Are neural networks really abandonware?

Question

I am planning to use neural networks for approximating a value function in a reinforcement learning algorithm. I want to do that to introduce some generalization and flexibility on how I represent states and actions.

Now, it looks to me that neural networks are the right tool to do that, however I have limited visibility here since I am not an AI expert. In particular, it seems that neural networks are being replaced by other technologies these days, e.g. support vector machines, but I am unsure if this is a fashion matter or if there is some real limitation in neural networks that could doom my approach. Do you have any suggestion?

Thanks,
Tunnuz

Answer 1

It's true that neural networks are no longer in vogue, as they once were, but they're hardly dead. The general reason for them falling from favor was the rise of the Support Vector Machine, because they converge globally and require fewer parameter specifications.

However, SVMs are very burdensome to implement and don't naturally generalize to reinforcement learning like ANNs do (SVMs are primarily used for offline decision problems).

I'd suggest you stick to ANNs if your task seems suitable to one, as within the realm of reinforcement learning, ANNs are still at the forefront in performance.

Here's a great place to start; just check out the section titled "Temporal Difference Learning" as that's the standard way ANNs solve reinforcement learning problems.

One caveat though: the recent trend in machine learning is to use many diverse learning agents together via bagging or boosting. While I haven't seen this as much in reinforcement learning, I'm sure employing this strategy would still be much more powerful than an ANN alone. But unless you really need world class performance (this is what won the netflix competition), I'd steer clear of this extremely complex technique.