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We study computationally and statistically efficient Reinforcement Learning algorithms for the linear Bellman Complete setting. This setting uses linear function approximation to capture value functions and unifies existing models like…
Reinforcement Learning, a machine learning framework for training an autonomous agent based on rewards, has shown outstanding results in various domains. However, it is known that learning a good policy is difficult in a domain where…
Keeping risk under control is often more crucial than maximizing expected rewards in real-world decision-making situations, such as finance, robotics, autonomous driving, etc. The most natural choice of risk measures is variance, which…
Optimal portfolio allocation is often formulated as a constrained risk problem, where one aims to minimize a risk measure subject to some performance constraints. This paper presents new Bayesian Optimization algorithms for such constrained…
We present the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) in the context of Markov chains and Markov decision processes with reachability and mean-payoff objectives. CVaR quantifies risk by means of the expectation of the worst p-quantile. As such it…
Motivated by the prominence of Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) as a measure for tail risk in settings affected by uncertainty, we develop a new formula for approximating CVaR based optimization objectives and their gradients from limited…
We work towards a unifying paradigm for accelerating policy optimization methods in reinforcement learning (RL) by integrating foresight in the policy improvement step via optimistic and adaptive updates. Leveraging the connection between…
Policy evaluation is a key process in Reinforcement Learning (RL). It assesses a given policy by estimating the corresponding value function. When using parameterized value functions, common approaches minimize the sum of squared Bellman…
We consider the problem of quantifying uncertainty over expected cumulative rewards in model-based reinforcement learning. In particular, we focus on characterizing the variance over values induced by a distribution over Markov decision…
Robust Optimization has traditionally taken a pessimistic, or worst-case viewpoint of uncertainty which is motivated by a desire to find sets of optimal policies that maintain feasibility under a variety of operating conditions. In this…
Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is a family of "coherent risk measures" which generalize the traditional mathematical expectation. Widely used in mathematical finance, it is garnering increasing interest in machine learning, e.g., as an…
Finding optimal policies which maximize long term rewards of Markov Decision Processes requires the use of dynamic programming and backward induction to solve the Bellman optimality equation. However, many real-world problems require…
Financial portfolios are often optimized for maximum profit while subject to a constraint formulated in terms of the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). This amounts to solving a linear problem. However, in its original formulation this…
In a wide variety of sequential decision making problems, it can be important to estimate the impact of rare events in order to minimize risk exposure. A popular risk measure is the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR), which is commonly…
We consider a liquidation problem in which a risk-averse trader tries to liquidate a fixed quantity of an asset in the presence of market impact and random price fluctuations. The trader encounters a trade-off between the transaction costs…
We study risk-sensitive planning under partial observability using the dynamic risk measure Iterated Conditional Value-at-Risk (ICVaR). A policy evaluation algorithm for ICVaR is developed with finite-time performance guarantees that do not…
Dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) provide a principled framework for optimizing sequential decision-making in domains where decisions must adapt over time in response to individual trajectories, such as healthcare, education, and digital…
Risk-averse decision-making under uncertainty in partially observable domains is a central challenge in artificial intelligence and is essential for developing reliable autonomous agents. The formal framework for such problems is the…
We consider continuous-time stochastic optimal control problems featuring Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) in the objective. The major difficulty in these problems arises from time-inconsistency, which prevents us from directly using…
Batch reinforcement learning (RL) is important to apply RL algorithms to many high stakes tasks. Doing batch RL in a way that yields a reliable new policy in large domains is challenging: a new decision policy may visit states and actions…