Enhancing data efficiency in reinforcement learning: a novel imagination mechanism based on mesh information propagation

Reinforcement learning(RL) algorithms face the challenge of limited data efficiency, particularly when dealing with high-dimensional state spaces and large-scale problems. Most of RL methods often rely solely on state transition information within the same episode when updating the agent's Critic, which can lead to low data efficiency and sub-optimal training time consumption. Inspired by human-like analogical reasoning abilities, we introduce a novel mesh information propagation mechanism, termed the 'Imagination Mechanism (IM)', designed to significantly enhance the data efficiency of RL algorithms. Specifically, IM enables information generated by a single sample to be effectively broadcasted to different states across episodes, instead of simply transmitting in the same episode. This capability enhances the model's comprehension of state interdependencies and facilitates more efficient learning of limited sample information. To promote versatility, we extend the IM to function as a plug-and-play module that can be seamlessly and fluidly integrated into other widely adopted RL algorithms. Our experiments demonstrate that IM consistently boosts four mainstream SOTA RL algorithms, such as SAC, PPO, DDPG, and DQN, by a considerable margin, ultimately leading to superior performance than before across various tasks. For access to our code and data, please visit https://github.com/OuAzusaKou/imagination_mechanism

Fast Intent Classification for Spoken Language Understanding

Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) systems consist of several machine learning components operating together (e.g. intent classification, named entity recognition and resolution). Deep learning models have obtained state of the art results on several of these tasks, largely attributed to their better modeling capacity. However, an increase in modeling capacity comes with added costs of higher latency and energy usage, particularly when operating on low complexity devices. To address the latency and computational complexity issues, we explore a BranchyNet scheme on an intent classification scheme within SLU systems. The BranchyNet scheme when applied to a high complexity model, adds exit points at various stages in the model allowing early decision making for a set of queries to the SLU model. We conduct experiments on the Facebook Semantic Parsing dataset with two candidate model architectures for intent classification. Our experiments show that the BranchyNet scheme provides gains in terms of computational complexity without compromising model accuracy. We also conduct analytical studies regarding the improvements in the computational cost, distribution of utterances that egress from various exit points and the impact of adding more complexity to models with the BranchyNet scheme.