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Interview Questions

  • Here are some questions and their answers to make you ready for your next interview. Best of luck šŸ‘‹

Explain Reinforcement learning (RL) in deep learning.

Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning where an agent learns to make decisions by interacting with an environment. The agent receives rewards or penalties based on its actions, and the goal is to learn a policy that maximizes the total reward. Deep reinforcement learning combines reinforcement learning with deep neural networks, allowing the agent to make decisions based on complex, high-dimensional input such as images or speech.

What is the use of the deep reinforcement learning in machine learning?

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is a type of reinforcement learning that uses deep neural networks as function approximators to learn policies or value functions. DRL allows for the use of complex, high-dimensional observations such as images or speech and can be used for tasks such as playing games, controlling robots, and optimizing resource allocation.

What is the difference between model-free and model-based RL?

Model-based RL has an agent that tries to understand (or model) the world by learning state transition function and reward function. So if an agent can predict the next state and the reward before taking the action, it is a model-based RL algorithm. If not then it is model-free algorithm. Refer this AI StackExchange QA

What is the difference between value-based and policy-based reinforcement learning?

Value-based reinforcement learning methods, such as Q-learning, estimate the value of different actions given a certain state, and then take the action that maximizes this value. Policy-based methods, such as REINFORCE, directly learn a policy that maps states to actions.

How does Q-learning work in reinforcement learning?

Q-learning is a value-based reinforcement learning algorithm that estimates the value of different actions given a certain state. It uses the Bellman equation to update the Q-value, which is the expected future reward of taking an action in a certain state. Over time, the algorithm converges to the optimal Q-value function that represents the best action to take in each state.

What is the difference between on-policy and off-policy reinforcement learning?

On-policy reinforcement learning (ex: SARSA) methods learn from the actions taken by the current policy, while off-policy (ex: Q-learning) methods learn from actions taken by a different policy (like greedy approach). On-policy methods are often used when an agent can easily interact with its environment, while off-policy methods are used when it is difficult or expensive to interact with the environment. Refer this StackOverflow QA for more details.

What is the use of the SARSA algorithm in reinforcement learning?

SARSA (State-Action-Reward-State-Action) is a type of on-policy algorithm that estimates the value of different actions given a certain state. It updates the Q-value based on the action taken in the next state, rather than the optimal action as in Q-learning. This makes SARSA more suitable for problems with non-deterministic environments.

Explain actor-critic algorithm.

Actor-Critic is a type of algorithm that combines both policy-based and value-based methods in reinforcement learning. The actor network is used to output a probability distribution over actions given a certain state, while the critic network is used to estimate the value of the actions taken by the actor network. The actor network is then updated according to the critic network's evaluation of its actions.

Explain A3C algorithm in reinforcement learning.

A3C (Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic) is an algorithm that uses multiple parallel agents to train a neural network in an asynchronous manner. A3C is an extension of the actor-critic algorithm that allows for faster and more stable training by reducing the correlation between the updates of different agents. It's useful for training agents for tasks that require handling high dimensional and continuous action spaces, such as robotics and gaming.

What is the use of the Q-network in reinforcement learning?

A Q-network is a neural network used in Q-learning, a value-based reinforcement learning algorithm. The Q-network is trained to estimate the value of taking different actions given a certain state. It's used to approximate the Q-value function, which represents the expected future rewards of taking different actions in different states, and to make decisions based on the current state.

What is Monte Carlo Tree Search in reinforcement learning?

Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a method used to select the next action in a reinforcement learning problem. MCTS works by building a search tree, where each node represents a state and each edge represents an action. The algorithm explores the tree by selecting the best node based on a combination of the current value estimates and the uncertainty of the estimates. MCTS is particularly useful for problems with large and complex action spaces, such as game playing.