Related papers: Optimism in Reinforcement Learning and Kullback-Le…
Hybrid Reinforcement Learning (RL), where an agent learns from both an offline dataset and online explorations in an unknown environment, has garnered significant recent interest. A crucial question posed by Xie et al. (2022) is whether…
This manuscript introduces the idea of using Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) for the Counterfactual Risk Minimization (CRM) problem. Tapping into a rich existing literature, we show that DRO is a principled tool for…
Standard Markov decision process (MDP) and reinforcement learning algorithms optimize the policy with respect to the expected gain. We propose an algorithm which enables to optimize an alternative objective: the probability that the gain is…
This paper proposes model-free imitation learning named Entropy-Regularized Imitation Learning (ERIL) that minimizes the reverse Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. ERIL combines forward and inverse reinforcement learning (RL) under the…
We consider the nonlinear Kalman filtering problem using Kullback-Leibler (KL) and $\alpha$-divergence measures as optimization criteria. Unlike linear Kalman filters, nonlinear Kalman filters do not have closed form Gaussian posteriors…
We study the reinforcement learning problem in the setting of finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with $S$ states, $A$ actions, and episode length $H$. We propose a model-free algorithm UCB-Advantage and prove that it…
We study a primal-dual (PD) reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm for online constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs). Despite its widespread practical use, the existing theoretical literature on PD-RL algorithms for this problem only…
The deepening penetration of renewable resources into power systems entails great difficulties that have not been surmounted satisfactorily. An issue that merits special attention is the short-term planning of power systems under net load…
Selecting an appropriate divergence measure is a critical aspect of machine learning, as it directly impacts model performance. Among the most widely used, we find the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, originally introduced in kinetic…
In recent years, Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been applied to real-world problems with increasing success. Such applications often require to put constraints on the agent's behavior. Existing algorithms for constrained RL (CRL) rely on…
To address the needs of modeling uncertainty in sensitive machine learning applications, the setup of distributionally robust optimization (DRO) seeks good performance uniformly across a variety of tasks. The recent multi-distribution…
We study online learning in \emph{constrained MDPs} (CMDPs), focusing on the goal of attaining sublinear strong regret and strong cumulative constraint violation. Differently from their standard (weak) counterparts, these metrics do not…
The reasoning performance of large language models (LLMs) can be substantially improved by training them with reinforcement learning (RL). The RL objective for LLM training involves a regularization term, which is the reverse…
To bridge the gap between empirical success and theoretical understanding in transfer reinforcement learning (RL), we study a principled approach with provable performance guarantees. We introduce a novel composite MDP framework where…
Modern tasks in reinforcement learning have large state and action spaces. To deal with them efficiently, one often uses predefined feature mapping to represent states and actions in a low-dimensional space. In this paper, we study…
Reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) with large state spaces is a challenging problem. The performance of standard RL algorithms degrades drastically with the dimensionality of state space. However, in practice,…
Safe reinforcement learning is extremely challenging--not only must the agent explore an unknown environment, it must do so while ensuring no safety constraint violations. We formulate this safe reinforcement learning (RL) problem using the…
We provide improved gap-dependent regret bounds for reinforcement learning in finite episodic Markov decision processes. Compared to prior work, our bounds depend on alternative definitions of gaps. These definitions are based on the…
Motivated by the wide adoption of reinforcement learning (RL) in real-world personalized services, where users' sensitive and private information needs to be protected, we study regret minimization in finite-horizon Markov decision…
At the boundary between the known and the unknown, an agent inevitably confronts the dilemma of whether to explore or to exploit. Epistemic uncertainty reflects such boundaries, representing systematic uncertainty due to limited knowledge.…