When does return-conditioned supervised learning work for offline reinforcement learning?

David Brandfonbrener, Alberto Bietti, Jacob Buckman, Romain Laroche, Joan Bruna

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Several recent works have proposed a class of algorithms for the offline reinforcement learning (RL) problem that we will refer to as return-conditioned supervised learning (RCSL). RCSL algorithms learn the distribution of actions conditioned on both the state and the return of the trajectory. Then they define a policy by conditioning on achieving high return. In this paper, we provide a rigorous study of the capabilities and limitations of RCSL, something which is crucially missing in previous work. We find that RCSL returns the optimal policy under a set of assumptions that are stronger than those needed for the more traditional dynamic programming-based algorithms. We provide specific examples of MDPs and datasets that illustrate the necessity of these assumptions and the limits of RCSL. Finally, we present empirical evidence that these limitations will also cause issues in practice by providing illustrative experiments in simple point-mass environments and on datasets from the D4RL benchmark.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationAdvances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 - 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2022
EditorsS. Koyejo, S. Mohamed, A. Agarwal, D. Belgrave, K. Cho, A. Oh
PublisherNeural information processing systems foundation
ISBN (Electronic)9781713871088
StatePublished - 2022
Event36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2022 - New Orleans, United States
Duration: Nov 28 2022Dec 9 2022

Publication series

NameAdvances in Neural Information Processing Systems
Volume35
ISSN (Print)1049-5258

Conference

Conference36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NeurIPS 2022
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew Orleans
Period11/28/2212/9/22

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Information Systems
  • Signal Processing

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