Related papers: Robust Losses for Learning Value Functions
We study the exploration problem with approximate linear action-value functions in episodic reinforcement learning under the notion of low inherent Bellman error, a condition normally employed to show convergence of approximate value…
This paper describes recursive algorithms for state estimation of linear dynamical systems when measurements are noisy with unknown bias and/or outliers. For situations with noisy and biased measurements, algorithms are proposed that…
Considered here are robust subgroup-classifier learning and testing in change-plane regressions with heavy-tailed errors, which can identify subgroups as a basis for making optimal recommendations for individualized treatment. A new…
This paper introduces a loss-based generalized Bayesian methodology for high-dimensional robust regression with serially correlated errors and predictors. The proposed framework employs a novel scaled pseudo-Huber (SPH) loss function, which…
Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) provides a principled framework for aligning AI systems with human preference data. For various reasons, e.g., personal bias, context ambiguity, lack of training, etc, human annotators may…
Many problems in robotics, such as estimating the state from noisy sensor data or aligning two point clouds, can be posed and solved as least-squares problems. Unfortunately, vanilla nonminimal solvers for least-squares problems are…
This paper designs novel nonparametric Bellman mappings in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs) for reinforcement learning (RL). The proposed mappings benefit from the rich approximating properties of RKHSs, adopt no assumptions on the…
Improving data utilization efficiency is critical for scaling reinforcement learning (RL) for long-horizon tasks where generating trajectories is expensive. However, the dominant RL methods for LLMs are largely on-policy: they update each…
We consider the problem of control in the setting of reinforcement learning (RL), where model information is not available. Policy gradient algorithms are a popular solution approach for this problem and are usually shown to converge to a…
Conventional off-policy reinforcement learning (RL) focuses on maximizing the expected return of scalar rewards. Distributional RL (DRL), in contrast, studies the distribution of returns with the distributional Bellman operator in a…
In this paper, we develop a new optimization framework for the least squares learning problem via fully connected neural networks or physics-informed neural networks. The gradient descent sometimes behaves inefficiently in deep learning…
The ordinary least squares estimate in linear regression is sensitive to the influence of errors with large variance, which reduces its robustness, especially when dealing with heavy-tailed errors or outliers frequently encountered in…
We study the problem of infinite-horizon average-reward reinforcement learning with linear Markov decision processes (MDPs). The associated Bellman operator of the problem not being a contraction makes the algorithm design challenging.…
Despite the numerous advances, reinforcement learning remains away from widespread acceptance for autonomous controller design as compared to classical methods due to lack of ability to effectively tackle the reality gap. The reliance on…
Quadratic programming is a workhorse of modern nonlinear optimization, control, and data science. Although regularized methods offer convergence guarantees under minimal assumptions on the problem data, they can exhibit the slow…
Gradient descent or its variants are popular in training neural networks. However, in deep Q-learning with neural network approximation, a type of reinforcement learning, gradient descent (also known as Residual Gradient (RG)) is barely…
Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms assume that users specify tasks by manually writing down a reward function. However, this process can be laborious and demands considerable technical expertise. Can we devise RL algorithms that instead…
Semi-functional linear regression models postulate a linear relationship between a scalar response and a functional covariate, and also include a non-parametric component involving a univariate explanatory variable. It is of practical…
Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising strategy for finetuning small language models (SLMs) to solve targeted tasks such as math and coding. However, RL algorithms tend to be resource-intensive, taking a significant amount…
Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) for downstream tasks typically exhibit a fundamental safety-capability tradeoff, where improving task performance degrades safety alignment even on benign datasets. This degradation persists across…