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Related papers: Parameter-Based Value Functions

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Large scale reinforcement learning has become a central tool for improving reasoning in large language models. At this scale, generation is often lagged or asynchronous, so updates are performed on data collected by older policies. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Otmane Sakhi , Aleksei Arzhantsev , Imad Aouali , Flavian Vasile

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) learns effective policies from pre-collected datasets, offering a practical solution for applications where online interactions are risky or costly. Model-based approaches are particularly advantageous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Xuyang Chen , Keyu Yan , Guojian Wang , Lin Zhao

Learning per-domain generalizing policies is a key challenge in learning for planning. Standard approaches learn state-value functions represented as graph neural networks using supervised learning on optimal plans generated by a teacher…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Nicola J. Müller , Moritz Oster , Isabel Valera , Jörg Hoffmann , Timo P. Gros

When using reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms to evaluate a policy it is common, given a large state space, to introduce some form of approximation architecture for the value function (VF). The exact form of this architecture can have a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-03-06 Edward W. Barker , Charl J. Ras

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) for Large Reasoning Models hinges on baseline estimation for variance reduction, but existing approaches pay a heavy price: PPO requires a policy-model scale critic, while GRPO needs…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Yunho Choi , Jongwon Lim , Woojin Ahn , Minjae Oh , Jeonghoon Shim , Yohan Jo

In reinforcement learning, offline value function learning is the procedure of using an offline dataset to estimate the expected discounted return from each state when taking actions according to a fixed target policy. The stability of this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Brahma S. Pavse , Yudong Chen , Qiaomin Xie , Josiah P. Hanna

Traditional reinforcement learning lacks the ability to provide stability guarantees. More recent algorithms learn Lyapunov functions alongside the control policies to ensure stable learning. However, the current self-learned Lyapunov…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-01-19 Sarvan Gill , Daniela Constantinescu

Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) is a paradigm in which an RL agent learns to optimize a task using pair-wise preference-based feedback over trajectories, rather than explicit reward signals. While PbRL has demonstrated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-18 Wenhao Zhan , Masatoshi Uehara , Wen Sun , Jason D. Lee

We establish geometric and topological properties of the space of value functions in finite state-action Markov decision processes. Our main contribution is the characterization of the nature of its shape: a general polytope (Aigner et al.,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-17 Robert Dadashi , Adrien Ali Taïga , Nicolas Le Roux , Dale Schuurmans , Marc G. Bellemare

Reward functions are difficult to design and often hard to align with human intent. Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms address these problems by learning reward functions from human feedback. However, the majority of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-28 Joey Hejna , Dorsa Sadigh

The goal of offline reinforcement learning (RL) is to find an optimal policy given prerecorded trajectories. Many current approaches customize existing off-policy RL algorithms, especially actor-critic algorithms in which policy evaluation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-07 Wonjoon Goo , Scott Niekum

An open problem in artificial intelligence is how to learn and represent knowledge that is sufficient for a general agent that needs to solve multiple tasks in a given world. In this work we propose world value functions (WVFs), which are a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-19 Geraud Nangue Tasse , Steven James , Benjamin Rosman

We study estimation and inference using data collected by reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. These algorithms adaptively experiment by interacting with individual units over multiple stages, updating their strategies based on past…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-10-06 Vasilis Syrgkanis , Ruohan Zhan

The policy gradients of the expected return objective can react slowly to rare rewards. Yet, in some cases agents may wish to emphasize the low or high returns regardless of their probability. Borrowing from the economics and control…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-03-20 Chris J. Maddison , Dieterich Lawson , George Tucker , Nicolas Heess , Arnaud Doucet , Andriy Mnih , Yee Whye Teh

Value function is the central notion of Reinforcement Learning (RL). Value estimation, especially with function approximation, can be challenging since it involves the stochasticity of environmental dynamics and reward signals that can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-04 Hongyao Tang , Jianye Hao , Guangyong Chen , Pengfei Chen , Chen Chen , Yaodong Yang , Luo Zhang , Wulong Liu , Zhaopeng Meng

The performance of reinforcement learning depends upon designing an appropriate action space, where the effect of each action is measurable, yet, granular enough to permit flexible behavior. So far, this process involved non-trivial user…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-08 Edoardo Cetin , Oya Celiktutan

Many practical applications of reinforcement learning constrain agents to learn from a fixed batch of data which has already been gathered, without offering further possibility for data collection. In this paper, we demonstrate that due to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-13 Scott Fujimoto , David Meger , Doina Precup

We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) framework under a broad class of risk objectives, characterized by convex scoring functions. This class covers many common risk measures, such as variance, Expected Shortfall, entropic Value-at-Risk,…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2025-05-16 Shanyu Han , Yang Liu , Xiang Yu

In this paper, we explore how directly pretraining a value model simplifies and stabilizes reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). In reinforcement learning, value estimation is the key to policy optimization, distinct from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Chenghua Huang , Lu Wang , Fangkai Yang , Pu Zhao , Zhixu Li , Qingwei Lin , Dongmei Zhang , Saravan Rajmohan , Qi Zhang

The concept of the value-gradient is introduced and developed in the context of reinforcement learning. It is shown that by learning the value-gradients exploration or stochastic behaviour is no longer needed to find locally optimal…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2008-03-26 Michael Fairbank