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Population-Based Evolution Optimizes a Meta-Learning Objective (arxiv.org)
2 points by TaurenHunter on Dec 22, 2023 | hide | past | pdf | 1 comment on HN

In plain words: Instead of nested training loops that teach a model how to learn, a population of evolving solutions competes on a fitness score that keeps changing, favoring the fastest improvers. The winners improved faster across generations and quickly solved rare-reward and robot control tasks.

Abstract

Meta-learning models, or models that learn to learn, have been a long-desired target for their ability to quickly solve new tasks. Traditional meta-learning methods can require expensive inner and outer loops, thus there is demand for algorithms that discover strong learners without explicitly searching for them. We draw parallels to the study of evolvable genomes in evolutionary systems -- genomes with a strong capacity to adapt -- and propose that meta-learning and adaptive evolvability optimize for the same objective: high performance after a set of learning iterations. We argue that population-based evolutionary systems with non-static fitness landscapes naturally bias towards high-evolvability genomes, and therefore optimize for populations with strong learning ability. We demonstrate this claim with a simple evolutionary algorithm, Population-Based Meta Learning (PBML), that consistently discovers genomes which display higher rates of improvement over generations, and can rapidly adapt to solve sparse fitness and robotic control tasks.

Kevin Frans, Olaf Witkowski
arXiv:2103.06435 · cs.NE · submitted Mar 11, 2021
abstract · pdf · html

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"Meta-learning models, or models that learn to learn, have been a long-desired target for their ability to quickly solve new tasks. Traditional meta-learning methods can require expensive inner and outer loops, thus there is demand for algorithms that discover strong learners without explicitly searching for them. ... We argue that population-based evolutionary systems with non-static fitness landscapes naturally bias towards high-evolvability genomes, and therefore optimize for populations with strong learning ability. We demonstrate this claim with a simple evolutionary algorithm, Population-Based Meta Learning (PBML), that consistently discovers genomes which display higher rates of improvement over generations, and can rapidly adapt to solve sparse fitness and robotic control tasks."