Related papers: Near-Optimal BRL using Optimistic Local Transition…
The goal of an offline reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm is to learn optimal polices using historical (offline) data, without access to the environment for online exploration. One of the main challenges in offline RL is the distribution…
Exploration in reinforcement learning (RL) remains an open challenge. RL algorithms rely on observing rewards to train the agent, and if informative rewards are sparse the agent learns slowly or may not learn at all. To improve exploration…
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful approach to complex decision making. However, one issue that limits its practical application is its brittleness, sometimes failing to train in the presence of small changes in the environment.…
Though neural networks have achieved much progress in various applications, it is still highly challenging for them to learn from a continuous stream of tasks without forgetting. Continual learning, a new learning paradigm, aims to solve…
In reinforcement learning (RL), an autonomous agent learns to perform complex tasks by maximizing an exogenous reward signal while interacting with its environment. In real-world applications, test conditions may differ substantially from…
Standard reinforcement learning (RL) aims to find an optimal policy that identifies the best action for each state. However, in healthcare settings, many actions may be near-equivalent with respect to the reward (e.g., survival). We…
As an automatic method of determining model complexity using the training data alone, Bayesian linear regression provides us a principled way to select hyperparameters. But one often needs approximation inference if distribution assumption…
Sample efficient learning of manipulation skills poses a major challenge in robotics. While recent approaches demonstrate impressive advances in the type of task that can be addressed and the sensing modalities that can be incorporated,…
We present new algorithms for inverse reinforcement learning (IRL, or inverse optimal control) in convex optimization settings. We argue that finite-space IRL can be posed as a convex quadratic program under a Bayesian inference framework…
One of the challenges in model-based control of stochastic dynamical systems is that the state transition dynamics are involved, and it is not easy or efficient to make good-quality predictions of the states. Moreover, there are not many…
Seeking to improve model generalization, we consider a new approach based on distributionally robust learning (DRL) that applies stochastic gradient descent to the outer minimization problem. Our algorithm efficiently estimates the gradient…
We consider a setting for Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) where the learner is extended with the ability to actively select multiple environments, observing an agent's behavior on each environment. We first demonstrate that if the…
This paper addresses the problem of maintaining safety during training in Reinforcement Learning (RL), such that the safety constraint violations are bounded at any point during learning. In a variety of RL applications the safety of the…
Sample efficiency in Reinforcement Learning (RL) has traditionally been driven by algorithmic enhancements. In this work, we demonstrate that scaling can also lead to substantial improvements. We conduct a thorough investigation into the…
This paper presents an inverse reinforcement learning~(IRL) framework for Bayesian stopping time problems. By observing the actions of a Bayesian decision maker, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition to identify if these actions…
Reinforcement finetuning (RFT) is a key technique for aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences and enhancing reasoning, yet its effectiveness is highly sensitive to which tasks are explored during training. Uniform task…
With the fast development of quantitative portfolio optimization in financial engineering, lots of AI-based algorithmic trading strategies have demonstrated promising results, among which reinforcement learning begins to manifest…
Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) (Chipman et. al., 2010) is a powerful predictive model that often outperforms alternative models at out-of-sample prediction. BART is especially well-suited to settings with unstructured predictor…
Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) is a promising framework for learning control in a data-efficient manner. MBRL algorithms can be fairly complex due to the separate dynamics modeling and the subsequent planning algorithm, and as a…
This paper studies model-based bandit and reinforcement learning (RL) with nonlinear function approximations. We propose to study convergence to approximate local maxima because we show that global convergence is statistically intractable…