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machine-learningartificial-intelligencereinforcement-learningevolutionary-algorithm

Can evolutionary computation be a method of reinforcement learning?


What is evolutionary computation? Is it a method of reinforcement learning? Or a separate method of machine learning? Or maybe none?

Please, cite references used to answer this question.


Solution

  • There are evolutionary methods that are explicitly aimed at solving the reinforcement learning problem. The subfield typically goes by the name of Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) or occasionally Genetics-Based Machine Learning (GBML).

    Aside from that, I'm not sure your question has a very well-defined answer. It basically boils down to "what is machine learning?" There's no canon that we've all agreed on for how to answer that question. For some, EC might be a part of that subfield. For others, it isn't. I just sampled a handful of ML textbooks from my shelf, and about half contained material on evolutionary methods. I suspect 15 years ago that fraction would have been higher, but fashions change, and machine learning is very nearly a subfield of statistics now. EC methods don't fit that mold very well.