Langevin algorithms enhance training of deep neural networks for stochastic control problems.
problem Training acceleration for deep neural networks in stochastic control problems.
method Application of Langevin algorithms to minimize the loss of deep neural networks in stochastic control problems.
result Langevin algorithms improve training on various stochastic control problems.
New framework for policy gradient methods in continuous time reinforcement learning.
problem Addressing policy gradient methods for continuous time reinforcement learning.
method Control randomisation technique to derive policy gradient representation for various Markovian control problems.
result Demonstrated application to optimal switching problems in the energy sector.
This work improves variational inference by reducing gradient variance.
problem Hard optimization of flexible variational distributions.
method Control variate based on quadratic approximation of the model's mean and covariance.
result Significant improvement in gradient variance and optimization convergence.
This work proposes using zero-variance control variates to reduce variance in pathwise gradient estimators for variational inference.
problem Pathwise gradient estimators in variational inference have high variance, leading to inefficient optimization.
method Apply zero-variance control variates to pathwise gradient estimators.
result Zero-variance control variates can significantly reduce the variance of pathwise gradient estimators without requiring complex assumptions.
This paper studies how gradient descent in control systems can perform well on unseen data.
problem The extent of a learned controller's ability to extrapolate to unseen initial states.
method Theoretical study of policy gradient in Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) problems, focusing on the role of exploration.
result The performance of a learned controller on unseen initial states depends on the degree of exploration induced by the system.
New method reduces inference variance for faster optimization.
problem High variance in black-box variational inference.
method Joint control variate addressing both data subsampling and Monte Carlo noise.
result Significantly reduced gradient variance, leading to faster optimization.
New method reduces training cost by using approximate gradients.
problem Training neural networks is computationally expensive.
method Uses control variates to approximate gradients without full backward pass.
result Efficacy demonstrated on a vision transformer classification task.
Survey of theoretical foundations for policy optimization in control.
problem Understanding the theoretical properties of gradient-based methods in control and reinforcement learning.
method Interdisciplinary review of optimization landscape, convergence, and sample complexity for various control problems.
result Recent theoretical results on stability and robustness in learning-based control.
Developed policy gradient methods for stochastic control with exit time, outperforming traditional techniques in share repurchase pricing.
problem Optimal control with exit time in stochastic models.
method Two types of algorithms: direct policy learning and alternately learning value function and control.
result Policy gradient methods outperform PDE or neural networks in share repurchase pricing.
Variational inference is increasingly being addressed with stochastic optimization. In this setting, the gradient's variance plays a crucial role in the optimization procedure, since high variance gradients lead to poor convergence. A popular approach used to reduce gradient's variance involves the use of control varia…
It is well known that Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods scale poorly with dataset size. A popular class of methods for solving this issue is stochastic gradient MCMC. These methods use a noisy estimate of the gradient of the log posterior, which reduces the per iteration computational cost of the algorithm. Despi…
Gradient descent on LSE objectives implicitly performs EM, leading to collapse without volume control.
problem Gradient collapse in autoencoders without volume control.
method Introduced a single-layer encoder with an LSE objective and InfoMax regularization for volume control.
result Gradient--responsibility identity holds exactly; LSE alone collapses; variance prevents dead components; decorrelation prevents redundancy.
Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic programming techniques, policy gradient algorithms face non-convex optimization pro…
A new method reduces variance in training discrete latent variable models.
problem High variance in stochastic gradient estimators for discrete latent variable models.
method Double control variates for score function estimators using Taylor expansions.
result Our method can have lower variance compared to other estimators.
We investigate necessary and sufficient conditions under which a general nonlinear affine control system with outputs can be written as a gradient control system corresponding to some pseudo-Riemannian metric defined on the state space. The results rely on a suitable notion of compatibility of the system with respect t…
Efficient deep policy gradient method for continuous-time control problems.
problem Optimal control in continuous time with fine time discretization.
method Multi-scale deep policy gradient method with varying time discretization.
result Targeted efficiency in computational resources achieved through multi-scale approach.
Improves gradient estimation for discrete distributions with variance reduction techniques.
problem Excessive variance in gradient estimation for discrete distributions.
method Stein operators for discrete distributions and control variates.
result Substantially lower variance in gradient estimation.
Policy gradient methods have achieved remarkable successes in solving challenging reinforcement learning problems. However, it still often suffers from the large variance issue on policy gradient estimation, which leads to poor sample efficiency during training. In this work, we propose a control variate method to effe…
Paper improves variance control in importance weighted variational bounds.
problem Improving the variance of gradient estimators for IWAE.
method Develops a novel control variate that grows SNR as √K for large K.
result Empirically, the method yields superior variance reduction for generative models.
Study policy gradient for large-agent mean-field control and game in continuous time.
problem Optimal policy learning for large number of agents in continuous-time mean-field systems.
method Policy gradient method applied to linear-quadratic mean-field control and game models.
result Policy gradient converges to optimal solution at a linear rate for both mean-field control and game.
New method controls gradient error for sparse MRFs.
problem Efficient learning for sparse discrete MRFs with NP-hard inference.
method Stochastic proximal gradient (SPG) with controlled gradient approximation error.
result Novel bounds control gradient approximation quality.
A key challenge for gradient based optimization methods in model-free reinforcement learning is to develop an approach that is sample efficient and has low variance. In this work, we apply Kronecker-factored curvature estimation technique (KFAC) to a recently proposed gradient estimator for control variate optimization…
Spectral normalization stabilizes GANs by controlling gradient explosion and vanishing.
problem Stability and sample quality issues in GAN training.
method Spectral normalization controls gradient explosion and vanishing, improving GAN training stability and sample quality.
result Bidirectional Scaled Spectral Normalization (BSSN) outperforms standard spectral normalization in sample quality and training stability.
VarGrad reduces variance in ELBO gradient estimation for variational inference.
problem Improving the variance of gradient estimators in variational inference.
method VarGrad uses a new log-variance loss to estimate the ELBO gradient, achieving lower variance than the score function method.
result VarGrad offers a lower variance gradient estimator compared to other methods.
Develops a new reinforcement learning framework for complex control problems.
problem Continuous-time extended mean field control with deterministic policies.
method Model-free sensitivity formula, deterministic policy gradient, local value and advantage-rate representations.
result Demonstrates efficiency, stability, and robustness in solving complex control problems.
Faster policy learning via continuous-time gradients.
problem Efficiently estimating policy gradients for continuous-time systems.
method Approximating continuous-time gradients directly, using adaptive discretization.
result More efficient policy gradient estimator leads to faster learning.
The paper tackles robust control with uncertain dependence using data-driven methods.
problem Nonparametric robust control under dependence uncertainty in multi-period stochastic systems.
method Nonparametric adaptive robust control framework using stochastic gradient descent ascent algorithm.
result The controller benefits from knowing more about the uncertain model.
Gradient flossing stabilizes RNN training by controlling Lyapunov exponents.
problem Gradient instability in RNNs leading to exploding and vanishing gradients.
method Regularizing Lyapunov exponents through backpropagation using differentiable linear algebra.
result Gradient flossing improves RNN training success rate and convergence speed.
The linear quadratic regulator (LQR) problem has reemerged as an important theoretical benchmark for reinforcement learning-based control of complex dynamical systems with continuous state and action spaces. In contrast with nearly all recent work in this area, we consider multiplicative noise models, which are increas…
This paper improves Adam's performance in machine learning tasks.
problem Improving the generalization ability of adaptive gradient methods.
method Develops a control theoretic framework to propose AdamSSM, a new variant of Adam.
result AdamSSM improves generalization accuracy and convergence compared to recent adaptive gradient methods.
GNMR controls runtime stability in low-precision language model training.
problem Efficient low-precision training faces numerical risks at specific operators.
method GNMR compares gradient norms to historical means, applying bounded recovery actions.
result GNMR preserves high-fidelity quality with sparse, budgeted recovery.
Study on PG learning for LQ MFC problems with common noise, proving convergence and sample complexity.
problem Optimal policy learning in LQ MFC problems with common noise and entropy regularization.
method Comprehensive error analysis of PG algorithms in both model-based and model-free settings.
result Global linear convergence and sample complexity of PG algorithms in model-free setting.
Many continuous control tasks have bounded action spaces. When policy gradient methods are applied to such tasks, out-of-bound actions need to be clipped before execution, while policies are usually optimized as if the actions are not clipped. We propose a policy gradient estimator that exploits the knowledge of action…
The paper presents a model-free method for stabilizing unknown control systems.
problem Stabilizing unknown control systems in engineering.
method Solving discounted LQR problems with increasing discount factors.
result The method efficiently recovers a stabilizing controller for linear and smooth nonlinear systems.
New framework for online control in evolving populations.
problem Control of evolving populations in real-world conditions.
method Online control framework for linear and non-linear dynamical systems.
result Near-optimal regret bounds for gradient-based controllers.
Policy-gradient method controls multiple non-cohesive targets.
problem Controlling multiple non-cohesive targets in a decentralized manner.
method Proximal Policy Optimization for target selection and driving.
result Effective control of non-cohesive targets without prior dynamics knowledge.
Hybridizes CEM and gradient descent for efficient model-predictive control.
problem Efficiently planning optimal action sequences in high-dimensional spaces.
method Interleaves Cross-Entropy Method (CEM) and gradient descent steps.
result Faster convergence and avoidance of local optima compared to CEM.
This work classifies SOC loss functions based on their gradient properties.
problem Optimizing noisy systems in stochastic optimal control.
method Grouping loss functions into classes with the same gradient expectation.
result Different loss functions have the same optimization landscape but differ in gradient variance.
We develop and analyze a procedure for gradient-based optimization that we refer to as stochastically controlled stochastic gradient (SCSG). As a member of the SVRG family of algorithms, SCSG makes use of gradient estimates at two scales, with the number of updates at the faster scale being governed by a geometric rand…
Paper introduces RCaI, a risk-sensitive control method using Rényi divergence.
problem Risk-sensitive control in reinforcement learning.
method RCaI extends CaI using Rényi divergence variational inference.
result Risk-sensitive optimal policy can be obtained by solving a soft Bellman equation.
Reinforcement learning is a promising approach to learning robotics controllers. It has recently been shown that algorithms based on finite-difference estimates of the policy gradient are competitive with algorithms based on the policy gradient theorem. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding this phenomen…
DBQPG improves policy gradient estimation with fewer samples.
problem Accurate policy gradient estimation with limited samples.
method Deep Bayesian Quadrature Policy Gradient (DBQPG).
result DBQPG provides more accurate and less variable gradient estimates.
In this paper, the Riemannian gradient algorithm and the natural gradient algorithm are applied to solve descent direction problems on the manifold of positive definite Hermitian matrices, where the geodesic distance is considered as the cost function. The first proposed problem is control for positive definite Hermiti…
Improved text generation with constraints using discrete auto-regressive biasing.
problem Balancing fluency and constraint satisfaction in LLM outputs.
method Discrete Auto-regressive Biasing, leveraging gradients in discrete text space.
result Significantly improved constraint satisfaction with comparable fluency.
Reinforcement learning algorithms such as the deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm (DDPG) has been widely used in continuous control tasks. However, the model-free DDPG algorithm suffers from high sample complexity. In this paper we consider the deterministic value gradients to improve the sample efficiency of …
Policy gradient reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have achieved impressive performance in challenging learning tasks such as continuous control, but suffer from high sample complexity. Experience replay is a commonly used approach to improve sample efficiency, but gradient estimators using past trajectories typica…
A method for accurate pricing of multidimensional derivatives under uncertain volatility.
problem High-dimensional stochastic control problem in uncertain volatility model.
method Backward actor-critic stochastic policy gradient scheme combining DP, PPO, and neural networks.
result Accurate and efficient pricing of multidimensional derivatives compared to benchmarks.
Algorithm optimizes system design and control for better rewards.
problem Optimizing system design and control for maximum rewards.
method Deep reinforcement learning combining policy gradient and model-based optimization.
result DEPS algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art methods in various environments.