Skip to main content

A Definition of Happiness for Reinforcement Learning Agents

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9205))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

What is happiness for reinforcement learning agents? We seek a formal definition satisfying a list of desiderata. Our proposed definition of happiness is the temporal difference error, i.e. the difference between the value of the obtained reward and observation and the agent’s expectation of this value. This definition satisfies most of our desiderata and is compatible with empirical research on humans. We state several implications and discuss examples.

Research supported by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Reinforcement Learners http://petrl.org. See the extended technical report for omitted proofs and details about the data analysis [4].

Both authors contributed equally.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Bostrom, N.: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers. Oxford University Press, Strategies (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Brickman, P., Campbell, D.T.: Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. Adaptation-Level Theory, pp. 287–305 (1971)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Brickman, P., Coates, D., Janoff-Bulman, R.: Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36, 917 (1978)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Daswani, M., Leike, J.: A definition of happiness for reinforcement learning agents. Technical report, Australian National University (2015). http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04497

  5. Diener, E., Lucas, R.E., Scollon, C.N.: Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist 61, 305 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Jacobs, E., Broekens, J., Jonker, C.: Joy, distress, hope, and fear in reinforcement learning. In: Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 1615–1616 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Niv, Y.: Reinforcement learning in the brain. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 53, 139–154 (2009)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  8. Rutledge, R.B., Skandali, N., Dayan, P., Dolan, R.J.: A computational and neural model of momentary subjective well-being. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Schmidhuber, J.: Formal theory of creativity, fun, and intrinsic motivation (1990–2010). IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development. 2, 230–247 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Sutton, R., Barto, A.: Time-derivative models of Pavlovian reinforcement. In: Learning and Computational Neuroscience: Foundations of Adaptive Networks, pp. 497–537. MIT Press (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Sutton, R.S., Barto, A.G.: Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction. MIT Press, Cambridge (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Tomasik, B.: Do artificial reinforcement-learning agents matter morally? Technical report, Foundational Research Institute (2014). http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8233

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan Leike .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Daswani, M., Leike, J. (2015). A Definition of Happiness for Reinforcement Learning Agents. In: Bieger, J., Goertzel, B., Potapov, A. (eds) Artificial General Intelligence. AGI 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9205. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21365-1_24

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21365-1_24

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21364-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21365-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics