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Reinforcement learning

As explained in The AI Pocket Book

A learning approach in which an agent improves by trying actions and using feedback from the results.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is learning by trial and error: an agent tries actions, observes the results, and uses feedback to improve later choices. section 1.27

Choosing advertisements

An advertising platform initially shows random ads and records whether the user clicks. This exploration reveals interests; later, the platform exploits that information by showing more relevant ads. section 1.27

The central tradeoff is exploration versus exploitation. Continued exploration can uncover new preferences, but trial and error may waste opportunities compared with supervised learning, which supplies examples directly. section 1.27 section 1.27

How The AI Pocket Book covers it

How deep it goes
Explains random actions, feedback, exploration, exploitation, and their tradeoff, but does not detail algorithms or implementation.
Examples
Uses randomized advertisements, click feedback, and later preference-based ad selection as its concrete example.
What you can do after
Evaluate when feedback-driven learning is useful and recognize its exploration, exploitation, and data-efficiency tradeoffs.
How it connects
Connects reinforcement learning to supervised learning, exploration, exploitation, user preferences, and large language models.

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Related concepts

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of The AI Pocket Book. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.