Related papers: GradientDICE: Rethinking Generalized Offline Estim…
In many real-world applications of reinforcement learning (RL), interactions with the environment are limited due to cost or feasibility. This presents a challenge to traditional RL algorithms since the max-return objective involves an…
Driven by the need to solve increasingly complex optimization problems in signal processing and machine learning, there has been increasing interest in understanding the behavior of gradient-descent algorithms in non-convex environments.…
The recently proposed distribution correction estimation (DICE) family of estimators has advanced the state of the art in off-policy evaluation from behavior-agnostic data. While these estimators all perform some form of stationary…
Randomly initialized first-order optimization algorithms are the method of choice for solving many high-dimensional nonconvex problems in machine learning, yet general theoretical guarantees cannot rule out convergence to critical points of…
This paper considers a class of distributed resource allocation problems where each agent privately holds a smooth, potentially non-convex local objective, subject to a globally coupled equality constraint. Built upon the existing method,…
One important property of DIstribution Correction Estimation (DICE) methods is that the solution is the optimal stationary distribution ratio between the optimized and data collection policy. In this work, we show that DICE-based methods…
Non-convex optimization problems are challenging to solve; the success and computational expense of a gradient descent algorithm or variant depend heavily on the initialization strategy. Often, either random initialization is used or…
In this paper, a gradient-free distributed algorithm is introduced to solve a set constrained optimization problem under a directed communication network. Specifically, at each time-step, the agents locally compute a so-called…
This paper considers optimization problems over networks where agents have individual objectives to meet, or individual parameter vectors to estimate, subject to subspace constraints that require the objectives across the network to lie in…
Offline imitation learning (IL) promises the ability to learn performant policies from pre-collected demonstrations without interactions with the environment. However, imitating behaviors fully offline typically requires numerous expert…
Recent years have seen increased interest in performance guarantees of gradient descent algorithms for non-convex optimization. A number of works have uncovered that gradient noise plays a critical role in the ability of gradient descent…
Recovering high-dimensional statistical structure from limited measurements is a fundamental challenge in hyperspectral imaging, where capturing full-resolution data is often infeasible due to sensor, bandwidth, or acquisition constraints.…
We study the problem of efficiently estimating policies that simultaneously optimize multiple objectives in reinforcement learning (RL). Given $n$ objectives (or tasks), we seek the optimal partition of these objectives into $k \ll n$…
High dimensional and/or nonconvex optimization remains a challenging and important problem across a wide range of fields, such as machine learning, data assimilation, and partial differential equation (PDE) constrained optimization. Here we…
Offline reinforcement learning (RL) offers a promising direction for learning policies from pre-collected datasets without requiring further interactions with the environment. However, existing methods struggle to handle out-of-distribution…
In this article, we propose a new approach, optimize then agree for minimizing a sum $ f = \sum_{i=1}^n f_i(x)$ of convex objective functions over a directed graph. The optimize then agree approach decouples the optimization step and the…
Gradient boosting is a state-of-the-art prediction technique that sequentially produces a model in the form of linear combinations of simple predictors---typically decision trees---by solving an infinite-dimensional convex optimization…
The optimization of the latents and parameters of diffusion models with respect to some differentiable metric defined on the output of the model is a challenging and complex problem. The sampling for diffusion models is done by solving…
Gradient descent and its variants are widely used in machine learning. However, oracle access of gradient may not be available in many applications, limiting the direct use of gradient descent. This paper proposes a method of estimating…
Off-policy learning refers to the problem of learning the value function of a way of behaving, or policy, while following a different policy. Gradient-based off-policy learning algorithms, such as GTD and TDC/GQ, converge even when using…