Related papers: Towards Return Parity in Markov Decision Processes

Fairness in algorithmic decision-making processes is attracting increasing concern. When an algorithm is applied to human-related decision-making an estimator solely optimizing its predictive power can learn biases on the existing data,…

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…

Dynamic optimization of mean and variance in Markov decision processes (MDPs) is a long-standing challenge caused by the failure of dynamic programming. In this paper, we propose a new approach to find the globally optimal policy for…

In this paper, a sparse Markov decision process (MDP) with novel causal sparse Tsallis entropy regularization is proposed.The proposed policy regularization induces a sparse and multi-modal optimal policy distribution of a sparse MDP. The…

We study the synthesis of a policy in a Markov decision process (MDP) following which an agent reaches a target state in the MDP while minimizing its total discounted cost. The problem combines a reachability criterion with a discounted…

A central task in control theory, artificial intelligence, and formal methods is to synthesize reward-maximizing strategies for agents that operate in partially unknown environments. In environments modeled by gray-box Markov decision…

Equity in real-world sequential decision problems can be enforced using fairness-aware methods. Therefore, we require algorithms that can make suitable and transparent trade-offs between performance and the desired fairness notions. As the…

Markov decision processes (MDP) are a well-established model for sequential decision-making in the presence of probabilities. In robust MDP (RMDP), every action is associated with an uncertainty set of probability distributions, modelling…

We consider a setting involving $N$ agents, where each agent interacts with an environment modeled as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The agents' MDPs differ in their reward functions, capturing heterogeneous objectives/tasks. The…

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) aim to handle changing or partially known system dynamics. To solve them, one typically resorts to robust optimization methods. However, this significantly increases computational complexity and…

We study computational and statistical aspects of learning Latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs). In this model, the learner interacts with an MDP drawn at the beginning of each epoch from an unknown mixture of MDPs. To sidestep known…

The Markov decision process (MDP) formulation used to model many real-world sequential decision making problems does not efficiently capture the setting where the set of available decisions (actions) at each time step is stochastic.…

We study group fairness in the context of feedback loops induced by meritocratic selection into programs that themselves confer additional advantage, like college admissions. We introduce a stylized, yet novel inter-generational model for…

A labelled Markov decision process is a labelled Markov chain with nondeterminism, i.e., together with a strategy a labelled MDP induces a labelled Markov chain. The model is related to interval Markov chains. Motivated by applications of…

We present algorithms to effectively represent a set of Markov decision processes (MDPs), whose optimal policies have already been learned, by a smaller source subset for lifelong, policy-reuse-based transfer learning in reinforcement…

In this work, we provide theoretical guarantees for reward decomposition in deterministic MDPs. Reward decomposition is a special case of Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning, that allows one to learn many policies in parallel and combine…

Traditional approaches to ensure group fairness in algorithmic decision making aim to equalize ``total'' error rates for different subgroups in the population. In contrast, we argue that the fairness approaches should instead focus only on…

The definition and implementation of fairness in automated decisions has been extensively studied by the research community. Yet, there hides fallacious reasoning, misleading assertions, and questionable practices at the foundations of the…

In this work, we study discrete-time Markov decision processes (MDPs) under constraints with Borel state and action spaces and where all the performance functions have the same form of the expected total reward (ETR) criterion over the…

Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are mathematical models of sequential decision-making under uncertainty that have found applications in healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and others. In these models, a decision-maker observes the state…