Action-Sufficient Goal Representations

arXiv:2601.22496v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In offline goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (GCRL), hierarchical approaches decompose long-horizon tasks into high-level subgoal prediction and low-level action execution. A critical design choice in such architectures is the goal representation-the compressed encoding of goals that serves as the interface between these levels. Existing methods derive this representation from value learning, implicitly assuming that information sufficient for value estimation is adequate for optimal action prediction. We show that this assumption can fail even under exact value estimation, as such representations may collapse goals requiring distinct optimal actions. To address this, we introduce action sufficiency, an information-theoretic condition on goal representations necessary for optimal action prediction. We prove that value sufficiency, the preservation of sufficient information for value estimation, does not imply action sufficiency and empirically verify that the latter is more strongly associated with control success in a discrete environment. We further demonstrate that an actor-based representation, naturally induced by standard log-likelihood training of the low-level policy, is approximately action-sufficient. Empirically, our actor-based representations consistently outperform representations learned via value function estimation.

Abstract:In offline goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (GCRL), hierarchical approaches decompose long-horizon tasks into high-level subgoal prediction and low-level action execution. A critical design choice in such architectures is the goal representation-the compressed encoding of goals that serves as the interface between these levels. Existing methods derive this representation from value learning, implicitly assuming that information sufficient for value estimation is adequate for optimal action prediction. We show that this assumption can fail even under exact value estimation, as such representations may collapse goals requiring distinct optimal actions. To address this, we introduce action sufficiency, an information-theoretic condition on goal representations necessary for optimal action prediction. We prove that value sufficiency, the preservation of sufficient information for value estimation, does not imply action sufficiency and empirically verify that the latter is more strongly associated with control success in a discrete environment. We further demonstrate that an actor-based representation, naturally induced by standard log-likelihood training of the low-level policy, is approximately action-sufficient. Empirically, our actor-based representations consistently outperform representations learned via value function estimation.

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2601.22496 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2601.22496v2 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.22496 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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Action-Sufficient Goal Representations

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