Download or read book Lessons from AlphaZero for Optimal Model Predictive and Adaptive Control written by Dimitri Bertsekas and published by Athena Scientific. This book was released on 2022-03-19 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to propose and develop a new conceptual framework for approximate Dynamic Programming (DP) and Reinforcement Learning (RL). This framework centers around two algorithms, which are designed largely independently of each other and operate in synergy through the powerful mechanism of Newton's method. We call these the off-line training and the on-line play algorithms; the names are borrowed from some of the major successes of RL involving games. Primary examples are the recent (2017) AlphaZero program (which plays chess), and the similarly structured and earlier (1990s) TD-Gammon program (which plays backgammon). In these game contexts, the off-line training algorithm is the method used to teach the program how to evaluate positions and to generate good moves at any given position, while the on-line play algorithm is the method used to play in real time against human or computer opponents. Both AlphaZero and TD-Gammon were trained off-line extensively using neural networks and an approximate version of the fundamental DP algorithm of policy iteration. Yet the AlphaZero player that was obtained off-line is not used directly during on-line play (it is too inaccurate due to approximation errors that are inherent in off-line neural network training). Instead a separate on-line player is used to select moves, based on multistep lookahead minimization and a terminal position evaluator that was trained using experience with the off-line player. The on-line player performs a form of policy improvement, which is not degraded by neural network approximations. As a result, it greatly improves the performance of the off-line player. Similarly, TD-Gammon performs on-line a policy improvement step using one-step or two-step lookahead minimization, which is not degraded by neural network approximations. To this end it uses an off-line neural network-trained terminal position evaluator, and importantly it also extends its on-line lookahead by rollout (simulation with the one-step lookahead player that is based on the position evaluator). Significantly, the synergy between off-line training and on-line play also underlies Model Predictive Control (MPC), a major control system design methodology that has been extensively developed since the 1980s. This synergy can be understood in terms of abstract models of infinite horizon DP and simple geometrical constructions, and helps to explain the all-important stability issues within the MPC context. An additional benefit of policy improvement by approximation in value space, not observed in the context of games (which have stable rules and environment), is that it works well with changing problem parameters and on-line replanning, similar to indirect adaptive control. Here the Bellman equation is perturbed due to the parameter changes, but approximation in value space still operates as a Newton step. An essential requirement here is that a system model is estimated on-line through some identification method, and is used during the one-step or multistep lookahead minimization process. In this monograph we aim to provide insights (often based on visualization), which explain the beneficial effects of on-line decision making on top of off-line training. In the process, we will bring out the strong connections between the artificial intelligence view of RL, and the control theory views of MPC and adaptive control. Moreover, we will show that in addition to MPC and adaptive control, our conceptual framework can be effectively integrated with other important methodologies such as multiagent systems and decentralized control, discrete and Bayesian optimization, and heuristic algorithms for discrete optimization. One of our principal aims is to show, through the algorithmic ideas of Newton's method and the unifying principles of abstract DP, that the AlphaZero/TD-Gammon methodology of approximation in value space and rollout applies very broadly to deterministic and stochastic optimal control problems. Newton's method here is used for the solution of Bellman's equation, an operator equation that applies universally within DP with both discrete and continuous state and control spaces, as well as finite and infinite horizon.

Download or read book A Course in Reinforcement Learning written by Dimitri Bertsekas and published by Athena Scientific. This book was released on 2023-06-21 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These lecture notes were prepared for use in the 2023 ASU research-oriented course on Reinforcement Learning (RL) that I have offered in each of the last five years. Their purpose is to give an overview of the RL methodology, particularly as it relates to problems of optimal and suboptimal decision and control, as well as discrete optimization. There are two major methodological RL approaches: approximation in value space, where we approximate in some way the optimal value function, and approximation in policy space, whereby we construct a (generally suboptimal) policy by using optimization over a suitably restricted class of policies.The lecture notes focus primarily on approximation in value space, with limited coverage of approximation in policy space. However, they are structured so that they can be easily supplemented by an instructor who wishes to go into approximation in policy space in greater detail, using any of a number of available sources, including the author's 2019 RL book. While in these notes we deemphasize mathematical proofs, there is considerable related analysis, which supports our conclusions and can be found in the author's recent RL and DP books. These books also contain additional material on off-line training of neural networks, on the use of policy gradient methods for approximation in policy space, and on aggregation.

Download or read book Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control written by Dimitri Bertsekas and published by Athena Scientific. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers large and challenging multistage decision problems, which can be solved in principle by dynamic programming (DP), but their exact solution is computationally intractable. We discuss solution methods that rely on approximations to produce suboptimal policies with adequate performance. These methods are collectively known by several essentially equivalent names: reinforcement learning, approximate dynamic programming, neuro-dynamic programming. They have been at the forefront of research for the last 25 years, and they underlie, among others, the recent impressive successes of self-learning in the context of games such as chess and Go. Our subject has benefited greatly from the interplay of ideas from optimal control and from artificial intelligence, as it relates to reinforcement learning and simulation-based neural network methods. One of the aims of the book is to explore the common boundary between these two fields and to form a bridge that is accessible by workers with background in either field. Another aim is to organize coherently the broad mosaic of methods that have proved successful in practice while having a solid theoretical and/or logical foundation. This may help researchers and practitioners to find their way through the maze of competing ideas that constitute the current state of the art. This book relates to several of our other books: Neuro-Dynamic Programming (Athena Scientific, 1996), Dynamic Programming and Optimal Control (4th edition, Athena Scientific, 2017), Abstract Dynamic Programming (2nd edition, Athena Scientific, 2018), and Nonlinear Programming (Athena Scientific, 2016). However, the mathematical style of this book is somewhat different. While we provide a rigorous, albeit short, mathematical account of the theory of finite and infinite horizon dynamic programming, and some fundamental approximation methods, we rely more on intuitive explanations and less on proof-based insights. Moreover, our mathematical requirements are quite modest: calculus, a minimal use of matrix-vector algebra, and elementary probability (mathematically complicated arguments involving laws of large numbers and stochastic convergence are bypassed in favor of intuitive explanations). The book illustrates the methodology with many examples and illustrations, and uses a gradual expository approach, which proceeds along four directions: (a) From exact DP to approximate DP: We first discuss exact DP algorithms, explain why they may be difficult to implement, and then use them as the basis for approximations. (b) From finite horizon to infinite horizon problems: We first discuss finite horizon exact and approximate DP methodologies, which are intuitive and mathematically simple, and then progress to infinite horizon problems. (c) From deterministic to stochastic models: We often discuss separately deterministic and stochastic problems, since deterministic problems are simpler and offer special advantages for some of our methods. (d) From model-based to model-free implementations: We first discuss model-based implementations, and then we identify schemes that can be appropriately modified to work with a simulator. The book is related and supplemented by the companion research monograph Rollout, Policy Iteration, and Distributed Reinforcement Learning (Athena Scientific, 2020), which focuses more closely on several topics related to rollout, approximate policy iteration, multiagent problems, discrete and Bayesian optimization, and distributed computation, which are either discussed in less detail or not covered at all in the present book. The author's website contains class notes, and a series of videolectures and slides from a 2021 course at ASU, which address a selection of topics from both books.

Download or read book A Course in Reinforcement Learning 2nd Edition written by Dimitri Bertsekas and published by Athena Scientific. This book was released on with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is 2nd edition of the textbook used at the author's ASU research-oriented course on Reinforcement Learning (RL), offered in each of the last six years. Its purpose is to give an overview of the RL methodology, particularly as it relates to problems of optimal and suboptimal decision and control, as well as discrete optimization. While in this book mathematical proofs are deemphasized, there is considerable related analysis, which supports the conclusions and can be found in the author's recent RL and DP books. These books also contain additional material on off-line training of neural networks, on the use of policy gradient methods for approximation in policy space, and on aggregation.

Download or read book Rollout Policy Iteration and Distributed Reinforcement Learning written by Dimitri Bertsekas and published by Athena Scientific. This book was released on 2021-08-20 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to develop in greater depth some of the methods from the author's Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control recently published textbook (Athena Scientific, 2019). In particular, we present new research, relating to systems involving multiple agents, partitioned architectures, and distributed asynchronous computation. We pay special attention to the contexts of dynamic programming/policy iteration and control theory/model predictive control. We also discuss in some detail the application of the methodology to challenging discrete/combinatorial optimization problems, such as routing, scheduling, assignment, and mixed integer programming, including the use of neural network approximations within these contexts. The book focuses on the fundamental idea of policy iteration, i.e., start from some policy, and successively generate one or more improved policies. If just one improved policy is generated, this is called rollout, which, based on broad and consistent computational experience, appears to be one of the most versatile and reliable of all reinforcement learning methods. In this book, rollout algorithms are developed for both discrete deterministic and stochastic DP problems, and the development of distributed implementations in both multiagent and multiprocessor settings, aiming to take advantage of parallelism. Approximate policy iteration is more ambitious than rollout, but it is a strictly off-line method, and it is generally far more computationally intensive. This motivates the use of parallel and distributed computation. One of the purposes of the monograph is to discuss distributed (possibly asynchronous) methods that relate to rollout and policy iteration, both in the context of an exact and an approximate implementation involving neural networks or other approximation architectures. Much of the new research is inspired by the remarkable AlphaZero chess program, where policy iteration, value and policy networks, approximate lookahead minimization, and parallel computation all play an important role.

Download or read book Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control written by Dimitri P. Bertsekas and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Stochastic Optimal Control written by Dimitri P. Bertsekas and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book AI and education written by Miao, Fengchun and published by UNESCO Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to address some of the biggest challenges in education today, innovate teaching and learning practices, and ultimately accelerate the progress towards SDG 4. However, these rapid technological developments inevitably bring multiple risks and challenges, which have so far outpaced policy debates and regulatory frameworks. This publication offers guidance for policy-makers on how best to leverage the opportunities and address the risks, presented by the growing connection between AI and education. It starts with the essentials of AI: definitions, techniques and technologies. It continues with a detailed analysis of the emerging trends and implications of AI for teaching and learning, including how we can ensure the ethical, inclusive and equitable use of AI in education, how education can prepare humans to live and work with AI, and how AI can be applied to enhance education. It finally introduces the challenges of harnessing AI to achieve SDG 4 and offers concrete actionable recommendations for policy-makers to plan policies and programmes for local contexts. [Publisher summary, ed]

Download or read book Understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on skills development written by UNESCO International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training and published by UNESCO Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-02 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Convex Optimization Algorithms written by Dimitri Bertsekas and published by Athena Scientific. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive and accessible presentation of algorithms for solving convex optimization problems. It relies on rigorous mathematical analysis, but also aims at an intuitive exposition that makes use of visualization where possible. This is facilitated by the extensive use of analytical and algorithmic concepts of duality, which by nature lend themselves to geometrical interpretation. The book places particular emphasis on modern developments, and their widespread applications in fields such as large-scale resource allocation problems, signal processing, and machine learning. The book is aimed at students, researchers, and practitioners, roughly at the first year graduate level. It is similar in style to the author's 2009"Convex Optimization Theory" book, but can be read independently. The latter book focuses on convexity theory and optimization duality, while the present book focuses on algorithmic issues. The two books share notation, and together cover the entire finite-dimensional convex optimization methodology. To facilitate readability, the statements of definitions and results of the "theory book" are reproduced without proofs in Appendix B.

Download or read book The Secret of Our Success written by Joseph Henrich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.

Download or read book Business and Consumer Analytics New Ideas written by Pablo Moscato and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume handbook presents a collection of novel methodologies with applications and illustrative examples in the areas of data-driven computational social sciences. Throughout this handbook, the focus is kept specifically on business and consumer-oriented applications with interesting sections ranging from clustering and network analysis, meta-analytics, memetic algorithms, machine learning, recommender systems methodologies, parallel pattern mining and data mining to specific applications in market segmentation, travel, fashion or entertainment analytics. A must-read for anyone in data-analytics, marketing, behavior modelling and computational social science, interested in the latest applications of new computer science methodologies. The chapters are contributed by leading experts in the associated fields.The chapters cover technical aspects at different levels, some of which are introductory and could be used for teaching. Some chapters aim at building a common understanding of the methodologies and recent application areas including the introduction of new theoretical results in the complexity of core problems. Business and marketing professionals may use the book to familiarize themselves with some important foundations of data science. The work is a good starting point to establish an open dialogue of communication between professionals and researchers from different fields. Together, the two volumes present a number of different new directions in Business and Customer Analytics with an emphasis in personalization of services, the development of new mathematical models and new algorithms, heuristics and metaheuristics applied to the challenging problems in the field. Sections of the book have introductory material to more specific and advanced themes in some of the chapters, allowing the volumes to be used as an advanced textbook. Clustering, Proximity Graphs, Pattern Mining, Frequent Itemset Mining, Feature Engineering, Network and Community Detection, Network-based Recommending Systems and Visualization, are some of the topics in the first volume. Techniques on Memetic Algorithms and their applications to Business Analytics and Data Science are surveyed in the second volume; applications in Team Orienteering, Competitive Facility-location, and Visualization of Products and Consumers are also discussed. The second volume also includes an introduction to Meta-Analytics, and to the application areas of Fashion and Travel Analytics. Overall, the two-volume set helps to describe some fundamentals, acts as a bridge between different disciplines, and presents important results in a rapidly moving field combining powerful optimization techniques allied to new mathematical models critical for personalization of services. Academics and professionals working in the area of business anyalytics, data science, operations research and marketing will find this handbook valuable as a reference. Students studying these fields will find this handbook useful and helpful as a secondary textbook.

Download or read book The Alignment Problem Machine Learning and Human Values written by Brian Christian and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them. Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us—and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole—and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands. The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called “artificial intelligence.” They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software. In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s “first-responders,” and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they—and we—succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story. The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture—and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.

Download or read book Harmonia Philosophica written by Spyridon Kakos and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this book is to show that dogmatism, under any form, is wrong. And even though dogmatism had for a long time been associated with religion, things have drastically changed in the last centuries. Nowadays science has replaced religion in the throne of doctrinaire thinking and the poison of materialism has dominated human intellect to a great extend. In this work one can read how separate opinions on crucial philosophical matters can be merged into one single "truth", if such thing even exists. The point of every chapter is to illustrate that one-way thinking is never correct – most of the times a combination of science and religion, measurements and theoretical thinking, logic and intuition, is required to draw a conclusion.

Download or read book Nonlinear Programming written by Dimitri P. Bertsekas and published by Goodman Publishers. This book was released on 1999 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Linear Network Optimization written by Dimitri P. Bertsekas and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linear Network Optimization presents a thorough treatment of classical approaches to network problems such as shortest path, max-flow, assignment, transportation, and minimum cost flow problems.

Download or read book Dynamic Programming and Optimal Control written by Dimitri P. Bertsekas and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The leading and most up-to-date textbook on the far-ranging algorithmic methododogy of Dynamic Programming, which can be used for optimal control, Markovian decision problems, planning and sequential decision making under uncertainty, and discrete/combinatorial optimization. The treatment focuses on basic unifying themes, and conceptual foundations. It illustrates the versatility, power, and generality of the method with many examples and applications from engineering, operations research, and other fields. It also addresses extensively the practical application of the methodology, possibly through the use of approximations, and provides an extensive treatment of the far-reaching methodology of Neuro-Dynamic Programming/Reinforcement Learning. The first volume is oriented towards modeling, conceptualization, and finite-horizon problems, but also includes a substantive introduction to infinite horizon problems that is suitable for classroom use. The second volume is oriented towards mathematical analysis and computation, treats infinite horizon problems extensively, and provides an up-to-date account of approximate large-scale dynamic programming and reinforcement learning. The text contains many illustrations, worked-out examples, and exercises."--Publisher's website.