Towards Deployable RL -- What's Broken with RL Research and a Potential Fix

Understand

Reinforcement learning (RL) has demonstrated great potential, but is currently full of overhyping and pipe dreams.

• We point to some difficulties with current research which we feel are endemic to the direction taken by the community.
• To us, the current direction is not likely to lead to "deployable" RL: RL that works in practice and can work in practical situations yet still is economically viable.
• We also propose a potential fix to some of the difficulties of the field.