Related papers: Discounted Reinforcement Learning Is Not an Optimi…
A common formulation of constrained reinforcement learning involves multiple rewards that must individually accumulate to given thresholds. In this class of problems, we show a simple example in which the desired optimal policy cannot be…
In reinforcement learning, a decision needs to be made at some point as to whether it is worthwhile to carry on with the learning process or to terminate it. In many such situations, stochastic elements are often present which govern the…
This survey (re)introduces reinforcement learning methods to economists. The curse of dimensionality limits how far exact dynamic programming can be effectively applied, forcing us to rely on suitably "small" problems or our ability to…
Function approximation has been an indispensable component in modern reinforcement learning algorithms designed to tackle problems with large state spaces in high dimensions. This paper reviews recent results on error analysis for these…
The framework of reinforcement learning or optimal control provides a mathematical formalization of intelligent decision making that is powerful and broadly applicable. While the general form of the reinforcement learning problem enables…
In continuing tasks, average-reward reinforcement learning may be a more appropriate problem formulation than the more common discounted reward formulation. As usual, learning an optimal policy in this setting typically requires a large…
We present the viewpoint that optimization problems encountered in machine learning can often be interpreted as minimizing a convex functional over a function space, but with a non-convex constraint set introduced by model parameterization.…
Reducing reinforcement learning to supervised learning is a well-studied and effective approach that leverages the benefits of compact function approximation to deal with large-scale Markov decision processes. Independently, the boosting…
Autonomous agents must often deal with conflicting requirements, such as completing tasks using the least amount of time/energy, learning multiple tasks, or dealing with multiple opponents. In the context of reinforcement learning~(RL),…
We study defense strategies against reward poisoning attacks in reinforcement learning. As a threat model, we consider attacks that minimally alter rewards to make the attacker's target policy uniquely optimal under the poisoned rewards,…
Linear temporal logic (LTL) and, more generally, $\omega$-regular objectives are alternatives to the traditional discount sum and average reward objectives in reinforcement learning (RL), offering the advantage of greater comprehensibility…
Distributional reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful framework increasingly adopted in safety-critical domains for its ability to optimize risk-sensitive objectives. However, the role of the discount factor is often overlooked, as it is…
In the last decade, Deep Reinforcement Learning has evolved into a powerful tool for complex sequential decision-making problems. It combines deep learning's proficiency in processing rich input signals with reinforcement learning's…
In reinforcement learning, the objective is almost always defined as a \emph{cumulative} function over the rewards along the process. However, there are many optimal control and reinforcement learning problems in various application fields,…
Solving tasks in Reinforcement Learning is no easy feat. As the goal of the agent is to maximize the accumulated reward, it often learns to exploit loopholes and misspecifications in the reward signal resulting in unwanted behavior. While…
In reinforcement learning, Return, which is the weighted accumulated future rewards, and Value, which is the expected return, serve as the objective that guides the learning of the policy. In classic RL, return is defined as the…
Reinforcement learning can greatly benefit from the use of options as a way of encoding recurring behaviours and to foster exploration. An important open problem is how can an agent autonomously learn useful options when solving particular…
Reinforcement learning is a model-free optimal control method that optimizes a control policy through direct interaction with the environment. For reaching tasks that end in regulation, popular discrete-action methods are not well suited…
Placement Optimization is an important problem in systems and chip design, which consists of mapping the nodes of a graph onto a limited set of resources to optimize for an objective, subject to constraints. In this paper, we start by…
Multi-task learning is a very challenging problem in reinforcement learning. While training multiple tasks jointly allow the policies to share parameters across different tasks, the optimization problem becomes non-trivial: It remains…