An introduction to Reinforcement Learning

[@DanielHernandez-rn6rp]

Love this guy. As an RL PhD student, your videos are golden.

[@nikhillondhe5815]

RL PhD sounds so interesting!

[@andres18m]

Institute name?

[@Ayanwesha]

hello..sir i am a grad stud can anyone tell me plzz if back propagation is necessary in supervised and unsupervised learning?or it is only used in reinforcement learning thanks

[@hcgaron]

Ayanwesha 12345 yes, back propagation is used as a basis for gradient based methods of optimization

[@ernie2111]

"RL PhD" didn't know such things exist lol

[@denebvegaaltair1146]

Your videos have just the right amount of technical terms such that student engineers can learn something, and also the right amount of summary and rewording such that beginners can get a vague idea of concepts. Thank you so much

[@yuanyuansun3521]

“If u only give it a positive reward when it successfully stacked a block, it’ll never get to see any of those reward” Only if my tutors realise this.

[@snippletrap]

The perils of reward shaping are well understood in a public policy context, where incentives can lead to "unintended consequences".

[@Hyuts]

Explains in an elegant manner more than I have learned in half a semester of my AI college course.

[@SukhwinderSingh-fb9qw]

This was one of the best videos on RL that I have seen. Extremely informative. The way you explain things is awesome. Keep up the great work! Cheers man!

[@atcer51]

fiiiinnnaaaallly after tons of googling, I finally fund a USEFUL video that accually EXPLAINS how to reward the agent, and not just saying: 'oh u just reward it'

[@davidfield5295]

The misuse of 'literally' notwithstanding, this was an excellent video. Very clear and concise explanation.

[@cemgocer8185]

Quality of the video is off the charts. Topics u have chosen to explain the field, the way u explain them and especially pointing the common misconceptions that make it harder for us to get into what AI really is... I'm sad that there is no superlike button. Rare to see videos of this quality and honesty

[@rednassie1101]

People: ANN ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD AND STUFF WILL NEVER BE THE SAME my horribly trained network on a cat: "dog"

[@I_Lemaire]

Could they help with the necessary government takeovers associated with COVID-19? Temporary command economies could be more efficient.

[@revimfadli4666]

KZbin's bots: "Robot fighting is animal cruelty"

[@floriandebrauwer9140]

Thanks for your work ! I like the way you present such a complex field in a clear manner for poeple without any background. Thanks to you I know where to start in my learning journey !

[@allamasadi7970]

Your channel deserves more views 👍

[@akramsystems]

agree %100

[@lohithArcot]

Not many reach these topics.

[@Lilowillow42]

Just wanted you to know that in my university course for introduction to AI our professor recommended your videos for machine learning. Your explanation is highly enjoyable and informative. Thank you!

[@TheBeansChopper]

I think the comment section speaks for itself. This is a fantastic grasp of the basic concepts and issues with this technologies in such short time, without diving unnecessarily into formalism. Thanks :)

[@rutexgreat3619]

Very clear material, very clear representation, thank you for your time and video.

[@DotCSV]

Hi Xander, just found your KZbin channel and I'm very amazed about your content! I also run a KZbin channel with the same topic but for the Spanish speaking audience, and I'm happy to see that more new channels are growing to educate in the field of machine learning. I hope in the future we can crossover our contents :)

[@ArxivInsights]

Checked out your channel, great stuff man!! It's indeed nice to see that many people are starting to contribute to the online ML community in such a huge variety of ways :p

[@OcramRatte]

eeee yo creo que te acabo de ver en tiktok

[@shirishbajpai9486]

watched in 2023 after all the LLMs stuff going on... still such relevant and pure gold!

[@funpy772]

Just wanted to tell you people.. this video is still awesome.

[@thanasispappas62]

By far the best video of RL ive ever seen.

[@TY-un4no]

Complex stuff made simple and easy, this is a very good intro video to RL. Starting to learn RL for work and your video gave me a great starting point, thank you!

[@PasseScience]

Hello, an RL idea I had, I am curious to know if you came accross similar things. Let's put the context in a very general way: a predictive/policy part doing it's usual job: having a latent/feature representation of the time line. (this time line including sense-data and action outputs, both past and predicted). and an RL part that can use the prediction of the policy part to make decisions. (determine action outputs). If we remain general both parts are working in some kind of a loop (policy predicts a future, decision parts tries to use it to determine futur actions, policy predicts again a futur based on what is planned etc...) We have here a very basic feature we usually seek: action that requires initially a huge number of back and forth in prediction-decision, can be eventually learned by the prediction parts (that will prefill the output actions based on it's prediction). Here nothing new, I am just talking about an abstraction that can suit a large number of RL systems. But now is the idea: usually the decision part job is to fill action output, but if we allow it to fill the "sense data prediction part" we end up with something interesting: we can see the prediction part in a more general way, not only as something that can predict but as something that can fill the gap (prediction is filling a specific gap), and so if the decision parts prefil the predicted sense-data with "i fill an apple in my hand" the predictive part (now more a "time-line filling gap part") can try to determine the actions that leads to this sense-data. Here we invent a new way of decision to communicate: by "will". It describes what it wants and the planification to get it is delegated to the first part of the engine. Was I clear? have you seen this kind of thing?

[@PriyanshuGupta-hf2hm]

You explained so well that I understood each and everything in your video. I am overjoyed!

[@HARtalks]

It was really interesting and helped me to get a clear picture of what reinforcement learning is... Thank you!!

[@laeeqahmed1980]

Great talk. Humans are not good at multiple sound recognition and you added music to your video.

[@aanex2005]

I have no idea about RL but your video has given me a good jump start. Thanks man

[@biiigates7381]

I've been learning AI for almost a year now and on all the channels I've spent with this is the best one. Very underrated! (btw its the first time i discovered this channel and I instantly subscribed)

[@mundeepcool]

Same here, loved this video and I instantly subscribed... and also oh yeah yeah

[@mantische]

One of the best explanations I've seen

[@MuditBachhawatIn]

I have been meaning to read about RL for a long time. This video couldn't be more simple and clear introduction to it. Thanks man!

[@williamkyburz]

Xander, extremely well done, lucid and cogent. You should be teaching at M.I.T. or Universiteit Gent). The ability to teach complex subjects in an intuitive and simple way is a gift. Wish you the best in everything. Peace

[@ArxivInsights]

Thanks William! I am actually doing my PhD in Gent at the moment :)

[@Krimson5pride]

It was both professional and entertaining at the same time. Great and precise explanation.

[@gusbakker]

Great balance between a very well explained content and the interesting facts about current progress in AI at the end. Good work

[@alirezaparsay8518]

The explanation was so clear. Thank you.

[@LearnRoboticsAndAI]

Summary : - State-of-the-art Robotics is a Software challenge and not a hardware challenge (Robots are physically capable of challenging tasks) - Supervised Learning * Known - Inputs, Outputs * Compute gradients using Backpropagation to train the network to predict outputs for new inputs * E.g. for a game of ping pong, the data can be screenshots at specific time instants and the key (Up/down) pressed at each instant by the user (recorded from a user playing the game) and it can be used to train a neural network to predict output for a new input image * Disadvantage is the creation of a dataset, which isn't always easy to do * Another disadvantage is that since the data is recorded from human playing the game, it can never be better than a human playing the game - Reinforcement Learning * Difference to supervised learning is that we do not know the target label as we have no dataset * The network that transforms the input states to output actions is called policy network * One simple way to train a policy network (can be fully connected or convoluted) is a method called policy gradients 1. In Policy Gradient method, we start with a completely random network 2. Feed the network a frame from the game engine, it produces a random output 3. Send that action back to the game engine 4. The game engine produces the next frame 5. Outputs are represented probabilistically sampled from a distribution such that the same exact actions are not repeated again and again 6. Rewards are given if the agent scores a goal (+1) and penalty is given is the opponent scores a goal (-1) 7. Entire goal is to optimize its policy to receive maximum reward 8. We get a bunch of experience by feeding frames to the network, getting random actions 9. Sometimes (rarely) the result would be a WIN 10. We use normal gradients to increase the probability of those actions (that result in WIN) in the future 11. For a negative reward we use the same gradient but multiply it with -1 * Credit Assignment Problem - Most of the steps were good but it lost at the end so our network will think that the particular sequence of actions is bad * Sparse reward setting, very sample inefficient * Reward shaping- Additional intermediate rewards. But must be designed individually for specific problems. Not scalable.

[@espangie]

This was really helpful. Thank you to people like you for creating this content. Appreciate you, Xander!

[@doctorartin]

Doing part of my PhD on potantial AI-strategies fordecision-making in healthcare, and this was very useful, thank you.

[@varshinis6930]

Which university??

[@doctorartin]

@@varshinis6930 Lund University

[@govindnarasimman1536]

Very clear naration and true to.ground comments. All the euphoria about AI needs to be grounded.

[@ArnauViaMartinezSeara]

Really useful. I am preparing a Reinforcement Learning class aplied to finance and it is really helpful. Can't wait to see next episode. Thanks

[@majeedhussain3276]

You deserve million subscribers hopefully one day you will. So much clarity in every video. Keep going...

[@shashankshivakumar4732]

I love this video. I love his criticial and grounded thinking. Great work !

[@rishidixit7939]

The sudden surprise of hearing Bruno Mars makes you pause video for other open tabs

[@poojanpatel2437]

Best Channel on yt for ml/dl/rl/ai... Keep up the good work... Would love to see your new video weekly...

[@ArxivInsights]

I'd love to make more videos too! But since I'm currently doing this 100% in my spare time and 1 vid takes about 30hrs of work, there's really no way I can do one per week for now :(

[@poojanpatel2437]

Arxiv Insights Still amazing work till now... Love to see your more videos in future.. ❤

[@ms_1918]

well came here for a 1 min intro to reinforcement learning for first class of course, stopped after 16 minutes what a superb experience.

[@soumyakantadash5986]

These videos are gem!!!..... incredible, precise and knowledgeable!!!!

[@RoxanaNoe]

Your channel is a great resource for getting into Deep Learning and AI.

[@josefpolasek6666]

Your videos are absolutely amazing! Thank you very much for explaining concept of RL in 16 minutes.

[@Z4NT0]

I learned so much in just 16 minutes. Awesome Video!

[@dean8147]

You’re a legend mate. Honestly, thanks for all of your hard work

[@7810]

Good stuff to learn the RL in terms of basic knowledge as well as the challenge it will face. Thanks for your time and sharing!

[@papaman1037]

Your content is far better than that guy that copies someone's code from GitHub makes an obscure reference to the original author and states that he added a wrapper to make the code easier to use (a lie Everytime I've checked). He uploads the code as an original comit (no fork from the rightful author's repo). He intentionally misleads people and profits from it -- a legal necessity for calling it fraudulent. Your content is excellent, clearly founded in recent research papers and you very professionally point out that material and more. You add value with your discussion of the topic. Thank you for an excellent channel. I would use patreon but I am Ill and not working. I'm doing my best to spread the word.

[@steadymedia234]

This is a great presentation on RL, short and clear content.

[@ingeniouswild]

Very nice episode! One thing that struck me about your suggestion that without Reward Shaping, the auto-learning of the 2600 games would be intractable: even for a human, this would be extremely difficult - we succeed with new, undocumented games because they often have similar sub-components and sub-goals that we already know from other games (or life). But I'm sure you could easily construct a game which would be impossible for a human to learn without any hints, while still having the same overall complexity.

[@gudusangtani]

So well explained ....I also liked the comments on Boston robotics considering the hype and buzz about AI and ML.. You are doing a very good job !

[@nateshrager512]

Great job introducing the topic. Very nice job dispelling misconceptions surrounding the topic as well. I put on that notification for your next videos, looking forward to em : )

[@orfeasliossatos]

I've been literally looking all over for a video like this, thank you so much

[@nemx4u]

You explain hard topics beautifully! great job. Would love to see more RL videos!

[@codyheiner3636]

Love the philosophical discussion at the end!

[@thaermashkoor6225]

Thanks for this clear introduction.

[@OliverZeigermann]

Very lively and understandable. Great work!

[@HarutakaShimizu]

Wow, this was a very clearly explained video, thanks!

[@robertfairburn9979]

When I was a psychology student when trained chickens using reinforcement training with reward shaping. However it was a form supervised training in reality

[@khajasaen]

Best channel in the crowd ... keep it up Xander

[@bsudharsh]

succinct; its a brilliant rendition on reinforcement learning

[@geraldkenneth119]

It seems to me one way, albeit a rather difficult one, to help AI deal with sparse rewards is to 1. Give them a reward function that doesn’t work based on if they accomplished the task or not, but on how close they got to achieving it 2. Give them the ability to generate plans for achieving a goal, and to recognize why they failed

[@gorillapimpin2978]

my new favorite channel

[@Alex-gc2vo]

your videos are some of the best explanations I've found for a lot of these very advanced subjects. I suspect your viewer count is going to jump very quickly. keep it up.

[@mujahid1324]

I would say "Wow'. You nailed it in10 mnts what's "reinforcement learning" is. Please keep sending more and more Ai . keep it up, Xander :)

[@sidharthaparhi7930]

Also your intro is very high quality, like an intro to a good TV show

[@amitredkar140]

Great video!!!! Explained exceptionally, liked other videos as well from your channel. Would love to see more stuff related to AI/DL or RL. Thanks in advance. Keep up the good work....

[@Jshizzle2]

Perfect video, so much more intuitive than my lectures. Thanks a bunch!

[@sharadrawatindia]

Hey Xander! Great videos. Looking forwards for your next video.

[@shirishbajpai9486]

3:12 - Why reinforcement learning 4:00 - RL framework 4:30 - Policy Gradients 5:37 - Training Policy network 7:50 - Problem with policy gradient(credit assignment problem) 9:25 - Where sparse reward setting fails 11:00 - Reward shaping

[@jackwhite9332]

Impressive explanation, found this very useful. Thank you!

[@ArturoMoraSoto]

Nice explanation, thanks for taking the time to create this great video.

[@alanator25]

Thank you! This was a great introduction!

[@32isaias]

The one that will take Siraj's crown, well deserved.

[@mehdisauvage1234]

Your videos are so useful and interesting ! This is pure gold to me :)

[@ahilanpalarajah3159]

Only way to describe this guy is "22 Two's - Jay-Z". Excellent video.

[@qandos-nour]

Great and clear explanation

[@saaniausaf9621]

I loved the way you explained everything. Thanks!

[@stefano3808]

really high quality videos, thanks for that

[@colorlace]

The Lebowski Theorem: No superintelligent AI is going to bother with a task that is harder than hacking its reward function.

[@wizardOfRobots]

Unless it's reward function punishes it for it. Now we have the Meta-Lebowski theorem: It's not going to bother with a task harder than hacking it's hack-detection algorithm.

[@halifakx]

perhaps, a machine become smart, and then smarter as it decides becoiming smarter is shorterst path to reward... finally so smart to realize their reward is just color mirrors? and create a new program inside the program that cancels or outweigh the previous reward and create new rewards? programming this new reawards in their own languaje, not apparent to us....like facebook robot talking their own languaje

[@halifakx]

estramboticusssssss dangerosicusss hahaha

[@sridhasridharan3600]

Great Videos! I am recommending these to my students.

[@punitpalial]

Here the notes from the video, LEARNZY (please ignore the timestamps, they are not accurate) 01:57 : Peter Abeel gave a demonstration of robots doing all the mundane tasks of the house like cleaning, cooking, and bringing a bottle of beer. It showed our remarkable achievements in the field of robotics We are sufficiently advanced(mechanically and in hardware essence) to build a robot capable of doing complex actions but the reason we aren't able to make terminator-like robots is that we still haven't embedded intelligence into these robots. So creating intelligent robots is a software problem, not a hardware problem 02:03 : Reinforcement learning is basically about letting computers learn on their own by learning from themselves. Like it's said, you can only be as good as your master. Therefore if a computer learns from the world's best chess player then the best it can become is to become equal to the best chess player but to surpass her, AI needs to learn much more than just from the best chess player, and that is made possible by learning from itself, allowing it to take random decisions and then regarding the decisions which lead to a positive outcoming and punishing for decisions which led to a negative outcome, and rewarding the AI for not just winning the war but when it wins the battle too. This learning from itself is called reinforcement learning. 04:07 : The difference between Reinforcement and SUpervised learning is that unlike in supervised learning where we need a training set like the moves of the best chess player to train our AI, and then the computer recognizes patterns picks the best pattern. In reinforcement learning, there is no training data and the computer pretty much learns by taking random decisions and figuring out which random move worked best 04:41 : Policry gradients- AI does a random action >>checks if it is good>> if good asks it to repeat it and reward it>>if not, then punish it 05:02 : 📌the entire goal of the policy network is to maximize the reward. It just receives the scoreboard as a checking mark 05:37 : 📌read Andrej Karpath's blog on dep reinforcement learning: pong from pixels 07:50 : the problem with policy gradient is that it rewards the end goal and not the process. so even if the AI took all the right steps in the game but only lost out on the last move, then the policy gradient would put all the moves made in the game as negative and will punish the ai for it. This problem is called the "Credit assignment Problem' To correct this, the AI can be rewarded for all the right moves in the game rather than winning the game. The solution given is called reward shaping. but the problem with reward shaping is that it has to be configured for all the cases where it is used. therefore makes it difficult to be used universally 12:03 : Reward shaping can also have "the alignment problem" where the ai is getting all the rewards but isn't doing what it is supposed to do 14:08 : Boston Dynamics has some pretty cool robots but those robots cant take autonomous intelligent decisions. They pre-programmed for doing what they do. They don't actively decide for themselves what they want to do. Hence they are not really intelligent and just a marketing gimmick at this point

[@papaman1037]

Even in games w/o an RL actor loops without achieving a goal occur. The long time solution was to periodically perturb the system sufficiently that such learned patterns get interrupted.

[@alenasazanova8331]

That's very interesting and understantable video. Thank you very much!

[@ipuhbamrash6708]

Fabulous!! No other word for you!!

[@mohammadhatoum]

Great job.. Explained the subject in a simple way. Keep it up and looking forward for new videos

[@azmathmoosa4324]

I like how u don't hype up anything. Great mate! I subscribe!

[@digvijaybhandari9747]

Really enjoyed the content here!

[@tnmygrwl]

You do an awesome of structuring the content. Loved the video.

[@senri-]

Cant wait for the next videos keep up the great work!

[@LongTheRevolution]

Amazing video. Thanks braddah

[@FujihiroCZ]

You are a GOD!

[@mgilson]

I can't wait for your next video !! 😍😍😍

[@wzyjoseph7317]

Very clear explaination! Thanks for the work!!!!XD

[@tyfoodsforthought]

That was a really good video. Sheesh. What a download!

[@tonakkie635]

Great overview, well explained👍.Thanks

[@josephedappully1482]

This is a great video; thanks for making it! Looking forward to your next one.

[@yasermahmoud6297]

awesome video! Discussing AI without its long term negative repercussions is absolutely useless.

[@robertpalmercoaching]

Rewards and Reinforcements need clarification. A reward is focused on a result, and a reinforcement is focused on behavior. Sometimes the difference is very subtle and hence the confusion, but the outcome is significantly different.