13.3 From GIRL to RELIC

GIRL provides the tangent layer of the construction. Bellman and policy relations are lifted to spaces of admissible variation, allowing the learner to distinguish directions that ordinary scalar optimization may conflate. DIAL-GIRL adds a second level: the maintained decision representation can be transported, restored, forked, or enlarged when the evidence warrants it.

The early synthetic experiments progressively removed oracle structure. In switching and partially observed worlds, active probes distinguished fixed parameter drift from a missing regime coordinate. Finite trajectories replaced supplied certificates; prototype families and latent filters were learned; sequential evidence controlled when additional history was justified. One important negative result shaped RELIC: exact restoration of a remembered policy was sometimes worse than continual learning because experience in the intervening regime transferred positively. Memory supplies a candidate, not a rollback command. Independent admission must choose among saved, current, and transported states.

Within their registered settings, these experiments support three design requirements for creative decision making:

1. the failure must be observable in finite interaction data;

2. the proposed change must have a declared type and support; and

3. numerical improvement cannot replace structural admission.

They do not by themselves establish creativity. Selecting a registered latent coordinate or restoring a stored state remains adaptation inside a supplied candidate family. RELIC begins to approach combinational creativity when the candidate is a newly assembled policy composition, and transformational creativity when the available stage or state language itself can expand.