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In offline reinforcement learning (RL), the absence of active exploration calls for attention on the model robustness to tackle the sim-to-real gap, where the discrepancy between the simulated and deployed environments can significantly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-28 He Wang , Laixi Shi , Yuejie Chi

We propose an epoch-based reinforcement learning algorithm for infinite-horizon average-cost Markov decision processes (MDPs) that leverages a partial order over a policy class. In this structure, $\pi' \leq \pi$ if data collected under…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-08-07 Zhongjun Zhang , Shipra Agrawal , Ilan Lobel , Sean R. Sinclair , Christina Lee Yu

We consider online reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the linear $q^\pi$-realizability assumption, where it is assumed that the action-values of all policies can be expressed as linear functions…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-21 Gellért Weisz , András György , Csaba Szepesvári

The benefit of multi-task learning over single-task learning relies on the ability to use relations across tasks to improve performance on any single task. While sharing representations is an important mechanism to share information across…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-14 Shagun Sodhani , Amy Zhang , Joelle Pineau

We provide performance guarantees for a variant of simulation-based policy iteration for controlling Markov decision processes that involves the use of stochastic approximation algorithms along with state-of-the-art techniques that are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Anna Winnicki , R. Srikant

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a well studied framework for solving sequential decision making problems under uncertainty. Exact methods for solving MDPs based on dynamic programming such as policy iteration and value iteration are…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-09-09 Yanping Huang

In this paper we consider the problem of how a reinforcement learning agent tasked with solving a set of related Markov decision processes can use knowledge acquired early in its lifetime to improve its ability to more rapidly solve novel,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-02-26 Francisco M. Garcia , Bruno C. da Silva , Philip S. Thomas

Hierarchical reinforcement learning methods offer a powerful means of planning flexible behavior in complicated domains. However, learning an appropriate hierarchical decomposition of a domain into subtasks remains a substantial challenge.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-08-03 Adam C. Earle , Andrew M. Saxe , Benjamin Rosman

In this work, we study value function approximation in reinforcement learning (RL) problems with high dimensional state or action spaces via a generalized version of representation policy iteration (RPI). We consider the limitations of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-18 Sephora Madjiheurem , Laura Toni

Approximate linear programming (ALP) represents one of the major algorithmic families to solve large-scale Markov decision processes (MDP). In this work, we study a primal-dual formulation of the ALP, and develop a scalable, model-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-04-30 Yichen Chen , Lihong Li , Mengdi Wang

Meta-learning, or learning-to-learn, seeks to design algorithms that can utilize previous experience to rapidly learn new skills or adapt to new environments. Representation learning -- a key tool for performing meta-learning -- learns a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-04 Nilesh Tripuraneni , Chi Jin , Michael I. Jordan

Reward-free reinforcement learning (RL) considers the setting where the agent does not have access to a reward function during exploration, but must propose a near-optimal policy for an arbitrary reward function revealed only after…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Andrew Wagenmaker , Yifang Chen , Max Simchowitz , Simon S. Du , Kevin Jamieson

This paper addresses a fundamental issue central to approximation methods for solving large Markov decision processes (MDPs): how to automatically learn the underlying representation for value function approximation? A novel theoretically…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-07-09 Sridhar Mahadevan

In this paper, we consider the framework of multi-task representation (MTR) learning where the goal is to use source tasks to learn a representation that reduces the sample complexity of solving a target task. We start by reviewing recent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-27 Quentin Bouniot , Ievgen Redko , Romaric Audigier , Angélique Loesch , Amaury Habrard

Planning plays an important role in the broad class of decision theory. Planning has drawn much attention in recent work in the robotics and sequential decision making areas. Recently, Reinforcement Learning (RL), as an agent-environment…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-08-18 Kamyar Azizzadenesheli , Alessandro Lazaric , Animashree Anandkumar

Multi-task learning (MTL) has emerged as a pivotal paradigm in machine learning by leveraging shared structures across multiple related tasks. Despite its empirical success, the development of likelihood-based efficiently solvable…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-07 Shihong Ding , Fangyu Du , Cong Fang

Reinforcement learning (RL) in recommendation systems offers the potential to optimize recommendations for long-term user engagement. However, the environment often involves large state and action spaces, which makes it hard to efficiently…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2023-09-20 Yijia Dai , Wen Sun

Representation learning is a widely adopted framework for learning in data-scarce environments, aiming to extract common features from related tasks. While centralized approaches have been extensively studied, decentralized methods remain…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-30 Donghwa Kang , Shana Moothedath

We consider online reinforcement learning in episodic Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transition function and stochastic rewards drawn from some fixed but unknown distribution. The learner aims to learn the optimal policy and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-12 Vincent Leon , S. Rasoul Etesami

It is believed that a model-based approach for reinforcement learning (RL) is the key to reduce sample complexity. However, the understanding of the sample optimality of model-based RL is still largely missing, even for the linear case.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-20 Qiwen Cui , Lin F. Yang