Related papers: Variational Actor-Critic Algorithms
Policy evaluation is a key process in Reinforcement Learning (RL). It assesses a given policy by estimating the corresponding value function. When using parameterized value functions, common approaches minimize the sum of squared Bellman…
We study whether a risk-sensitive objective from asset-pricing theory -- recursive utility -- improves reinforcement learning for portfolio allocation. The Bellman equation under recursive utility involves a certainty equivalent (CE) of…
We propose a method for finding approximate compilations of quantum unitary transformations, based on techniques from policy gradient reinforcement learning. The choice of a stochastic policy allows us to rephrase the optimization problem…
Optimal control problem is typically solved by first finding the value function through Hamilton-Jacobi equation (HJE) and then taking the minimizer of the Hamiltonian to obtain the control. In this work, instead of focusing on the value…
Model-free deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have been demonstrated on a range of challenging decision making and control tasks. However, these methods typically suffer from two major challenges: very high sample complexity and…
Off-policy Reinforcement Learning (RL) holds the promise of better data efficiency as it allows sample reuse and potentially enables safe interaction with the environment. Current off-policy policy gradient methods either suffer from high…
Policy gradient methods have achieved remarkable successes in solving challenging reinforcement learning problems. However, it still often suffers from the large variance issue on policy gradient estimation, which leads to poor sample…
We explore methods for option discovery based on variational inference and make two algorithmic contributions. First: we highlight a tight connection between variational option discovery methods and variational autoencoders, and introduce…
We study the dynamic investment decisions of investors who prioritise specific quantiles of outcomes over their expected values. Downside-focused agents targeting low quantiles reduce risk in states with high variance, while those with a…
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,…
Value functions arise as a component of algorithms as well as performance metrics in statistics and engineering applications. Computation of the associated Bellman equations is numerically challenging in all but a few special cases. A…
We consider the problem of finding a policy that maximizes an expected reward throughout the trajectory of an agent that interacts with an unknown environment. Frequently denoted Reinforcement Learning, this framework suffers from the need…
Reliable long-horizon value prediction is difficult in offline reinforcement learning because fitted value methods combine bootstrapping, function approximation, and distribution shift, while standard guarantees often require Bellman…
Value-based algorithms are a cornerstone of off-policy reinforcement learning due to their simplicity and training stability. However, their use has traditionally been restricted to discrete action spaces, as they rely on estimating…
We consider dynamic programming problems with finite, discrete-time horizons and prohibitively high-dimensional, discrete state-spaces for direct computation of the value function from the Bellman equation. For the case that the value…
This paper investigates estimating the variance of a temporal-difference learning agent's update target. Most reinforcement learning methods use an estimate of the value function, which captures how good it is for the agent to be in a…
Much of statistics relies upon four key elements: a law of large numbers, a calculus to operationalize stochastic convergence, a central limit theorem, and a framework for constructing local approximations. These elements are…
We describe a nonlinear generalization of dual dynamic programming theory and its application to value function estimation for deterministic control problems over continuous state and action spaces, in a discrete-time infinite horizon…
Features in machine learning problems are often time-varying and may be related to outputs in an algebraic or dynamical manner. The dynamic nature of these machine learning problems renders current higher order accelerated gradient descent…
In this work, we consider the problem of computing optimal actions for Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents in a co-operative setting, where the objective is to optimize a common goal. However, in many real-life applications, in addition to…