Related papers: Quantifying Differences in Reward Functions
In reinforcement learning from human feedback, preference-based reward models play a central role in aligning large language models to human-aligned behavior. However, recent studies show that these models are prone to reward hacking and…
Transfer learning of prediction models has been extensively studied, while the corresponding policy learning approaches are rarely discussed. In this paper, we propose principled approaches for learning the optimal policy in the target…
We initiate the study of fairness in reinforcement learning, where the actions of a learning algorithm may affect its environment and future rewards. Our fairness constraint requires that an algorithm never prefers one action over another…
While reinforcement learning algorithms provide automated acquisition of optimal policies, practical application of such methods requires a number of design decisions, such as manually designing reward functions that not only define the…
Reinforcement learning is a general technique that allows an agent to learn an optimal policy and interact with an environment in sequential decision making problems. The goodness of a policy is measured by its value function starting from…
Reinforcement learning (RL) systems typically optimize scalar reward functions that assume precise and reliable evaluation of outcomes. However, real-world objectives--especially those derived from human preferences--are often uncertain,…
The beneficial effects of treatments vary across individuals in most studies. Treatment heterogeneity motivates practitioners to search for the optimal policy based on personal characteristics. A long-standing common practice in policy…
We study the policy evaluation problem in an online multi-reward multi-policy discounted setting, where multiple reward functions must be evaluated simultaneously for different policies. We adopt an $(\epsilon,\delta)$-PAC perspective to…
Learning a reward function from human preferences is challenging as it typically requires having a high-fidelity simulator or using expensive and potentially unsafe actual physical rollouts in the environment. However, in many tasks the…
Diffusion models have achieved remarkable results in image generation, and have similarly been used to learn high-performing policies in sequential decision-making tasks. Decision-making diffusion models can be trained on lower-quality…
One of the main challenges in the field of embodied artificial intelligence is the open-ended autonomous learning of complex behaviours. Our approach is to use task-independent, information-driven intrinsic motivation(s) to support…
In some agent designs like inverse reinforcement learning an agent needs to learn its own reward function. Learning the reward function and optimising for it are typically two different processes, usually performed at different stages. We…
Deep reinforcement learning (RL) policies, although optimal in terms of task rewards, may not align with the personal preferences of human users. To ensure this alignment, a naive solution would be to retrain the agent using a reward…
In this paper, we take a step towards a deeper understanding of learning from human preferences by systematically comparing the paradigm of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) with the recently proposed paradigm of direct…
Reinforcement learning has shown promise in learning policies that can solve complex problems. However, manually specifying a good reward function can be difficult, especially for intricate tasks. Inverse reinforcement learning offers a…
An appropriate reward function is of paramount importance in specifying a task in reinforcement learning (RL). Yet, it is known to be extremely challenging in practice to design a correct reward function for even simple tasks.…
In classic reinforcement learning (RL) and decision making problems, policies are evaluated with respect to a scalar reward function, and all optimal policies are the same with regards to their expected return. However, many real-world…
In many real-world tasks, it is not possible to procedurally specify an RL agent's reward function. In such cases, a reward function must instead be learned from interacting with and observing humans. However, current techniques for reward…
Learning to make decisions from observed data in dynamic environments remains a problem of fundamental importance in a number of fields, from artificial intelligence and robotics, to medicine and finance. This paper concerns the problem of…
Most learning algorithms are not invariant to the scale of the function that is being approximated. We propose to adaptively normalize the targets used in learning. This is useful in value-based reinforcement learning, where the magnitude…