep architectures trained with back-propagation and inhomogeneous sampling of latent factors across epochs. We present empirical results of non-trivial CI during continual learning in Deep Linear Networks trained on the same task, in Convolutional Neural Networks when the task shifts from predicting semantic to graphical factors and during domain adaptation from simple to complex environments. We present results of the A-LTM model's ability to maintain viewpoint recognition learned in the highly controlled iLab-20M dataset with 10 object categories and 88 camera viewpoints, while adapting to the unstructured domain of Imagenet with 1,000 object categories.