- Title: TextWorld – A framework for training reinforcement learning agents on text-based games
- Speaker: Marc-Alexandre Côté, Microsoft Research Montreal
- Time and date: 11am to 12pm, Mar 28, 2019
- Room: BR 4.02, Bancroft Road Teaching Rooms, QMUL Mile End Campus
On Thursday 28th February 2019 the Game AI Group will host a seminar by Marc-Alexandre Côté from Microsoft Research Montreal. All welcome (especially students), no pre-booking required.
Abstract
Text-based games are complex, interactive simulations in which text describes the game state and players make progress by entering text commands. They are fertile ground for language-focused machine learning research. In addition to language understanding, successful play requires skills like long-term memory and planning, exploration (trial and error), and common sense.
The talk will introduce TextWorld, a sandbox learning environment for the training and evaluation of RL agents on text-based games. Its generative mechanisms give precise control over the difficulty, scope, and language of constructed games, and can be used to study generalization and transfer learning. This talk will also give an overview of the recent attempts to solve text-based games either using reinforcement learning or more handcrafted approaches.
Bio
Marc-Alexandre Côté is a researcher at Microsoft Research Montreal. His research focuses on machine learning, more specifically on generative models, reinforcement learning and language understanding. He is currently leading the TextWorld project, a learning environment for RL agent in the context of text-based games.