Lecture

Monte Carlo Tree Search and Alpha Zero

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In course

CS-456: Deep reinforcement learning

This course provides an overview and introduces modern methods for reinforcement learning (RL.) The course starts with the fundamentals of RL, such as Q-learning, and delves into commonly used approaches, like PPO and DQN. The course will introduce student ...

Description

This lecture covers the concepts of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and Alpha Zero, two key algorithms in deep reinforcement learning. It explains how MCTS involves selection, expansion, simulation, and backpropagation, while Alpha Zero utilizes visit counts, action values, and prior action probabilities to make decisions in games like Chess, Shogi, and Go.

Instructors (2)

Wulfram Gerstner

Wulfram Gerstner is Director of the Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience LCN at the EPFL. His research in computational neuroscience concentrates on models of spiking neurons and spike-timing dependent plasticity, on the problem of neuronal coding in single neurons and populations, as well as on the link between biologically plausible learning rules and behavioral manifestations of learning. He teaches courses for Physicists, Computer Scientists, Mathematicians, and Life Scientists at the EPFL. After studies of Physics in Tübingen and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Master 1989), Wulfram Gerstner spent a year as a visiting researcher in Berkeley. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from the Technical University Munich in 1993 with a thesis on associative memory and dynamics in networks of spiking neurons. After short postdoctoral stays at Brandeis University and the Technical University of Munich, he joined the EPFL in 1996 as assistant professor. Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in February 2001, he is since August 2006 a full professor with double appointment in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences and the School of Life Sciences. Wulfram Gerstner has been invited speaker at numerous international conferences and workshops. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Neuroscience, Network: Computation in Neural Systems', Journal of Computational Neuroscience', and `Science'.

Caglar Gulcehre

Teaching & PhD PhD Students Tim Ruben Davidson, Skander Moalla, Anja Surina, Xiuying Wei, Liangze Jiang, Mikhail Terekhov, Amin Mansouri, Justin Samuel Deschenaux, Yitao Xu Courses Training Large Language Models EE-628 This PhD-level course dives deep into the training of Large Language Models (LLMs), focusing on the complementary roles of datasets, pre-training and post training methodologies in shaping model performance and scalability.

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Backpropagation

As a machine-learning algorithm, backpropagation performs a backward pass to adjust the model's parameters, aiming to minimize the mean squared error (MSE). In a single-layered network, backpropagation uses the following steps: Traverse through the network from the input to the output by computing the hidden layers' output and the output layer. (the feedforward step) In the output layer, calculate the derivative of the cost function with respect to the input and the hidden layers.

Deep reinforcement learning

Deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) is a subfield of machine learning that combines reinforcement learning (RL) and deep learning. RL considers the problem of a computational agent learning to make decisions by trial and error. Deep RL incorporates deep learning into the solution, allowing agents to make decisions from unstructured input data without manual engineering of the state space. Deep RL algorithms are able to take in very large inputs (e.g.

Reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine learning paradigms, alongside supervised learning and unsupervised learning. Reinforcement learning differs from supervised learning in not needing labelled input/output pairs to be presented, and in not needing sub-optimal actions to be explicitly corrected.

Deep learning

Deep learning is part of a broader family of machine learning methods, which is based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. The adjective "deep" in deep learning refers to the use of multiple layers in the network. Methods used can be either supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised.

AlphaZero

AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero. On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team released a preprint paper introducing AlphaZero, which within 24 hours of training achieved a superhuman level of play in these three games by defeating world-champion programs Stockfish, Elmo, and the three-day version of AlphaGo Zero.

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