Related papers: Blackwell-Monotone Updating Rules
There are several well-known justifications for conditioning as the appropriate method for updating a single probability measure, given an observation. However, there is a significant body of work arguing for sets of probability measures,…
Boolean automata networks (aka Boolean networks) are space-time discrete dynamical systems, studied as a model of computation and as a representative model of natural phenomena. A collection of simple entities (the automata) update their…
An agent must try new behaviors to explore and improve. In high-stakes environments, an agent that violates safety constraints may cause harm and must be taken offline, curtailing any future interaction. Imitating old behavior is safe, but…
Duda, Hart, and Nilsson have set forth a method for rule-based inference systems to use in updating the probabilities of hypotheses on the basis of multiple items of new evidence. Pednault, Zucker, and Muresan claimed to give conditions…
We study conditioning on null events, or surprises, and behaviorally characterize the Ordered Surprises (OS) representation of beliefs. For feasible events, our Decision Maker (DM) is Bayesian. For null events, our DM considers a hierarchy…
Bayesian optimization is a methodology to optimize black-box functions. Traditionally, it focuses on the setting where you can arbitrarily query the search space. However, many real-life problems do not offer this flexibility; in…
An evolutionary form of a generalized Bayesian update method, which is strictly derivative- free yet directed through an additive update term based purely on the statistical moments of the design variables, is proposed for nonlinear inverse…
In a combinatorial auction with item bidding, agents participate in multiple single-item second-price auctions at once. As some items might be substitutes, agents need to strategize in order to maximize their utilities. A number of results…
Long-term autonomy requires autonomous systems to adapt as their capabilities no longer perform as expected. To achieve this, a system must first be capable of detecting such changes. In this position paper, we describe a system…
A key problem in reinforcement learning for control with general function approximators (such as deep neural networks and other nonlinear functions) is that, for many algorithms employed in practice, updates to the policy or $Q$-function…
Background: Confirmation bias is the tendency to acquire or evaluate new information in a way that is consistent with one's preexisting beliefs. It is omnipresent in psychology, economics, and even scientific practices. Prior theoretical…
We study the convergence of the log-linear non-Bayesian social learning update rule, for a group of agents that collectively seek to identify a parameter that best describes a joint sequence of observations. Contrary to recent literature,…
We analyze a model of learning and belief formation in networks in which agents follow Bayes rule yet they do not recall their history of past observations and cannot reason about how other agents' beliefs are formed. They do so by making…
Blackwell approachability, regret minimization and calibration are three criteria evaluating a strategy (or an algorithm) in different sequential decision problems, or repeated games between a player and Nature. Although they have at first…
We study a repeated information design setting in which the receiver, who is also the decision-maker, updates beliefs in a systematically biased way. More specifically, a distorted posterior in our model can be written as a convex…
We consider Bayesian optimization of an expensive-to-evaluate black-box objective function, where we also have access to cheaper approximations of the objective. In general, such approximations arise in applications such as reinforcement…
We apply Blackwell optimality to repeated games. An equilibrium whose strategy profile is sequentially rational for all high enough discount factors simultaneously is a Blackwell (subgame-perfect, perfect public, etc.) equilibrium. The bite…
We study a setting where a group of agents, each receiving partially informative private observations, seek to collaboratively learn the true state (among a set of hypotheses) that explains their joint observation profiles over time. To…
We present a model for studying communities of epistemically interacting agents who update their belief states by averaging (in a specified way) the belief states of other agents in the community. The agents in our model have a rich belief…
A bilevel optimization problem consists of two optimization problems nested as an upper- and a lower-level problem, in which the optimality of the lower-level problem defines a constraint for the upper-level problem. This paper considers…