Exploring Reinforcement Learning Methods from Algorithm to Application
Reinforcement learning (RL) is a systematic approach to learning and decision making under uncertainty. Developed and studied for decades, recent combinations of RL with modern deep learning have led to impressive demonstrations of the capabilities of today’s RL systems, and these new combinations have fueled an explosion of interest and research activity.
In this webinar led by Microsoft researcher Dr. Katja Hofmann, a Principal Researcher in the Game Intelligence group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, learn about the foundations of RL—elegant ideas giving rise to agents that can learn extremely complex behaviors in a wide range of settings. In the broader perspective, gain an overview of where we currently stand in terms of what is possible in RL from the researcher’s perspective. The webinar concludes with an outlook on key opportunities—both for future research and real-world applications of RL.
Together, you’ll explore:
- Why a Markov Decision Process is a simple yet powerful abstraction for reinforcement learning problems
- How to model a task as a reinforcement learning problem
- The challenge of balancing exploration and exploitation in reinforcement learning
- One of the fundamental approaches to reinforcement learning problems, Q-Learning, and how it solves the credit assignment problem
- Q-learning with function approximation
Resource list:
- Game Intelligence (opens in new tab) (Research group)
- Reinforcement Learning (opens in new tab) (Research group)
- Project Malmo (opens in new tab) (Project page)
- Optimistic Actor Critic avoids the pitfalls of greedy exploration in reinforcement learning (opens in new tab) (Blog)
- Malmo, Minecraft and machine learning with Dr. Katja Hofmann (opens in new tab) (Podcast)
- Project Malmo competition returns with student organizers and a new mission: To democratize reinforcement learning (opens in new tab) (Blog)
- Reinforcement Learning: Past, Present, and Future Perspectives (opens in new tab) (Publication)
- Learn about advanced topics in Reinforcement Learning: aka.ms/neurips-2019-rl-tutorial (opens in new tab)
- Get started with the Malmo platform: github.com/Microsoft/malmo (opens in new tab)
- Results of the MineRL competition 2019 @NeurIPS (opens in new tab)
- Katja Hofmann (opens in new tab) (Researcher profile)
*This on-demand webinar features a previously recorded Q&A session and open captioning.
This webinar originally aired on January 15, 2020
Explore more Microsoft Research webinars: https://aka.ms/msrwebinars (opens in new tab)
- Date:
- Haut-parleurs:
- Katja Hofmann
- Affiliation:
- Microsoft Research
-
-
Katja Hofmann
Senior Principal Researcher
-
-