I've Been Doing This Wrong The Whole Time ... The Right Way to Save Models In PyTorch

The Importance of Saving and Loading Models in Deep Learning

In deep learning, saving and loading models is a crucial step in the training process. The model needs to be saved at various stages during training, such as when the agent's policy or value function changes, or when the optimizer updates its parameters. The saved model can then be loaded into a new environment or situation, allowing the agent to continue learning from where it left off.

To save a model, you need to define a dictionary that contains all the relevant information about the model. This includes the Epsilon value, policy, Q-value function, state dictionary, and optimizer state. The dictionary is then saved to a checkpoint file using the `torch.save` method.

For example, in Python code, you might use the following lines to save a model:

```python

import torch

# Define the keys for the dictionary

keys = ['Epsilon', 'policy', 'Q_value.state_dict()', 'self.q_eval.state_dict()', 'optimizer']

# Create an empty dictionary

model_dict = {}

# Add the key-value pairs to the dictionary

for key in keys:

if key == 'Epsilon':

model_dict[key] = self.Epsilon

elif key == 'policy':

model_dict[key] = self.policy

elif key == 'Q_value.state_dict()':

model_dict[key] = self.q_eval.state_dict()

elif key == 'self.q_eval.state_dict()':

model_dict[key] = self.q_eval.state_dict()

elif key == 'optimizer':

model_dict[key] = self.optimizer.state

# Save the dictionary to a checkpoint file

torch.save(model_dict, 'checkpoints/modelscheckpoint')

```

In addition to saving the model, it's also important to load the saved model into a new environment or situation. This is done by loading the saved dictionary using the `torch.load` method.

For example, in Python code, you might use the following lines to load a saved model:

```python

import torch

# Load the saved dictionary from the checkpoint file

model_dict = torch.load('checkpoints/modelscheckpoint')

# Update the Epsilon value

self.Epsilon = model_dict['Epsilon']

# Update the policy

self.policy = model_dict['policy']

# Update the Q-value function

self.q_eval.load_state_dict(model_dict['Q_value.state_dict()'])

# Update the optimizer state

self.optimizer.load_state_dict(model_dict['optimizer'])

```

When loading a saved model, it's also important to update the Epsilon value and policy to match the saved values. This ensures that the agent continues learning from where it left off.

Saving and loading models is an important step in deep learning, especially when working with reinforcement learning algorithms like Deep Q-Networks (DQN). By saving and loading models, you can continue training the agent without having to retrain the entire model from scratch.

In practice, this means that you can save a trained DQN model at various stages during training and load it into a new environment or situation. This allows you to:

* Continue training the agent from where it left off

* Transfer learning between environments

* Use saved models for faster training times

Overall, saving and loading models is an important step in deep learning that enables you to continue training your agents without having to retrain the entire model from scratch.

The Benefits of Saving and Loading Models

Saving and loading models has several benefits, including:

* **Faster Training Times**: By saving and loading models, you can avoid retraining the entire model from scratch. This can significantly reduce training times for complex models.

* **Transfer Learning**: Saving and loading models enables transfer learning between environments. This allows you to reuse a trained model in a new environment without having to retrain it from scratch.

* **Continued Learning**: By saving and loading models, you can continue training the agent from where it left off. This ensures that the agent continues learning and improving its performance.

How to Implement Saving and Loading Models

Implementing saving and loading models is relatively straightforward. Here's a step-by-step guide:

1. Define a dictionary that contains all the relevant information about the model.

2. Save the dictionary to a checkpoint file using the `torch.save` method.

3. Load the saved dictionary from the checkpoint file using the `torch.load` method.

4. Update the Epsilon value and policy to match the saved values.

Conclusion

Saving and loading models is an important step in deep learning, especially when working with reinforcement learning algorithms like Deep Q-Networks (DQN). By saving and loading models, you can continue training your agents without having to retrain the entire model from scratch. This enables faster training times, transfer learning between environments, and continued learning.

In this article, we've discussed the importance of saving and loading models in deep learning. We've also provided an example of how to implement saving and loading models using PyTorch. By following these steps, you can save your model at various stages during training and load it into a new environment or situation. This will enable you to continue training your agents without having to retrain the entire model from scratch.

Saving and Loading Models in Practice

In practice, saving and loading models is used in a variety of applications, including:

* **Reinforcement Learning**: Saving and loading models is used in reinforcement learning algorithms like Deep Q-Networks (DQN) to continue training agents without having to retrain the entire model from scratch.

* **Transfer Learning**: Saving and loading models enables transfer learning between environments. This allows researchers to reuse a trained model in a new environment without having to retrain it from scratch.

* **Faster Training Times**: Saving and loading models can significantly reduce training times for complex models.

Overall, saving and loading models is an important step in deep learning that enables you to continue training your agents without having to retrain the entire model from scratch.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow it turns out all of us make mistakes and one of my big mistakes is how I have been saving models for deep reinforcement learning agents it turns out there is a much better way that allows you to save not only the state of the agent's weights and biases but also the state of the optimizer in the pytorch framework at any particular moment and you can also save things like Epsilon for your agent as well as any other parameter you need to resume training at a later time in this video I'm going to show you the better way to do it and absolve myself of my sins now here you can see the code we've been working with the past several videos this comes from a guest on my GitHub so take a look at the links in the description if you don't have this code yet we're going to be modifying this to include the better functionality for model saving so this is the agent file let's just quit out of here and take a look at the main file what I want to do just so that we know we are successful is I want to um I want to say print out the agent Epsilon something like this like that uh say two points of decimal space let me zoom out ever so slightly there we go then we can shorten this out just to average score and episode we can shorten to EP and we'll know exactly what we are looking at and then of course we'll need policy Dot Epsilon and we can right quit out of that the next thing we need to do is take a look at our agent file and we have to handle the actual saving in here so what we're going to be doing is saving a dictionary to a checkpoint file and then using those keys to access the relevant parameters for the variables we want say our agent Epsilon our Optimizer State the state of our qevalueqnext networks so let's add in a function here oops say deaf save models doesn't take any parameters input and returns a type of none so what we want to do is use t.save to save a dictionary and we're going to Define our keys as Epsilon we're going to save the policy Epsilon to begin with and then say qeval state dictionary self.qe val.state dict and of course we need the Q next Network as well optimizer and then we need to close our dictionary and specify a path so we're going to close the dictionary and say we want to save it to checkpoints slash models.check point something like that and then close up around the C okay so um then we need our load models functions def load models again that doesn't take any inputs and it has a return type of none let me scroll down a little bit for you guys here then we'll say uh we want to say checkpoint equals T dot load checkpoints slash models Dot chkpt then we have self.q eval load State dictionary checkpoint sub Q E vowel sorry in quotes cue eval State dictionary and of course so on and so forth load State dictionary checkpoint Q next state dictionary and then our optimizer and that's Optimizer State dictionary foreign our policy Epsilon as well rules checkpoint sub on okay so did I make any I don't have a comma here yeah that is an obvious error okay any others nope let's right quit and then we'll take a look at our main file again and down here at the end of every episode let's just save our model we'll say here agent dot save models and then we can write quit and we can run it hopefully I didn't make any mistakes oh of course I did I didn't do a maker checkpoints that is critical it doesn't have the capability of making directories on your local machine thankfully uh okay so that is going to run for a little bit I'm going to let it go until it gets a reasonable score and then I'm going to stop it and I'm going to modify the main file again to load the model and you'll be able to see that it resumes training from where it left off including the Epsilon so let's let this run for a minute okay so that has run for a minute and we're getting scores in the mid to high 100 range with an Epsilon of 0.22 let's take a look at our main and say right here agent dot load models and then just for the sake of Simplicity let's freeze the model at this point and resume training and make sure everything lines up with what we would expect and so our Epsilon starts out again at 0.2 right because it's printing at the end of the episode after it's decremented Epsilon a whole bunch of times and the scores are again in the high hundreds so it is Indeed Resume training precisely where it left off and what is different here from what I was doing before is two things one I'm saving the Epsilon um rather than having to change it manually and two I'm actually saving the state of the optimizer it wasn't something I was doing before and that is of course a mistake which I'm now correcting um you can find all of this in the documentation for pi torch on saving unloading models uh doing a Google search for that will yield the proper results and interestingly you can also use this for saving partial training I have to look into that for perhaps a little bit of transfer learning and that isn't useful when you want to go from something like the cart pool to like the lunar lander because they have a different Vector input space however when you are dealing with say the Atari Library it does open up the possibility of some type of transfer learning and in particular a student has been bugging me about a question for my udemy courses on intrinsic curiosity about perhaps having some sort of transfer learning between environments and the intrinsic curiosity module and I think that's a great question I'm going to address in the coming days so if you purchase that course and new to me or you're a subscriber to my neural net Academy be on the lookout for those improvements in the coming week or so I hope that was helpful for you if it was you know what to do leave a comment down below because the algorithm doesn't like to surface my stuff maybe I'm just not very good at this but leaving a comment would help greatly subscribe if you want to see more and I'll see you in the next videonow it turns out all of us make mistakes and one of my big mistakes is how I have been saving models for deep reinforcement learning agents it turns out there is a much better way that allows you to save not only the state of the agent's weights and biases but also the state of the optimizer in the pytorch framework at any particular moment and you can also save things like Epsilon for your agent as well as any other parameter you need to resume training at a later time in this video I'm going to show you the better way to do it and absolve myself of my sins now here you can see the code we've been working with the past several videos this comes from a guest on my GitHub so take a look at the links in the description if you don't have this code yet we're going to be modifying this to include the better functionality for model saving so this is the agent file let's just quit out of here and take a look at the main file what I want to do just so that we know we are successful is I want to um I want to say print out the agent Epsilon something like this like that uh say two points of decimal space let me zoom out ever so slightly there we go then we can shorten this out just to average score and episode we can shorten to EP and we'll know exactly what we are looking at and then of course we'll need policy Dot Epsilon and we can right quit out of that the next thing we need to do is take a look at our agent file and we have to handle the actual saving in here so what we're going to be doing is saving a dictionary to a checkpoint file and then using those keys to access the relevant parameters for the variables we want say our agent Epsilon our Optimizer State the state of our qevalueqnext networks so let's add in a function here oops say deaf save models doesn't take any parameters input and returns a type of none so what we want to do is use t.save to save a dictionary and we're going to Define our keys as Epsilon we're going to save the policy Epsilon to begin with and then say qeval state dictionary self.qe val.state dict and of course we need the Q next Network as well optimizer and then we need to close our dictionary and specify a path so we're going to close the dictionary and say we want to save it to checkpoints slash models.check point something like that and then close up around the C okay so um then we need our load models functions def load models again that doesn't take any inputs and it has a return type of none let me scroll down a little bit for you guys here then we'll say uh we want to say checkpoint equals T dot load checkpoints slash models Dot chkpt then we have self.q eval load State dictionary checkpoint sub Q E vowel sorry in quotes cue eval State dictionary and of course so on and so forth load State dictionary checkpoint Q next state dictionary and then our optimizer and that's Optimizer State dictionary foreign our policy Epsilon as well rules checkpoint sub on okay so did I make any I don't have a comma here yeah that is an obvious error okay any others nope let's right quit and then we'll take a look at our main file again and down here at the end of every episode let's just save our model we'll say here agent dot save models and then we can write quit and we can run it hopefully I didn't make any mistakes oh of course I did I didn't do a maker checkpoints that is critical it doesn't have the capability of making directories on your local machine thankfully uh okay so that is going to run for a little bit I'm going to let it go until it gets a reasonable score and then I'm going to stop it and I'm going to modify the main file again to load the model and you'll be able to see that it resumes training from where it left off including the Epsilon so let's let this run for a minute okay so that has run for a minute and we're getting scores in the mid to high 100 range with an Epsilon of 0.22 let's take a look at our main and say right here agent dot load models and then just for the sake of Simplicity let's freeze the model at this point and resume training and make sure everything lines up with what we would expect and so our Epsilon starts out again at 0.2 right because it's printing at the end of the episode after it's decremented Epsilon a whole bunch of times and the scores are again in the high hundreds so it is Indeed Resume training precisely where it left off and what is different here from what I was doing before is two things one I'm saving the Epsilon um rather than having to change it manually and two I'm actually saving the state of the optimizer it wasn't something I was doing before and that is of course a mistake which I'm now correcting um you can find all of this in the documentation for pi torch on saving unloading models uh doing a Google search for that will yield the proper results and interestingly you can also use this for saving partial training I have to look into that for perhaps a little bit of transfer learning and that isn't useful when you want to go from something like the cart pool to like the lunar lander because they have a different Vector input space however when you are dealing with say the Atari Library it does open up the possibility of some type of transfer learning and in particular a student has been bugging me about a question for my udemy courses on intrinsic curiosity about perhaps having some sort of transfer learning between environments and the intrinsic curiosity module and I think that's a great question I'm going to address in the coming days so if you purchase that course and new to me or you're a subscriber to my neural net Academy be on the lookout for those improvements in the coming week or so I hope that was helpful for you if it was you know what to do leave a comment down below because the algorithm doesn't like to surface my stuff maybe I'm just not very good at this but leaving a comment would help greatly subscribe if you want to see more and I'll see you in the next video\n"