# IxDRL: A Novel Explainable Deep Reinforcement Learning Toolkit based on Analyses of Interestingness

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.08933 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08933/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jul 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06680/) (2019)
- [Prioritized Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.05952/) (2015)
- [IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01561/) (2018)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning in a Handful of Trials using Probabilistic Dynamics Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12114/) (2018)
- [When to Trust Your Model: Model-Based Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08253/) (2019)
- [A Distributional Perspective on Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06887/) (2017)
- [StarCraft II: A New Challenge for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04782/) (2017)
- [Self-Supervised Exploration via Disagreement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04161/) (2019)
- [Metrics for Explainable AI: Challenges and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04608/) (2018)
- [Explainable Reinforcement Learning Through a Causal Lens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.10958/) (2019)
- [Visualizing and Understanding Atari Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00138/) (2017)
- [Explainable Reinforcement Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06247/) (2020)
- [Model-Based Active Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.12162/) (2018)
- [Explainability in Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06693/) (2020)
- [Graying the black box: Understanding DQNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.02658/) (2016)
- [Interestingness Elements for Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Understanding Agents' Capabilities and Limitations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.09007/) (2019)
- [Establishing Appropriate Trust via Critical States](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.08174/) (2018)
- [Contrastive Explanations for Reinforcement Learning in terms of Expected Consequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.08706/) (2018)
- [Counterfactual State Explanations for Reinforcement Learning Agents via Generative Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.12446/) (2021)
- [Learning Finite State Representations of Recurrent Policy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12530/) (2018)
- [Enabling Robots to Communicate their Objectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.03465/) (2017)
- [Exploring Computational User Models for Agent Policy Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13271/) (2019)
- [Outcome-Guided Counterfactuals for Reinforcement Learning Agents from a Jointly Trained Generative Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07710/) (2022)
- [A Framework for Understanding and Visualizing Strategies of RL Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08552/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In recent years, advances in deep learning have resulted in a plethora of successes in the use of reinforcement learning (RL) to solve complex sequential decision tasks with high-dimensional inputs. However, existing systems lack the necessary mechanisms to provide humans with a holistic view of their competence, presenting an impediment to their adoption, particularly in critical applications where the decisions an agent makes can have significant consequences. Yet, existing RL-based systems are essentially competency-unaware in that they lack the necessary interpretation mechanisms to allow human operators to have an insightful, holistic view of their competency. Towards more explainable Deep RL (xDRL), we propose a new framework based on analyses of interestingness. Our tool provides various measures of RL agent competence stemming from interestingness analysis and is applicable to a wide range of RL algorithms, natively supporting the popular RLLib toolkit. We showcase the use of our framework by applying the proposed pipeline in a set of scenarios of varying complexity. We empirically assess the capability of the approach in identifying agent behavior patterns and competency-controlling conditions, and the task elements mostly responsible for an agent's competence, based on global and local analyses of interestingness. Overall, we show that our framework can provide agent designers with insights about RL agent competence, both their capabilities and limitations, enabling more informed decisions about interventions, additional training, and other interactions in collaborative human-machine settings.