Pittsburgh Learning Classifier Systems for Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Comparing with XCS

Interest in reinforcement learning (RL) has recently surged due to the application of deep learning techniques, but these connectionist approaches are opaque compared with symbolic systems. Learning Classifier Systems (LCSs) are evolutionary machine learning systems that can be categorised as eXplainable AI (XAI) due to their rule-based nature. Michigan LCSs are commonly used in RL domains as the alternative Pittsburgh systems (e.g. SAMUEL) suffer from complex algorithmic design and high computational requirements; however they can produce more compact/interpretable solutions than Michigan systems. We aim to develop two novel Pittsburgh LCSs to address RL domains: PPL-DL and PPL-ST. The former acts as a "zeroth-level" system, and the latter revisits SAMUEL's core Monte Carlo learning mechanism for estimating rule strength. We compare our two Pittsburgh systems to the Michigan system XCS across deterministic and stochastic FrozenLake environments. Results show that PPL-ST performs on-par or better than PPL-DL and outperforms XCS in the presence of high levels of environmental uncertainty. Rulesets evolved by PPL-ST can achieve higher performance than those evolved by XCS, but in a more parsimonious and therefore more interpretable fashion, albeit with higher computational cost. This indicates that PPL-ST is an LCS well-suited to producing explainable policies in RL domains.