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Actor-critic (AC) algorithms, empowered by neural networks, have had significant empirical success in recent years. However, most of the existing theoretical support for AC algorithms focuses on the case of linear function approximations,…
Since the objective functions of reinforcement learning problems are typically highly nonconvex, it is desirable that policy gradient, the most popular algorithm, escapes saddle points and arrives at second-order stationary points. Existing…
Cooperative problems under continuous control have always been the focus of multi-agent reinforcement learning. Existing algorithms suffer from the problem of uneven learning degree with the increase of the number of agents. In this paper,…
Off-policy stochastic actor-critic methods rely on approximating the stochastic policy gradient in order to derive an optimal policy. One may also derive the optimal policy by approximating the action-value gradient. The use of action-value…
This paper presents a new method --- adversarial advantage actor-critic (Adversarial A2C), which significantly improves the efficiency of dialogue policy learning in task-completion dialogue systems. Inspired by generative adversarial…
This paper presents AFU, an off-policy deep RL algorithm addressing in a new way the challenging "max-Q problem" in Q-learning for continuous action spaces, with a solution based on regression and conditional gradient scaling. AFU has an…
In recent years, deep off-policy actor-critic algorithms have become a dominant approach to reinforcement learning for continuous control. One of the primary drivers of this improved performance is the use of pessimistic value updates to…
The average-reward formulation of reinforcement learning (RL) has drawn increased interest in recent years for its ability to solve temporally-extended problems without relying on discounting. Meanwhile, in the discounted setting,…
In this paper, we establish the global optimality and convergence rate of an off-policy actor critic algorithm in the tabular setting without using density ratio to correct the discrepancy between the state distribution of the behavior…
To obtain better value estimation in reinforcement learning, we propose a novel algorithm based on the double actor-critic framework with temporal difference error-driven regularization, abbreviated as TDDR. TDDR employs double actors, with…
We consider an improper reinforcement learning setting where a learner is given $M$ base controllers for an unknown Markov decision process, and wishes to combine them optimally to produce a potentially new controller that can outperform…
We study a multi-agent reinforcement learning dynamics, and analyze its asymptotic behavior in infinite-horizon discounted Markov potential games. We focus on the independent and decentralized setting, where players do not know the game…
We show that the simplest actor-critic method -- a linear softmax policy updated with TD through interaction with a linear MDP, but featuring no explicit regularization or exploration -- does not merely find an optimal policy, but moreover…
Multi-agent policy gradient (MAPG) methods recently witness vigorous progress. However, there is a significant performance discrepancy between MAPG methods and state-of-the-art multi-agent value-based approaches. In this paper, we…
Actor-critic algorithms address the dual goals of reinforcement learning (RL), policy evaluation and improvement via two separate function approximators. The practicality of this approach comes at the expense of training instability, caused…
In practical reinforcement learning (RL), the discount factor used for estimating value functions often differs from that used for defining the evaluation objective. In this work, we study the effect that this discrepancy of discount…
Most approaches to visual scene analysis have emphasised parallel processing of the image elements. However, one area in which the sequential nature of vision is apparent, is that of segmenting multiple, potentially similar and partially…
Actor-critic methods have achieved significant success in many challenging applications. However, its finite-time convergence is still poorly understood in the most practical single-timescale form. Existing works on analyzing…
Actor-critic (AC) is a powerful method for learning an optimal policy in reinforcement learning, where the critic uses algorithms, e.g., temporal difference (TD) learning with function approximation, to evaluate the current policy and the…
Actor-critic algorithms that make use of distributional policy evaluation have frequently been shown to outperform their non-distributional counterparts on many challenging control tasks. Examples of this behavior include the D4PG and DMPO…