Grokking Artificial Intelligence Algorithms

10 Reinforcement learning with Q-learning

This chapter covers

• Understanding the inspiration for reinforcement learning

• Identifying problems to solve with reinforcement learning

• Designing and implementing a reinforcement learning algorithm

• Understanding reinforcement learning approaches

What is reinforcement learning?

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning inspired by behavioral psychology. The concept of reinforcement learning is based on cumulative rewards or penalties for the actions that are taken by an agent in a dynamic environment. Think about a young dog growing up. The dog is the agent in an environment that is our home. When we want the dog to sit, we usually say, “Sit.” The dog doesn’t understand English, ...