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arXiv research

A locally-built, LLM-digested index of recent arXiv papers in quant finance, geometry/topology, and statistical ML — keyword search served straight from SQLite on this machine.

168,657 papers · 148 categories

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295786114 · Jun 202019922001200920172026
48 results for long-term rewards

This paper balances short-term and long-term rewards in policy learning.

problem Balancing short-term and long-term rewards in policy learning.
method Formalizes a new framework to balance rewards, identifies rewards under mild assumptions, deduces efficiency bounds, and develops a policy learning approach.
result The proposed method improves the estimator of long-term reward and reduces regret.

New algorithm optimizes for long-term user satisfaction in delayed reward settings.

problem Optimizing for long-term user satisfaction in delayed reward settings.
method Developed a predictive model of delayed rewards and a bandit algorithm that combines rewards and surrogate outcomes.
result Our algorithm significantly outperforms methods that optimize for short-term proxies or rely solely on delayed rewards.

New algorithm optimizes long-term user satisfaction in recommendation systems.

problem Optimizing long-term user satisfaction in recommendation systems with delayed rewards.
method Developed a predictive model of delayed rewards and a bandit algorithm that balances exploration and exploitation.
result Our approach results in substantially better performance compared to short-term or delayed optimization.

Finding optimal policies which maximize long term rewards of Markov Decision Processes requires the use of dynamic programming and backward induction to solve the Bellman optimality equation. However, many real-world problems require optimization of an objective that is non-linear in cumulative rewards for which dynami…

2019-09-06abs ↗pdf ↗

COCOA improves credit assignment in reinforcement learning by measuring contributions to rewards.

problem Improving sample efficiency in reinforcement learning through better credit assignment methods.
method Counterfactual Contribution Analysis (COCOA) for precise credit assignment.
result COCOA achieves lower bias and variance compared to Hindsight Credit Assignment (HCA), improving reinforcement learning performance.

Study improves reinforcement learning for stable long-term performance.

problem Distributionally robust average-reward reinforcement learning for stable long-term performance.
method Proposes two algorithms to achieve near-optimal sample complexity.
result Achieves a sample complexity of O(SAtmix2ε2)O(|\mathbf{S}||\mathbf{A}| t_{\mathrm{mix}}^2\varepsilon^{-2}) for estimating optimal policy and robust average reward.

Paper proposes a model-free algorithm for CMDPs with long-term constraints, achieving optimal regret bounds.

problem Optimizing systems with long-term constraints where transition probabilities are unknown.
method Combines concepts from constrained optimization and Q-learning to propose an algorithm.
result Achieves optimal regret bounds for reward and constraint violation.

In this paper, we derive a new model of synaptic plasticity, based on recent algorithms for reinforcement learning (in which an agent attempts to learn appropriate actions to maximize its long-term average reward). We show that these direct reinforcement learning algorithms also give locally optimal performance for the…

2019-11-17abs ↗pdf ↗

ARL uses queries to learn rewards, focusing on cost vs. reward value.

problem How to efficiently use queries to learn rewards in reinforcement learning.
method Proposed and evaluated heuristic approaches for ARL in multi-armed bandits and MDPs.
result Challenging aspects of ARL highlighted, including intractability of value computation.

This paper explores a simple regularizer for reinforcement learning by proposing Generative Adversarial Self-Imitation Learning (GASIL), which encourages the agent to imitate past good trajectories via generative adversarial imitation learning framework. Instead of directly maximizing rewards, GASIL focuses on reproduc…

2018-12-03abs ↗pdf ↗

Open-domain dialog generation is a challenging problem; maximum likelihood training can lead to repetitive outputs, models have difficulty tracking long-term conversational goals, and training on standard movie or online datasets may lead to the generation of inappropriate, biased, or offensive text. Reinforcement Lear…

2019-09-17abs ↗pdf ↗

There exist a number of reinforcement learning algorithms which learnby climbing the gradient of expected reward. Their long-runconvergence has been proved, even in partially observableenvironments with non-deterministic actions, and without the need fora system model. However, the variance of the gradient estimator ha…

2013-01-10abs ↗pdf ↗

The paper tackles batch policy learning in Markov Decision Processes, focusing on average reward maximization.

problem Maximizing long-term average reward in Markov Decision Processes with batch learning.
method Doubly robust estimator for average reward, optimization algorithm for optimal policy, finite-sample regret guarantee.
result The proposed method achieves semiparametric efficiency and provides a finite-sample regret guarantee.

Model user preferences for conversational LLMs using weak rewards.

problem Lack of persistent user models in conversational LLMs leading to repeated user restatements.
method Vector-Adapted Retrieval Scoring (VARS) framework that updates user vectors online from weak scalar rewards.
result Full VARS agent achieves strongest overall performance, matches strong Reflection baseline in task success, and reduces user effort.

Paper proposes RRD to learn proxy rewards for sparse delayed rewards in episodic reinforcement learning.

problem Learning from sparse and delayed rewards in reinforcement learning.
method Randomized Return Decomposition (RRD) algorithm to redistribute rewards.
result Substantial improvement over baseline algorithms in experiments.

Algorithm improves movie recommendation efficiency with fairness constraints.

problem Improving movie recommendation efficiency with fairness constraints in combinatorial semi-bandits.
method Adopted Thompson Sampling with beta priors and Bernoulli likelihoods to handle fairness constraints.
result Time-averaged regret upper bounded by $\frac{N}{2η} + O\left(\frac{\sqrt{mNT\ln T}}{T} ight)$, with fairness constraints satisfied.

Drawing an inspiration from behavioral studies of human decision making, we propose here a general parametric framework for a reinforcement learning problem, which extends the standard Q-learning approach to incorporate a two-stream framework of reward processing with biases biologically associated with several neurolo…

2019-06-21abs ↗pdf ↗

Algorithm reduces long-term policy regret in ML decision-making.

problem Capturing long-term impacts of ML decisions in communities.
method Modeling communities as arms in a multi-armed bandit problem, defining policy regret as a stronger metric than external regret.
result Algorithm achieves provably sub-linear policy regret for long time horizons.

Deep reinforcement learning has obtained significant breakthroughs in recent years. Most methods in deep-RL achieve good results via the maximization of the reward signal provided by the environment, typically in the form of discounted cumulative returns. Such reward signals represent the immediate feedback of a partic…

2018-09-07abs ↗pdf ↗

This paper proposes a new algorithm for learning guidance rewards in RL.

problem Long-term temporal credit assignment in sparse or delayed reward environments.
method Surrogate RL objective with trajectory-space smoothing to learn guidance rewards.
result Guidance rewards can be learned without additional neural networks and have intuitive interpretation.

In this paper, we study reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms to solve real-world decision problems with the objective of maximizing the long-term reward as well as satisfying cumulative constraints. We propose a novel first-order policy optimization method, Interior-point Policy Optimization (IPO), which augments the…

2019-10-21abs ↗pdf ↗

We study a reinforcement learning setting, where the state transition function is a convex combination of a stochastic continuous function and a deterministic function. Such a setting generalizes the widely-studied stochastic state transition setting, namely the setting of deterministic policy gradient (DPG). We firstl…

2018-07-10abs ↗pdf ↗

We extend Bayesian multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms beyond their original setting by making use of sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods. A MAB is a sequential decision making problem where the goal is to learn a policy that maximizes long term payoff, where only the reward of the executed action is observed. In the …

2018-08-08abs ↗pdf ↗

This work improves Q-learning for average-reward MDPs, reducing sample and communication complexities in federated settings.

problem Improving sample complexity of Q-learning for average-reward MDPs.
method Simple Q-learning algorithm with carefully chosen parameters for both single-agent and federated scenarios.
result Established first federated Q-learning algorithm for average-reward MDPs with provable efficiency in sample and communication complexities.

In real-world decision-making problems, for instance in the fields of finance, robotics or autonomous driving, keeping uncertainty under control is as important as maximizing expected returns. Risk aversion has been addressed in the reinforcement learning literature through risk measures related to the variance of retu…

2019-12-06abs ↗pdf ↗

New algorithms for efficient learning with long-term rewards in contextual bandits.

problem Efficient learning with long-term rewards in contextual bandits.
method Proposes new algorithms leveraging sparsity to discover dependence patterns and arm parameters.
result Regret upper bounds for data-poor and data-rich regimes, showing improved sample complexity.

New AI learns like neurons, generalizing from sparse rewards.

problem Designing AI that learns without explicit instructions and applies that learning to sparse reward scenarios.
method Combining neuroscience principles with computational efficiency, creating the Neurons-in-a-Box architecture.
result The architecture can learn efficiently and generalize across various tasks, including challenging environments.

A new algorithm tackles delayed combinatorial semi-bandit with causal relations.

problem Optimizing decisions in a non-stationary environment with delayed and causally related rewards.
method Formalized as a non-stationary delayed combinatorial semi-bandit problem, the approach models causal relations with a directed graph in a stationary structural equation model. The agent learns these relations from delayed feedback to optimize decisions.
result Proved a regret bound for the proposed algorithm's performance.

We propose and study a new model for reinforcement learning with rich observations, generalizing contextual bandits to sequential decision making. These models require an agent to take actions based on observations (features) with the goal of achieving long-term performance competitive with a large set of policies. To …

2016-02-08abs ↗pdf ↗

The problem of multi-armed bandits (MAB) asks to make sequential decisions while balancing between exploitation and exploration, and have been successfully applied to a wide range of practical scenarios. Various algorithms have been designed to achieve a high reward in a long term. However, its short-term performance m…

2019-11-26abs ↗pdf ↗

The paper addresses statistical inference for online decision-making in a contextual bandit setting.

problem Understanding the performance of reward models in online decision-making with contextual information.
method The paper uses the contextual bandit framework with a linear reward model and the ε\varepsilon-greedy policy to address the exploration-exploitation dilemma. It employs the martingale central limit theorem and inverse propensity score weighting to establish asymptotic normality of parameter estimators.
result The online ordinary least squares estimator and the online weighted least squares estimator are asymptotically normal, providing insights into the performance of the reward model.

Develops first-order methods for average-reward MDPs with strong guarantees.

problem Lack of strong theoretical guarantees for first-order methods in AMDPs.
method Average-reward stochastic policy mirror descent (SPMD) and variance-reduced temporal difference (VRTD) methods.
result Establishes sample complexity results for solving AMDPs.

Reinforcement learning (RL) methods learn optimal decisions in the presence of a stationary environment. However, the stationary assumption on the environment is very restrictive. In many real world problems like traffic signal control, robotic applications, one often encounters situations with non-stationary environme…

2019-05-10abs ↗pdf ↗

New model-free RL algorithm tackles robust average-reward problems with finite sample complexity analysis.

problem Long-term decision-making in environments with varying dynamics.
method Proposes Robust Halpern Iteration (RHI) algorithm based on a black-box sampling oracle and multi-level Monte-Carlo estimator.
result Achieves ε-optimal robust policy with sample complexity of O(1/ε^(2+o(1))) under generative model setting.