A new framework improves reinforcement learning algorithms with policy guarantees.
problem Designing efficient and stable reinforcement learning algorithms.
method A general framework (FMA-PG) based on functional mirror ascent that constructs surrogate functions enabling policy improvement guarantees.
result The proposed framework enables policy improvement guarantees that hold regardless of policy parameterization, and recovers important heuristics.
Develops methods to create consistent surrogate models for agent-based simulators.
problem High computational costs and misjudgment of interventions in agent-based models.
method Causal abstractions to learn interventionally consistent surrogate models.
result Surrogates trained for interventional consistency closely mimic the agent-based model's behavior under interventions.
New MLIPS method reduces error in batch bandit learning.
problem Learning from logged bandit feedback with policy discrepancy.
method Estimates a surrogate policy to reduce error in inverse propensity weighting.
result MLIPS has smaller mean squared error than IPS.
Safe reinforcement learning with nonconvex constraints using convex approximations.
problem Safe reinforcement learning with nonlinear function approximation.
method Constructing surrogate convex constrained optimization problems by replacing nonconvex functions with convex quadratic functions.
result Solutions to surrogate problems converge to a stationary point of the original nonconvex problem.
PPOS improves PPO by smoothing the surrogate objective function.
problem Performance instability and optimization inefficiency in PPO.
method Use of a functional clipping method instead of a flat clipping method.
result PPOS conducts more accurate updates and outperforms other PPO variants.
New algorithm learns optimal resource allocation in wireless systems without models.
problem Learning optimal resource allocation in wireless systems without system models.
method Developed a model-free primal-dual algorithm using smoothed surrogates of constrained problems.
result The algorithm can make the gap between optimal values and dual values arbitrarily small.
Adapts GRPO for off-policy RL, improving reward.
problem Improving training stability and efficiency in RL.
method Adapts GRPO to off-policy setting, uses clipped surrogate objectives.
result Off-policy GRPO outperforms on-policy GRPO in empirical tests.
The paper studies consistency of surrogate loss procedures under constrained classifiers.
problem Consistency of surrogate loss approaches under constrained classifiers without correct specification.
method The paper develops theoretical results and hinge loss based procedures for a constrained classification problem.
result Hinge losses are the only surrogate losses that preserve consistency in second-best scenarios.
Robust optimization and statistical robustness improve robot navigation policies.
problem Efficiently finding optimal robot navigation policies in uncertain environments.
method Combining robust optimization and statistical robustness with improved Bayesian optimization techniques.
result Safe and repeatable robot navigation policies are achieved with improved robust optimization methods.
Revisits PPO design choices, exposing failure modes and proposing alternatives.
problem Failure modes of standard PPO in new environments.
method Revisits standard PPO design choices, exposes failure modes, and proposes alternative approaches.
result Alternative design choices prevent failure modes in new environments.
POIS optimizes policies using importance sampling bounds.
problem Optimizing policies in reinforcement learning with variance control.
method POIS algorithm for policy search, using importance sampling bounds and surrogate optimization.
result POIS achieves state-of-the-art performance on continuous control tasks.
Work establishes conditions for bias-free policy optimization.
problem Improving policy optimization methods without introducing bias.
method Established conditions for parametric critic without bias.
result Identified bias in current policy optimization algorithms.
Efficient policy learning from observational data using weighted classification reductions.
problem Efficient policy evaluation does not necessarily lead to efficient estimation of policy parameters.
method Proposed an estimation approach based on generalized method of moments, efficient for policy parameters.
result Demonstrated empirical efficiency and regret benefits of a proposed method.
New RL algorithms improve performance using multi-step greedy policies.
problem Improving model-free reinforcement learning performance.
method Developed multi-step greedy κ-Policy Iteration and κ-Value Iteration algorithms for model-free RL. result Multi-step greedy algorithms outperform DQN and TRPO on various benchmark tasks.
New algorithms and bounds for contextual bandits using surrogate losses.
problem Efficiently solving contextual bandit problems with margin-based regret bounds.
method Use of surrogate losses (ramp and hinge) to derive new regret bounds and algorithms.
result Derives new margin-based regret bounds and efficient algorithms for contextual bandits.
RRPI improves offline RL by optimizing policies against worst-case dynamics.
problem Offline RL's performance degrades under distribution shift and transition uncertainty.
method Formulates offline RL as robust policy optimization, treating transition kernel as decision variable.
result RRPI achieves strong average performance on D4RL benchmarks, outperforming recent baselines.
New method improves solving combinatorial optimization problems with smoothed policies.
problem Solving combinatorial optimization problems repeatedly with varying instances.
method Smoothed policies with controlled random perturbations to linear oracle, leading to differentiable surrogate risk.
result Generalization bound decomposes excess risk into bias, estimation, and optimization components.
Seq2Seq models speed up epidemic model predictions.
problem Complex epidemic models are computationally expensive.
method Used deep seq2seq models as surrogates for complex models.
result Surrogates predict scenarios up to several thousand times faster.
Paper reformulates policy gradient for on/off-policy reinforcement learning.
problem Combining on/off-policy methods for real-world reinforcement learning.
method Reformulates policy gradient into a perceptron-like loss function, removing on/off policy distinction.
result New formulation enables off-policy training with arbitrary policies.
CJE calibrates cheap LLM judges against an oracle, achieving high accuracy at a fraction of the cost.
problem Inexpensive LLM judges can produce biased rankings, leading to unreliable outcomes.
method CJE uses a small oracle to calibrate cheap scores, then evaluates at scale with valid uncertainty.
result CJE achieves 99% pairwise ranking accuracy at 14x lower cost compared to a 16x oracle/judge cost ratio.
Managers of US National Forests must decide what policy to apply for dealing with lightning-caused wildfires. Conflicts among stakeholders (e.g., timber companies, home owners, and wildlife biologists) have often led to spirited political debates and even violent eco-terrorism. One way to transform these conflicts into…
PPO's gradients are heavy-tailed, affecting learning; a robust estimator improves performance.
problem Heavy-tailedness of PPO gradients causing learning issues.
method Characterized heavy-tailed gradients, identified likelihood ratios and advantages as sources, proposed GMOM as a robust estimator.
result GMOM improves PPO performance without clipping tricks.
The paper interprets policy-gradient algorithms using continuation theory.
problem Optimizing nonconvex functions in reinforcement learning.
method Formulates policy optimization as optimization by continuation, interprets policy-gradient algorithms as implicitly optimizing deterministic policies.
result Exploration in policy-gradient algorithms is seen as computing a continuation of the return of the policy.
The study analyzes how neural reward models learn features for policy optimization in a Gaussian single-index model.
problem Reward modeling in policy optimization and its impact on downstream value.
method Two-stage neural reward model: first learns hidden direction, then fits readout layer.
result For any feature-learning temperature above a dimension-free threshold, a constant fraction of neurons recover the hidden direction.
CPS methods improve sample efficiency in robotics.
problem Improving sample efficiency in reinforcement learning for robotics.
method Empirical evaluation of C-CMA-ES with active covariance matrix adaptation and comparison-based surrogate model.
result Improvements in sample efficiency with C-CMA-ES extensions.
Estimating the long-term effects of treatments is of interest in many fields. A common challenge in estimating such treatment effects is that long-term outcomes are unobserved in the time frame needed to make policy decisions. One approach to overcome this missing data problem is to analyze treatments effects on an int…
We interpret policy optimization as Wasserstein gradient flows and develop efficient algorithms.
problem Unclear mathematical principle of policy optimization in reinforcement learning.
method Interpreting policy optimization as Wasserstein gradient flows, developing efficient algorithms to solve the corresponding discrete gradient flows.
result Policy optimization becomes a convex problem in terms of distribution optimization under specified circumstances.
Accelerates policy optimization in RL with optimistic and adaptive updates.
problem Improving policy optimization methods in reinforcement learning.
method Integrates foresight into policy improvement step via optimistic and adaptive updates.
result Designs an optimistic policy gradient algorithm, adaptive via meta-gradient learning.
New PG losses improve decision optimization in misspecified models.
problem Improving decision optimization in models that are not perfectly specified.
method Introducing Perturbation Gradient (PG) losses to connect decision loss with directional derivatives and optimizing using gradient techniques.
result PG losses yield best-in-class policies asymptotically, even in misspecified settings.
Estimates long-term effects of new treatments using historical and short-term data.
problem Estimating long-term effects of novel treatments with limited historical data.
method Surrogate indices, dynamic treatment effect estimation, and double machine learning combined in a unified pipeline.
result Consistent and asymptotically normal estimates of long-term effects under Markovian assumption.
TRM improves long-horizon LLM RL by masking divergent sequences.
problem Long-horizon reinforcement learning with LLMs suffers from off-policy mismatch and approximation errors.
method Derives and applies trust region bounds to control divergence, proposing Trust Region Masking.
result First non-vacuous monotonic improvement guarantees for long-horizon LLM-RL.
TRM improves long-horizon reinforcement learning for LLMs by masking divergent sequences.
problem Long-horizon reinforcement learning for LLMs suffers from off-policy mismatch and approximation errors.
method Derives and applies trust region bounds to control divergence, proposing Trust Region Masking.
result First non-vacuous monotonic improvement guarantees for long-horizon LLM-RL.
Bayesian approach uses Gaussian process for reinforcement learning.
problem Robotic locomotion environments
method Bayesian actor-critic, model-free reinforcement learning with Gaussian process for exploration and policy optimization.
result Gaussian process method outperforms current algorithms in robotic locomotion environments.
Efficient RL method uses SSL for small labeled data in health outcomes.
problem Lack of precise health outcome data for reinforcement learning.
method Semi-supervised learning approach for Q-learning and value estimation.
result Method efficiently estimates Q-function and value function, robust to mis-specification.
This work extends ME-RL using diffusion models to sample optimal policies.
problem Sampling from the optimal policy trajectory distribution in ME-RL.
method Introducing Diffusion-Augmented Markov Decision Processes (DA-MDPs) to minimize reverse KL divergence.
result DA-MDPs enable seamless integration into various ME-RL methods and outperform baselines.
A method to improve surrogate model accuracy using multiple fidelity models.
problem Efficiently combining models of varying accuracy and computational cost.
method Multifidelity Gaussian process models and leave-one-out cross-validation.
result Reduced LOO-CV error at the highest fidelity through adaptive learning.
Deep policy gradient algorithms deviate from their framework's predictions.
problem Understanding the behavior of deep policy gradient algorithms.
method Fine-grained analysis of gradient estimation, value prediction, and optimization landscapes.
result The surrogate objective does not match the true reward landscape, learned value estimators fail to fit the true value function, and gradient estimates poorly correlate with the true gradient.
POLAR learns efficient data acquisition policies using pretrained belief representations.
problem Challenges in learning effective policies for adaptive data acquisition.
method POLAR decouples representation learning from policy learning by leveraging pretrained predictive foundation models as belief-state encoders.
result POLAR outperforms state-of-the-art methods across diverse tasks while requiring fewer training samples.
Proposes a new sampling policy for ranking and selection problems.
problem Improving ranking and selection in adaptive sampling policies.
method Annealed entropic allocation, using soft-min weights and saddlepoint corrections.
result Consistently competitive performance in various settings.
GAIL reduces sample complexity for imitation learning.
problem High sample complexity in imitation learning.
method Generative Adversarial Nets (GANs) with self-tuned surrogate reward and actor-critic architecture.
result Significant increase in sample-efficiency over previous methods.
Study finds dividend payout policy positively impacts firm profitability.
problem Determining the optimal dividend payout ratio and its effect on financial performance.
method Panel data analysis of 60 Indian listed firms over 10 years, using ROA as a proxy for profitability.
result Positive and significant relationship between dividend payout policy and firm performance.
Very recently proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithms have been proposed as first-order optimization methods for effective reinforcement learning. While PPO is inspired by the same learning theory that justifies trust region policy optimization (TRPO), PPO substantially simplifies algorithm design and improves da…
TAMO optimizes multiple objectives in-context using transformers.
problem Balancing competing objectives in expensive, black-box problems.
method Fully amortized, transformer-based policy for multi-objective optimization.
result Significant speedup in proposal time with improved Pareto quality.
New algorithm uses machine learning to predict rewards for decision-making problems.
problem Sequential decision-making under uncertainty with scarce online data.
method Machine Learning-Assisted Upper Confidence Bound (MLA-UCB) algorithm.
result Proves to improve cumulative regret even with biased surrogate rewards.
Comment on entropy learning for dynamic treatment regimes.
problem Evaluating dynamic treatment regimes using entropy loss.
method Optimization-based alternative to IPW estimate.
result Suggests optimization-based approach for evaluation.
Paper proposes a new approach for agents to explore environments efficiently.
problem Learning policies that explore uniformly and mix quickly in environments without external rewards.
method Introduces a surrogate objective to maximize entropy and develops a model-based reinforcement learning algorithm, IDE3AL. result Demonstrates improved exploration and mixing in hard-exploration tasks.
Survey on algorithms for quick robot learning.
problem Efficiently learn robot controllers with limited data.
method Leverage prior knowledge and data-driven models.
result Combining prior knowledge and surrogate models improves learning.
This work tackles the exploration-exploitation dilemma in RL by developing optimal policies that are inherently exploration-conscious.
problem The exploration-exploitation tradeoff in Reinforcement Learning, where policies need to balance new action exploration with past experience exploitation.
method Developed exploration-conscious criteria that result in optimal policies, solving these criteria by solving a surrogate Markov Decision Process.
result Demonstrated superior performance of exploration-conscious RL algorithms compared to non-exploration-conscious counterparts in both discrete and continuous action spaces.