Related papers: Convergent Tree Backup and Retrace with Function A…
Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) is attractive in scenarios where reward engineering can be tedious. However, prior IRL algorithms use on-policy transitions, which require intensive sampling from the current policy for stable and…
We consider the problem of using a heuristic policy to improve the value approximation by the Upper Confidence Bound applied in Trees (UCT) algorithm in non-adversarial settings such as planning with large-state space Markov Decision…
We present the first class of policy-gradient algorithms that work with both state-value and policy function-approximation, and are guaranteed to converge under off-policy training. Our solution targets problems in reinforcement learning…
In this paper we introduce the idea of improving the performance of parametric temporal-difference (TD) learning algorithms by selectively emphasizing or de-emphasizing their updates on different time steps. In particular, we show that…
Motivated by policy gradient methods in the context of reinforcement learning, we identify a large deviation rate function for the iterates generated by stochastic gradient descent for possibly non-convex objectives satisfying a…
Reinforcement learning provides a mathematical framework for learning-based control, whose success largely depends on the amount of data it can utilize. The efficient utilization of historical trajectories obtained from previous policies is…
In reinforcement learning (RL), it is often advantageous to consider additional constraints on the action space to ensure safety or action relevance. Existing work on such action-constrained RL faces challenges regarding effective policy…
In experimenting with off-policy temporal difference (TD) methods in hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) systems, we have observed unwanted on-policy learning under reproducible conditions. Here we present modifications to several TD…
We propose the first boosting algorithm for off-policy learning from logged bandit feedback. Unlike existing boosting methods for supervised learning, our algorithm directly optimizes an estimate of the policy's expected reward. We analyze…
Decision Trees (DTs) are commonly used for many machine learning tasks due to their high degree of interpretability. However, learning a DT from data is a difficult optimization problem, as it is non-convex and non-differentiable.…
Off-policy learning plays a pivotal role in optimizing and evaluating policies prior to the online deployment. However, during the real-time serving, we observe varieties of interventions and constraints that cause inconsistency between the…
Although adversarial examples and model robustness have been extensively studied in the context of linear models and neural networks, research on this issue in tree-based models and how to make tree-based models robust against adversarial…
Training neural networks requires optimizing a loss function that may be highly irregular, and in particular neither convex nor smooth. Popular training algorithms are based on stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM), for which…
In this paper, we study last-iterate convergence of learning algorithms in bilinear saddle-point problems, a preferable notion of convergence that captures the day-to-day behavior of learning dynamics. We focus on the challenging setting…
In order for reinforcement learning techniques to be useful in real-world decision making processes, they must be able to produce robust performance from limited data. Deep policy optimization methods have achieved impressive results on…
We consider large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) with an unknown cost function and employ stochastic convex optimization tools to address the problem of imitation learning, which consists of learning a policy from a finite set of…
In reinforcement learning (RL) , one of the key components is policy evaluation, which aims to estimate the value function (i.e., expected long-term accumulated reward) of a policy. With a good policy evaluation method, the RL algorithms…
Many engineering problems have multiple objectives, and the overall aim is to optimize a non-linear function of these objectives. In this paper, we formulate the problem of maximizing a non-linear concave function of multiple long-term…
We consider the offline constrained reinforcement learning (RL) problem, in which the agent aims to compute a policy that maximizes expected return while satisfying given cost constraints, learning only from a pre-collected dataset. This…
Replication of experimental results has been a challenge faced by many scientific disciplines, including the field of machine learning. Recent work on the theory of machine learning has formalized replicability as the demand that an…