Related papers: Solving Multi-Objective MDP with Lexicographic Pre…
We consider policy evaluation in infinite-horizon discounted Markov decision problems (MDPs) with infinite spaces. We reformulate this task a compositional stochastic program with a function-valued decision variable that belongs to a…
In many practical sequential decision-making problems, tracking the state of the environment incurs a sensing/communication/computation cost. In these settings, the agent's interaction with its environment includes the additional component…
We consider a planning problem where the dynamics and rewards of the environment depend on a hidden static parameter referred to as the context. The objective is to learn a strategy that maximizes the accumulated reward across all contexts.…
Although many real-world stochastic planning problems are more naturally formulated by hybrid models with both discrete and continuous variables, current state-of-the-art methods cannot adequately address these problems. We present the…
Direct preference optimization (DPO) has shown to be an effective method for large language model (LLM) alignment. Recent works have attempted to apply DPO to multimodal scenarios but have found it challenging to achieve consistent…
Reinforcement learning (RL) typically models the interaction between the agent and environment as a Markov decision process (MDP), where the rewards that guide the agent's behavior are always observable. However, in many real-world…
We provide performance guarantees for a variant of simulation-based policy iteration for controlling Markov decision processes that involves the use of stochastic approximation algorithms along with state-of-the-art techniques that are…
Personalization in machine learning (ML) tailors models' decisions to the individual characteristics of users. While this approach has seen success in areas like recommender systems, its expansion into high-stakes fields such as healthcare…
This paper studies the optimization of Markov decision processes (MDPs) from a risk-seeking perspective, where the risk is measured by conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). The objective is to find a policy that maximizes the long-run CVaR of…
Fairness has emerged as an important concern in automated decision-making in recent years, especially when these decisions affect human welfare. In this work, we study fairness in temporally extended decision-making settings, specifically…
We investigate the problems of model estimation and reward-free learning in episodic Block MDPs. In these MDPs, the decision maker has access to rich observations or contexts generated from a small number of latent states. We are first…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) with rewards are a widespread and well-studied model for systems that make both probabilistic and nondeterministic choices. A fundamental result about MDPs is that their minimal and maximal expected rewards…
We study the synthesis of a policy in a Markov decision process (MDP) following which an agent reaches a target state in the MDP while minimizing its total discounted cost. The problem combines a reachability criterion with a discounted…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the standard formalism for modelling sequential decision making in stochastic environments. Policy synthesis addresses the problem of how to control or limit the decisions an agent makes so that a given…
In this paper, we consider Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with error states. Error states are those states entering which is undesirable or dangerous. We define the risk with respect to a policy as the probability of entering such a state…
In this paper, we propose an approximate dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm to solve a Markov decision process (MDP) formulation for the admission control of elective patients. To manage the elective patients from multiple specialties…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has gained substantial attention across diverse application domains and theoretical investigations. Existing literature on RL theory largely focuses on risk-neutral settings where the decision-maker learns to…
We consider the problem of solving robust Markov decision process (MDP), which involves a set of discounted, finite state, finite action space MDPs with uncertain transition kernels. The goal of planning is to find a robust policy that…
Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) provide an elegant mathematical framework for modeling complex decision and planning problems in stochastic domains in which states of the system are observable only indirectly, via a…
Designing a safe policy for uncertain environments is crucial in real-world control systems. However, this challenge remains inadequately addressed within the Markov decision process (MDP) framework. This paper presents the first algorithm…