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In order to model risk aversion in reinforcement learning, an emerging line of research adapts familiar algorithms to optimize coherent risk functionals, a class that includes conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). Because optimizing the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-09 Audrey Huang , Liu Leqi , Zachary C. Lipton , Kamyar Azizzadenesheli

Risk-averse reinforcement learning finds application in various high-stakes fields. Unlike classical reinforcement learning, which aims to maximize expected returns, risk-averse agents choose policies that minimize risk, occasionally…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Igor Udovichenko , Olivier Croissant , Anita Toleutaeva , Evgeny Burnaev , Alexander Korotin

Considering the problem of risk-sensitive parameter estimation, we propose a fairly wide family of lower bounds on the exponential moments of the quadratic error, both in the Bayesian and the non--Bayesian regime. This family of bounds,…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2017-03-02 Neri Merhav

In this paper we consider the problem of obtaining sharp bounds for the performance of temporal difference (TD) methods with linear function approximation for policy evaluation in discounted Markov decision processes. We show that a simple…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-06-18 Sergey Samsonov , Daniil Tiapkin , Alexey Naumov , Eric Moulines

Reinforcement learning with multinomial logistic (MNL) function approximation has become an important framework due to its flexibility and broad applicability. While existing studies have established regret guarantees under worst-case…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-28 Wonyoung Kim , Min-Hwan Oh , Garud Iyengar , Assaf Zeevi

Although in recent years reinforcement learning has become very popular the number of successful applications to different kinds of operations research problems is rather scarce. Reinforcement learning is based on the well-studied dynamic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-03 Manuel Schneckenreither

We study risk-sensitive RL where the goal is learn a history-dependent policy that optimizes some risk measure of cumulative rewards. We consider a family of risks called the optimized certainty equivalents (OCE), which captures important…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-03 Kaiwen Wang , Dawen Liang , Nathan Kallus , Wen Sun

We address the problem of inverse reinforcement learning in Markov decision processes where the agent is risk-sensitive. In particular, we model risk-sensitivity in a reinforcement learning framework by making use of models of human…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-23 Lillian J. Ratliff , Eric Mazumdar

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Rohan Mitta , Hosein Hasanbeig , Jun Wang , Daniel Kroening , Yiannis Kantaros , Alessandro Abate

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…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-08-21 Xiaofeng Lin , Xuezhou Zhang

We derive a novel PAC-Bayesian generalization bound for reinforcement learning that explicitly accounts for Markov dependencies in the data, through the chain's mixing time. This contributes to overcoming challenges in obtaining…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Abdelkrim Zitouni , Mehdi Hennequin , Juba Agoun , Ryan Horache , Nadia Kabachi , Omar Rivasplata

We consider the problem of learning models for risk-sensitive reinforcement learning. We theoretically demonstrate that proper value equivalence, a method of learning models which can be used to plan optimally in the risk-neutral setting,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-05 Tyler Kastner , Murat A. Erdogdu , Amir-massoud Farahmand

Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms combined with value function approximation have recently achieved impressive performance in a variety of application domains. However, the theoretical understanding of such algorithms is limited,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-12 Botao Hao , Nevena Lazic , Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Pooria Joulani , Csaba Szepesvari

This paper investigates the computational complexity of reinforcement learning in a novel linear function approximation regime, termed partial $q^{\pi}$-realizability. In this framework, the objective is to learn an $\epsilon$-optimal…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-31 Shayan Karimi , Xiaoqi Tan

We prove bounds for the approximation and estimation of certain binary classification functions using ReLU neural networks. Our estimation bounds provide a priori performance guarantees for empirical risk minimization using networks of a…

Functional Analysis · Mathematics 2022-03-11 Andrei Caragea , Philipp Petersen , Felix Voigtlaender

For a risk-averse finite-horizon Markov Decision Problem, we introduce a special class of Markov coherent risk measures, called mini-batch measures. We also define the class of multipattern risk-averse problems that generalizes the class of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Andrzej Ruszczynski , Tiangang Zhang

A new non-linear variant of a quantitative extension of the uniform boundedness principle is used to show sharpness of error bounds for univariate approximation by sums of sigmoid and ReLU functions. Single hidden layer feedforward neural…

Functional Analysis · Mathematics 2020-06-18 Steffen Goebbels

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-27 Christoph Dann , Teodor V. Marinov , Mehryar Mohri , Julian Zimmert

This paper is concerned with the problem of policy evaluation with linear function approximation in discounted infinite horizon Markov decision processes. We investigate the sample complexities required to guarantee a predefined estimation…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-03 Gen Li , Weichen Wu , Yuejie Chi , Cong Ma , Alessandro Rinaldo , Yuting Wei

We study risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision processes with unknown transition kernels, where the goal is to optimize the total reward under the risk measure of exponential utility. We propose two provably…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-25 Yingjie Fei , Zhuoran Yang , Yudong Chen , Zhaoran Wang , Qiaomin Xie