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Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms update an agent's parameters according to one of several possible rules, discovered manually through years of research. Automating the discovery of update rules from data could lead to more efficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-06 Junhyuk Oh , Matteo Hessel , Wojciech M. Czarnecki , Zhongwen Xu , Hado van Hasselt , Satinder Singh , David Silver

The concept of utilizing multi-step returns for updating value functions has been adopted in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for a number of years. Updating value functions with different backup lengths provides advantages in different…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-17 Po-Han Chiang , Hsuan-Kung Yang , Zhang-Wei Hong , Chun-Yi Lee

Multi-step (also called n-step) methods in reinforcement learning (RL) have been shown to be more efficient than the 1-step method due to faster propagation of the reward signal, both theoretically and empirically, in tasks exploiting…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-06-24 Lingheng Meng , Rob Gorbet , Dana Kulić

In deep Reinforcement Learning (RL), the learning rate critically influences both stability and performance, yet its optimal value shifts during training as the environment and policy evolve. Standard decay schedulers assume monotonic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-09 Henrique Donâncio , Antoine Barrier , Leah F. South , Florence Forbes

Temporal difference (TD) learning is a cornerstone of reinforcement learning. In the average-reward setting, standard TD($\lambda$) is highly sensitive to the choice of step-size and thus requires careful tuning to maintain numerical…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-08 Hwanwoo Kim , Dongkyu Derek Cho , Eric Laber

We study estimation and inference using data collected by reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. These algorithms adaptively experiment by interacting with individual units over multiple stages, updating their strategies based on past…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-06 Vasilis Syrgkanis , Ruohan Zhan

Most deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms distill experience into parametric behavior policies or value functions via gradient updates. While effective, this approach has several disadvantages: (1) it is computationally expensive,…

Multi-step temporal difference (TD) learning is an important approach in reinforcement learning, as it unifies one-step TD learning with Monte Carlo methods in a way where intermediate algorithms can outperform either extreme. They address…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-10 Kristopher De Asis , Richard S. Sutton

Scaling issues are mundane yet irritating for practitioners of reinforcement learning. Error scales vary across domains, tasks, and stages of learning; sometimes by many orders of magnitude. This can be detrimental to learning speed and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-13 Tom Schaul , Georg Ostrovski , Iurii Kemaev , Diana Borsa

Multi-step methods such as Retrace($\lambda$) and $n$-step $Q$-learning have become a crucial component of modern deep reinforcement learning agents. These methods are often evaluated as a part of bigger architectures and their evaluations…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-02-11 J. Fernando Hernandez-Garcia , Richard S. Sutton

Estimating value functions is a core component of reinforcement learning algorithms. Temporal difference (TD) learning algorithms use bootstrapping, i.e. they update the value function toward a learning target using value estimates at…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-07 Anthony GX-Chen , Veronica Chelu , Blake A. Richards , Joelle Pineau

Enhancing the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) with efficiency and scalability remains a fundamental challenge in artificial intelligence research. This paper presents a rigorous experimental investigation into how…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-04-02 Yunjie Ji , Sitong Zhao , Xiaoyu Tian , Haotian Wang , Shuaiting Chen , Yiping Peng , Han Zhao , Xiangang Li

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms that learn policies by trial-and-error must learn from limited amounts of data collected by actively interacting with the environment. While many prior works have shown that proper regularization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-21 Qiyang Li , Aviral Kumar , Ilya Kostrikov , Sergey Levine

Off-policy learning allows us to learn about possible policies of behavior from experience generated by a different behavior policy. Temporal difference (TD) learning algorithms can become unstable when combined with function approximation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-23 Ray Jiang , Tom Zahavy , Zhongwen Xu , Adam White , Matteo Hessel , Charles Blundell , Hado van Hasselt

The classical theory of reinforcement learning (RL) has focused on tabular and linear representations of value functions. Further progress hinges on combining RL with modern function approximators such as kernel functions and deep neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Zhuoran Yang , Chi Jin , Zhaoran Wang , Mengdi Wang , Michael I. Jordan

Value-based deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms suffer from the estimation bias primarily caused by function approximation and temporal difference (TD) learning. This problem induces faulty state-action value estimates and therefore…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-15 Dogan C. Cicek , Enes Duran , Baturay Saglam , Kagan Kaya , Furkan B. Mutlu , Suleyman S. Kozat

In reinforcement learning, the TD($\lambda$) algorithm is a fundamental policy evaluation method with an efficient online implementation that is suitable for large-scale problems. One practical drawback of TD($\lambda$) is its sensitivity…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-12-23 Aviv Tamar , Panos Toulis , Shie Mannor , Edoardo M. Airoldi

Multi-task representation learning (MTRL) is an approach that learns shared latent representations across related tasks, facilitating collaborative learning that improves the overall learning efficiency. This paper studies MTRL for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Yaoze Guo , Shana Moothedath

Deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) has been successful in learning sophisticated behaviors automatically; however, the learning process requires a huge number of trials. In contrast, animals can learn new tasks in just a few trials,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-11-11 Yan Duan , John Schulman , Xi Chen , Peter L. Bartlett , Ilya Sutskever , Pieter Abbeel

In this work we describe a novel deep reinforcement learning architecture that allows multiple actions to be selected at every time-step in an efficient manner. Multi-action policies allow complex behaviours to be learnt that would…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-09-07 Jack Harmer , Linus Gisslén , Jorge del Val , Henrik Holst , Joakim Bergdahl , Tom Olsson , Kristoffer Sjöö , Magnus Nordin