Complexity-Regularized Proximal Policy Optimization
Policy gradient methods usually rely on entropy regularization to prevent premature convergence. However, maximizing entropy indiscriminately pushes the policy towards a uniform distribution, often overriding the reward signal if not optimally tuned. We propose replacing the standard entropy term with a self-regulating complexity term, defined as the product of Shannon entropy and disequilibrium, where the latter quantifies the distance from the uniform distribution. Unlike pure entropy, which favors maximal disorder, this complexity measure is zero for both fully deterministic and perfectly uniform distributions, i.e., it is strictly positive for systems that exhibit a meaningful interplay between order and randomness. These properties ensure the policy maintains beneficial stochasticity while reducing regularization pressure when the policy is highly uncertain, allowing learning to focus on reward optimization. We introduce Complexity-Regularized Proximal Policy Optimization (CR-PPO), a modification of PPO that leverages this dynamic. We empirically demonstrate that CR-PPO is significantly more robust to hyperparameter selection than entropy-regularized PPO, achieving consistent performance across orders of magnitude of regularization coefficients and remaining harmless when regularization is unnecessary, thereby reducing the need for expensive hyperparameter tuning.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Sampling Complexity of TD and PPO in RKHS
We revisit Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) from a function-space perspective. Our analysis decouples policy evaluation and improvement in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS): (i) A kernelized temporal-difference…
Stochastic OptimizationOn the Stochastic (Variance-Reduced) Proximal Gradient Method for Regularized Expected Reward Optimization
We consider a regularized expected reward optimization problem in the non-oblivious setting that covers many existing problems in reinforcement learning (RL). In order to solve such an optimization problem, we apply and …
Reinforcement Learning (RL)Proximal Oracles for Optimization and Sampling
We consider convex optimization with non-smooth objective function and log-concave sampling with non-smooth potential (negative log density). In particular, we study two specific settings where the convex objective/poten…
A Theory of Regularized Markov Decision Processes
Many recent successful (deep) reinforcement learning algorithms make use of regularization, generally based on entropy or Kullback-Leibler divergence. We propose a general theory of regularized Markov Decision Processes …
Deep Reinforcement LearningQ-LearningReinforcement LearningProximal Policy Optimization for Amortized Discrete Sampling
This paper explores policy gradient algorithms for training stochastic policies to sample from structured discrete probability distributions under the Generative Flow Network (GFlowNet) framework. Building on extensive t…
Reinforcement LearningGraph Generation