English
Related papers

Related papers: Robust Losses for Learning Value Functions

200 papers

This paper presents a novel approach to reinforcement learning (RL) for control systems that provides probabilistic stability guarantees using finite data. Leveraging Lyapunov's method, we propose a probabilistic stability theorem that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Minghao Han , Lixian Zhang , Chenliang Liu , Zhipeng Zhou , Jun Wang , Wei Pan

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become central to training large language models (LLMs), yet the field lacks predictive scaling methodologies comparable to those established for pre-training. Despite rapidly rising compute budgets, there is…

The problem of solving Markov decision processes under function approximation remains a fundamental challenge, even under linear function approximation settings. A key difficulty arises from a geometric mismatch: while the Bellman…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-09 Hyukjun Yang , Han-Dong Lim , Donghwan Lee

This paper considers the problem of solving constrained reinforcement learning (RL) problems with anytime guarantees, meaning that the algorithmic solution must yield a constraint-satisfying policy at every iteration of its evolution. Our…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-03 Pol Mestres , Arnau Marzabal , Jorge Cortés

We study reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation in Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) satisfying \emph{linear Bellman completeness} -- a fundamental setting where the Bellman backup of any linear value function remains…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-25 Zakaria Mhammedi , Alexander Rakhlin , Nneka Okolo

Reinforcement learning is structurally harder than supervised learning because the policy changes the data distribution it learns from. The resulting fragility is especially visible in large-model training, where the training and rollout…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Rasool Fakoor , Murdock Aubry , Nicholas Stranges , Alexander J. Smola

Reinforcement learning (RL) plays a central role in improving the reasoning and alignment of large language models, yet its efficiency critically depends on how training data are selected. Existing online selection strategies predominantly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Xinyu Zhou , Boyu Zhu , Haotian Zhang , Huiming Wang , Zhijiang Guo

In this work, we address the problem of determining reliable policies in reinforcement learning (RL), with a focus on optimization under uncertainty and the need for performance guarantees. While classical RL algorithms aim at maximizing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Nadir Farhi

Reinforcement learning (RL) with continuous time and state/action spaces is often data-intensive and brittle under nuisance variability and shift, motivating methods that exploit value-preserving structures to stabilize and improve…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Zuyuan Zhang , Fei Xu Yu , Tian Lan

Finding the minimal structural assumptions that empower sample-efficient learning is one of the most important research directions in Reinforcement Learning (RL). This paper advances our understanding of this fundamental question by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-19 Chi Jin , Qinghua Liu , Sobhan Miryoosefi

Deep neural networks tend to underestimate uncertainty and produce overly confident predictions. Recently proposed solutions, such as MC Dropout and SDENet, require complex training and/or auxiliary out-of-distribution data. We propose a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-14 Akib Mashrur , Wei Luo , Nayyar A. Zaidi , Antonio Robles-Kelly

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR), which uses simple binary feedback to post-train large language models, has found significant empirical success. However, a principled understanding of why it works is lacking. This…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Joe Suk , Yaqi Duan

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in analyzing the non-asymptotic behavior of model-free reinforcement learning algorithms. However, the performance of such algorithms in non-ideal environments, such as in the presence of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-06 Sreejeet Maity , Aritra Mitra

Three major challenges in reinforcement learning are the complex dynamical systems with large state spaces, the costly data acquisition processes, and the deviation of real-world dynamics from the training environment deployment. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-04 Shyam Sundhar Ramesh , Pier Giuseppe Sessa , Yifan Hu , Andreas Krause , Ilija Bogunovic

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in decision-making tasks, where not only accuracy but also reliable confidence estimates are essential. Well-calibrated confidence enables downstream systems to decide when to trust a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Duygu Nur Yaldiz , Evangelia Spiliopoulou , Zheng Qi , Siddharth Varia , Srikanth Doss , Nikolaos Pappas

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful machine learning technique that enables an intelligent agent to learn an optimal policy that maximizes the cumulative rewards in sequential decision making. Most of methods in the existing…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-01-06 Chengchun Shi , Zhengling Qi , Jianing Wang , Fan Zhou

Fairness plays a crucial role in various multi-agent systems (e.g., communication networks, financial markets, etc.). Many multi-agent dynamical interactions can be cast as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). While existing research has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-02 Peizhong Ju , Arnob Ghosh , Ness B. Shroff

Under losses which are potentially heavy-tailed, we consider the task of minimizing sums of the loss mean and standard deviation, without trying to accurately estimate the variance. By modifying a technique for variance-free robust mean…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-12 Matthew J. Holland

Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) address the challenge of model uncertainty by optimizing the worst-case performance over an uncertainty set of MDPs. In this paper, we focus on the robust average-reward MDPs under the model-free…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-19 Yue Wang , Alvaro Velasquez , George Atia , Ashley Prater-Bennette , Shaofeng Zou

Model calibration is essential for ensuring that the predictions of deep neural networks accurately reflect true probabilities in real-world classification tasks. However, deep networks often produce over-confident or under-confident…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-01 Jinxu Lin , Linwei Tao , Minjing Dong , Chang Xu
‹ Prev 1 8 9 10 Next ›