English
Related papers

Related papers: VIPeR: Provably Efficient Algorithm for Offline RL…

200 papers

Value iteration-type methods have been extensively studied for computing a nearly optimal value function in reinforcement learning (RL). Under a generative sampling model, these methods can achieve sharper sample complexity than policy…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-08 Zhichao Jia , Guanghui Lan

We study offline reinforcement learning under a novel model called strategic MDP, which characterizes the strategic interactions between a principal and a sequence of myopic agents with private types. Due to the bilevel structure and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-24 Mengxin Yu , Zhuoran Yang , Jianqing Fan

Safe reinforcement learning is extremely challenging--not only must the agent explore an unknown environment, it must do so while ensuring no safety constraint violations. We formulate this safe reinforcement learning (RL) problem using the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-19 Archana Bura , Aria HasanzadeZonuzy , Dileep Kalathil , Srinivas Shakkottai , Jean-Francois Chamberland

We propose a new learning framework that captures the tiered structure of many real-world user-interaction applications, where the users can be divided into two groups based on their different tolerance on exploration risks and should be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-28 Jiawei Huang , Li Zhao , Tao Qin , Wei Chen , Nan Jiang , Tie-Yan Liu

Online reinforcement learning (RL) excels in complex, safety-critical domains but suffers from sample inefficiency, training instability, and limited interpretability. Data attribution provides a principled way to trace model behavior back…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Yuzheng Hu , Fan Wu , Haotian Ye , David Forsyth , James Zou , Nan Jiang , Jiaqi W. Ma , Han Zhao

This paper studies offline policy learning, which aims at utilizing observations collected a priori (from either fixed or adaptively evolving behavior policies) to learn an optimal individualized decision rule that achieves the best overall…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Ying Jin , Zhimei Ren , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang

We investigate the theoretical aspects of offline reinforcement learning (RL) under general function approximation. While prior works (e.g., Xie et al., 2021) have established the theoretical foundations of learning a good policy from…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Xiang Li , Yuheng Zhang , Nan Jiang

We study offline Reinforcement Learning in large infinite-horizon discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the reward and transition models are linearly realizable under a known feature map. Starting from the classic linear-program…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-24 Gergely Neu , Nneka Okolo

We consider offline Reinforcement Learning (RL), where the agent does not interact with the environment and must rely on offline data collected using a behavior policy. Previous works provide policy evaluation guarantees when the target…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-26 Xumei Xi , Christina Lee Yu , Yudong Chen

Bayesian inference over the reward presents an ideal solution to the ill-posed nature of the inverse reinforcement learning problem. Unfortunately current methods generally do not scale well beyond the small tabular setting due to the need…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-15 Alex J. Chan , Mihaela van der Schaar

Offline reinforcement learning requires reconciling two conflicting aims: learning a policy that improves over the behavior policy that collected the dataset, while at the same time minimizing the deviation from the behavior policy so as to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-13 Ilya Kostrikov , Ashvin Nair , Sergey Levine

In this paper, we study the problem of efficient online reinforcement learning in the infinite horizon setting when there is an offline dataset to start with. We assume that the offline dataset is generated by an expert but with unknown…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-05 Dengwang Tang , Rahul Jain , Botao Hao , Zheng Wen

Safety is a crucial necessity in many applications of reinforcement learning (RL), whether robotic, automotive, or medical. Many existing approaches to safe RL rely on receiving numeric safety feedback, but in many cases this feedback can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-27 Andrew Bennett , Dipendra Misra , Nathan Kallus

We consider the offline reinforcement learning problem, where the aim is to learn a decision making policy from logged data. Offline RL -- particularly when coupled with (value) function approximation to allow for generalization in large or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-31 Dylan J. Foster , Akshay Krishnamurthy , David Simchi-Levi , Yunzong Xu

This work pioneers regret analysis of risk-sensitive reinforcement learning in partially observable environments with hindsight observation, addressing a gap in theoretical exploration. We introduce a novel formulation that integrates…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Tonghe Zhang , Yu Chen , Longbo Huang

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) has attracted much attention due to its ability in learning from static offline datasets and eliminating the need of interacting with the environment. Nevertheless, the success of offline RL relies…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Jiafei Lyu , Xiaoteng Ma , Le Wan , Runze Liu , Xiu Li , Zongqing Lu

Reinforcement learning (RL) with sparse and deceptive rewards is challenging because non-zero rewards are rarely obtained. Hence, the gradient calculated by the agent can be stochastic and without valid information. Recent studies that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-08 Guojian Wang , Faguo Wu , Xiao Zhang , Jianxiang Liu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Lianghuan Huang , Sagnik Anupam , Insup Lee , Shuo Li , Osbert Bastani

In many applications of Reinforcement Learning (RL), it is critically important that the algorithm performs safely, such that instantaneous hard constraints are satisfied at each step, and unsafe states and actions are avoided. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-10 Ming Shi , Yingbin Liang , Ness Shroff

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms that estimate state and state-action value functions have been shown to be effective in a variety of challenging domains, including learning control strategies from raw image pixels. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-10-26 Peter Jin , Kurt Keutzer , Sergey Levine