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Temporal explanations for deep reinforcement learning agents

Temporal explanations for deep reinforcement learning agents
Temporal explanations for deep reinforcement learning agents
Despite significant progress in deep reinforcement learning across a range of environments, there are still limited tools to understand why agents make decisions. A central issue is how certain actions enable agents to collect rewards or achieve goals. Understanding this temporal context for actions is critical to explaining an agent’s choices. To date, little research has explored such explanations and those that do rely heavily on domain knowledge. We propose three novel video-based temporal explanations, two of which do not require domain knowledge. Utilising our novel explanations and two state-of-the-art feature-based explanations, we conduct a comprehensive user survey for three Atari environments, finding users prefer our explanations
80.7 of the time over the state-of-the-art.

Explainable Reinforcement Learning, Temporal Explanations, Video Explanations
0302-9743
99-115
Springer Cham
Towers, Mark
18e6acc7-29c4-4d0c-9058-32d180ad4f12
Du, Yali
0b0d4eef-0820-4753-b384-72db5058df32
Freeman, Chris
ccdd1272-cdc7-43fb-a1bb-b1ef0bdf5815
Norman, Tim
663e522f-807c-4569-9201-dc141c8eb50d
Calvaresi, Davide
Najjar, Amro
Omicini, Andrea
Aydogan, Reyhan
Carli, Rachele
Ciatto, Giovanni
Hulstijn, Joris
Främling, Kary
Towers, Mark
18e6acc7-29c4-4d0c-9058-32d180ad4f12
Du, Yali
0b0d4eef-0820-4753-b384-72db5058df32
Freeman, Chris
ccdd1272-cdc7-43fb-a1bb-b1ef0bdf5815
Norman, Tim
663e522f-807c-4569-9201-dc141c8eb50d
Calvaresi, Davide
Najjar, Amro
Omicini, Andrea
Aydogan, Reyhan
Carli, Rachele
Ciatto, Giovanni
Hulstijn, Joris
Främling, Kary

Towers, Mark, Du, Yali, Freeman, Chris and Norman, Tim (2024) Temporal explanations for deep reinforcement learning agents. Calvaresi, Davide, Najjar, Amro, Omicini, Andrea, Aydogan, Reyhan, Carli, Rachele, Ciatto, Giovanni, Hulstijn, Joris and Främling, Kary (eds.) In Explainable and Transparent AI and Multi-Agent Systems - 6th International Workshop, EXTRAAMAS 2024, Revised Selected Papers. vol. 14847, Springer Cham. pp. 99-115 . (doi:10.1007/978-3-031-70074-3_6).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Despite significant progress in deep reinforcement learning across a range of environments, there are still limited tools to understand why agents make decisions. A central issue is how certain actions enable agents to collect rewards or achieve goals. Understanding this temporal context for actions is critical to explaining an agent’s choices. To date, little research has explored such explanations and those that do rely heavily on domain knowledge. We propose three novel video-based temporal explanations, two of which do not require domain knowledge. Utilising our novel explanations and two state-of-the-art feature-based explanations, we conduct a comprehensive user survey for three Atari environments, finding users prefer our explanations
80.7 of the time over the state-of-the-art.

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Published date: 25 September 2024
Venue - Dates: 6th International Workshop, EXTRAAMAS 2024, , Auckland, New Zealand, 2024-05-06 - 2024-05-10
Keywords: Explainable Reinforcement Learning, Temporal Explanations, Video Explanations

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 496688
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/496688
ISSN: 0302-9743
PURE UUID: 61a31482-42e9-4937-8cfd-2839dd1af3c4
ORCID for Mark Towers: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2609-2041
ORCID for Chris Freeman: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0305-9246
ORCID for Tim Norman: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6387-4034

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Date deposited: 07 Jan 2025 22:03
Last modified: 10 Jan 2025 03:08

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Contributors

Author: Mark Towers ORCID iD
Author: Yali Du
Author: Chris Freeman ORCID iD
Author: Tim Norman ORCID iD
Editor: Davide Calvaresi
Editor: Amro Najjar
Editor: Andrea Omicini
Editor: Reyhan Aydogan
Editor: Rachele Carli
Editor: Giovanni Ciatto
Editor: Joris Hulstijn
Editor: Kary Främling

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