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We consider the reinforcement learning (RL) problem with general utilities which consists in maximizing a function of the state-action occupancy measure. Beyond the standard cumulative reward RL setting, this problem includes as particular…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-06 Anas Barakat , Ilyas Fatkhullin , Niao He

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has emerged as a powerful tool for neural combinatorial optimization, enabling models to learn heuristics that solve complex problems without requiring expert knowledge. Despite significant progress, existing RL…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-14 Mingjun Pan , Guanquan Lin , You-Wei Luo , Bin Zhu , Zhien Dai , Lijun Sun , Chun Yuan

This paper examines reinforcement learning (RL) in infinite-horizon decision processes with almost-sure safety constraints, crucial for applications like autonomous systems, finance, and resource management. We propose a doubly-regularized…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Pekka Malo , Lauri Viitasaari , Antti Suominen , Eeva Vilkkumaa , Olli Tahvonen

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) trains a policy to maximize the task reward while satisfying safety constraints. While prior works focus on the performance optimality, we find that the optimal solutions of many safe RL problems are not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-03 Zuxin Liu , Zijian Guo , Zhepeng Cen , Huan Zhang , Jie Tan , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

We derive a policy gradient theorem for Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) objectives in finite-horizon Reinforcement Learning (RL), generalizing the standard policy gradient theorem and encompassing distortion-based risk objectives as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Olivier Lepel , Anas Barakat

Many sequential decision-making tasks involve optimizing multiple conflicting objectives, requiring policies that adapt to different user preferences. In multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL), one widely studied approach} addresses…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Ying-Tu Chen , Wei Hung , Bing-Shu Wu , Zhang-Wei Hong , Ping-Chun Hsieh

The objective of a reinforcement learning agent is to discover better actions through exploration. However, typical exploration techniques aim to maximize rewards, often incurring high costs in both exploration and learning processes. We…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Akane Tsuboya , Yu Kono , Tatsuji Takahashi

We study constrained reinforcement learning (CRL) from a novel perspective by setting constraints directly on state density functions, rather than the value functions considered by previous works. State density has a clear physical and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-25 Zengyi Qin , Yuxiao Chen , Chuchu Fan

Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a promising approach for learning optimal policies in environments where direct exploration is expensive or unfeasible. However, the adoption of such policies in practice is often challenging, as they…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-03 Aaron Sonabend-W , Junwei Lu , Leo A. Celi , Tianxi Cai , Peter Szolovits

Having a perfect model to compute the optimal policy is often infeasible in reinforcement learning. It is important in high-stakes domains to quantify and manage risk induced by model uncertainties. Entropic risk measure is an exponential…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Reazul Hasan Russel , Bahram Behzadian , Marek Petrik

We study behavior-regularized reinforcement learning (RL), where regularization toward a reference distribution (the dataset in offline RL or the base model in LLM RL finetuning) is essential to prevent value over-optimization caused by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Haoran Xu , Kaiwen Hu , Somayeh Sojoudi , Amy Zhang

This paper presents a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework for dynamic portfolio optimization under market uncertainty and risk. The proposed model integrates a Sharpe ratio-based reward function with direct risk control mechanisms,…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2025-11-17 Emmanuel Lwele , Sabuni Emmanuel , Sitali Gabriel Sitali

The standard reinforcement learning (RL) formulation considers the expectation of the (discounted) cumulative reward. This is limiting in applications where we are concerned with not only the expected performance, but also the distribution…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-13 Changjian Li , Krzysztof Czarnecki

Reinforcement learning (RL) and model predictive control (MPC) offer a wealth of distinct approaches for automatic decision-making under uncertainty. Given the impact both fields have had independently across numerous domains, there is…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-13 Nathan P. Lawrence , Philip D. Loewen , Michael G. Forbes , R. Bhushan Gopaluni , Ali Mesbah

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a central post-training paradigm for large language models (LLMs), but its performance is highly sensitive to the quality of training problems. This sensitivity stems from the non-stationarity of RL:…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Ningyuan Yang , Weihua Du , Weiwei Sun , Sean Welleck , Yiming Yang

Reinforcement learning (RL) combines a control problem with statistical estimation: The system dynamics are not known to the agent, but can be learned through experience. A recent line of research casts `RL as inference' and suggests a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-05 Brendan O'Donoghue , Ian Osband , Catalin Ionescu

Cumulative prospect theory (CPT) is known to model human decisions well, with substantial empirical evidence supporting this claim. CPT works by distorting probabilities and is more general than the classic expected utility and coherent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-03-01 Prashanth L. A. , Cheng Jie , Michael Fu , Steve Marcus , Csaba Szepesvári

Recently, there has been a surge in interest in safe and robust techniques within reinforcement learning (RL). Current notions of risk in RL fail to capture the potential for systemic failures such as abrupt stoppages from system failures…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-10-09 David Mguni

Managing risk in dynamic decision problems is of cardinal importance in many fields such as finance and process control. The most common approach to defining risk is through various variance related criteria such as the Sharpe Ratio or the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-07-03 Dotan Di Castro , Aviv Tamar , Shie Mannor

The endeavor of artificial intelligence (AI) is to design autonomous agents capable of achieving complex tasks. Namely, reinforcement learning (RL) proposes a theoretical background to learn optimal behaviors. In practice, RL algorithms…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-27 Firas Jarboui , Ahmed Akakzia