Related papers: Why is Posterior Sampling Better than Optimism for…
We consider the problem of provably optimal exploration in reinforcement learning for finite horizon MDPs. We show that an optimistic modification to value iteration achieves a regret bound of $\tilde{O}( \sqrt{HSAT} + H^2S^2A+H\sqrt{T})$…
In this paper, we study reinforcement learning in Markov Decision Processes with Probabilistic Reward Machines (PRMs), a form of non-Markovian reward commonly found in robotics tasks. We design an algorithm for PRMs that achieves a regret…
Most known regret bounds for reinforcement learning are either episodic or assume an environment without traps. We derive a regret bound without making either assumption, by allowing the algorithm to occasionally delegate an action to an…
In this paper, we propose Posterior Sampling Reinforcement Learning for Zero-sum Stochastic Games (PSRL-ZSG), the first online learning algorithm that achieves Bayesian regret bound of $O(HS\sqrt{AT})$ in the infinite-horizon zero-sum…
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a powerful approach for aligning generative models, but its reliance on learned reward models makes it vulnerable to mis-specification and reward hacking. Preference-based…
We consider un-discounted reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under drifting non-stationarity, i.e., both the reward and state transition distributions are allowed to evolve over time, as long as their respective…
This paper considers the use of a simple posterior sampling algorithm to balance between exploration and exploitation when learning to optimize actions such as in multi-armed bandit problems. The algorithm, also known as Thompson Sampling,…
Bayesian posterior sampling techniques have demonstrated superior empirical performance in many exploration-exploitation settings. However, their theoretical analysis remains a challenge, especially in complex settings like reinforcement…
Learning in POMDPs is known to be significantly harder than in MDPs. In this paper, we consider the online learning problem for episodic POMDPs with unknown transition and observation models. We propose a Posterior Sampling-based…
We consider un-discounted reinforcement learning (RL) in Markov decision processes (MDPs) under temporal drifts, ie, both the reward and state transition distributions are allowed to evolve over time, as long as their respective total…
Posterior sampling allows exploitation of prior knowledge on the environment's transition dynamics to improve the sample efficiency of reinforcement learning. The prior is typically specified as a class of parametric distributions, the…
We propose an optimistic model-based algorithm, dubbed SMRL, for finite-horizon episodic reinforcement learning (RL) when the transition model is specified by exponential family distributions with $d$ parameters and the reward is bounded…
We propose a general framework to design posterior sampling methods for model-based RL. We show that the proposed algorithms can be analyzed by reducing regret to Hellinger distance in conditional probability estimation. We further show…
We study reinforcement learning (RL) for decision processes with non-Markovian reward, in which high-level knowledge of the task in the form of reward machines is available to the learner. We consider probabilistic reward machines with…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved tremendous success in recent years. However, the classical foundations of RL do not account for the risk sensitivity of the objective function, which is critical in various fields, including…
Sampling algorithms drive probabilistic machine learning, and recent years have seen an explosion in the diversity of tools for this task. However, the increasing sophistication of sampling algorithms is correlated with an increase in the…
We study learning in periodic Markov Decision Process (MDP), a special type of non-stationary MDP where both the state transition probabilities and reward functions vary periodically, under the average reward maximization setting. We…
We design a new provably efficient algorithm for episodic reinforcement learning with generalized linear function approximation. We analyze the algorithm under a new expressivity assumption that we call "optimistic closure," which is…
We study model-based reinforcement learning in an unknown finite communicating Markov decision process. We propose a simple algorithm that leverages a variance based confidence interval. We show that the proposed algorithm, UCRL-V, achieves…
For the problem of task-agnostic reinforcement learning (RL), an agent first collects samples from an unknown environment without the supervision of reward signals, then is revealed with a reward and is asked to compute a corresponding…