CAREER: Toward Artificial General Intelligence for Complex Adaptive Systems: A Natural Concurrent “Learning-in-Learning” Control Paradigm

人工智能(AI)技术正在改变我们生活的方方面面，强化学习(RL)被视为当前AI浪潮中的下一个重大研究课题之一。虽然已有的AI和RL研究成果令人振奋，但在数据聚集、学习和逼近能力以及不确定情况下的性能泛化等方面的基础研究还没有完全展开。受此启发，PI提出了一种自然并发的RL框架，与传统RL方法相比具有三大优势，即：1)同时学习复杂系统的多峰特性的优势；2)使用个性化学习方案的结构优势；3)数据驱动的样本高效设计的实现优势。在这个框架内，PI建议设计两种并行的RL方法来整合过去的经验和预期的知识，并建立在学习中学习的控制范式。理论结果将证明，对于不确定环境下的复杂自适应系统，所提出的RL框架可以高置信度地部署。在智能能源社区的应用将支持新的学习框架和理论成果。除了科学影响，拟议的研究对包括交通、康复和机器人在内的广泛研究学科具有更广泛的影响。研究和教育活动的整合也将在区域和国家范围内对这些机构产生积极影响。一个拟议的研讨会将邀请世界知名专家邀请(州立大学)经济支持有限的学生和年轻研究人员参加专业会议。与行业和国家实验室的合作为学生提供了获得外部培训的机会，这可能会导致竞争激烈的工作机会。拟议的带回家的人工智能/远程学习项目将促进研究能力有限的学校(例如农村社区学院)和在当前流行病期间倾向于远程学习的学生进行互动远程学习。这些活动将有力地促进国家人工智能劳动力的发展。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are transforming nearly every aspect of our lives and reinforcement learning (RL) is viewed as one of next big research topics in the current AI wave. While the existing AI and RL achievements are exciting, the fundamental research of data aggregation, learning and approximation capability, and the performance generalization during uncertainties, is not fully yet developed. There is still a gap from the current state-of-the-art techniques to the artificial general intelligence that can bring good performance in learning speed, data efficiency, and generalization of the optimization performance.Inspired by this observation, the PI proposes a natural concurrent RL framework that carries three major advantages over traditional RL methods, namely the i) advantages of simultaneously learning multimodal properties of the complex system; ii) structural advantages of using a personalized learning scheme; and iii) implementation advantages of the data-driven sample-efficient design. Within this framework, the PI proposes to design two concurrent RL methods to consolidate past experiences and anticipatory knowledge and build the “learning-in-learning” control paradigm. The theoretical results will certify that the proposed RL framework can be deployed with high confidence for complex adaptive systems under uncertain environments. The applications on smart energy community will support the novel learning framework and theoretical results.Beyond the scientific impacts, the proposed research has broader impacts for a wide range of research disciplines including transportation, rehabilitation, and robotics. The integration of research and education activities will also positively impact the institutions regionally and nationally. A proposed workshop will bring world renown experts to engage (state college) students and young researchers with limited financial supports to attend professional conferences. The collaboration with the industry and the national laboratory provides the students the opportunity to get external training, which can lead to competitive job offers. The proposed take-home AI/RL projects will promote interactive distance learning for schools with limited research capacity (e.g., rural community college) and for students with the preference of remote studying during the current pandemic. These activities will vigorously contribute to the nation’s AI workforce development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.