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Multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) algorithms tackle sequential decision problems where agents may have different preferences over (possibly conflicting) reward functions. Such algorithms often learn a set of policies (each…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-16 Lucas N. Alegre , Ana L. C. Bazzan , Diederik M. Roijers , Ann Nowé , Bruno C. da Silva

To unbiasedly evaluate multiple target policies, the dominant approach among RL practitioners is to run and evaluate each target policy separately. However, this evaluation method is far from efficient because samples are not shared across…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-30 Shuze Daniel Liu , Claire Chen , Shangtong Zhang

We propose a new perspective on representation learning in reinforcement learning based on geometric properties of the space of value functions. We leverage this perspective to provide formal evidence regarding the usefulness of value…

Sampling efficiency is a key bottleneck in reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards. Existing group-based policy optimization methods, such as GRPO, allocate a fixed number of rollouts for all training prompts. This uniform allocation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-06 Hieu Trung Nguyen , Bao Nguyen , Wenao Ma , Yuzhi Zhao , Ruifeng She , Viet Anh Nguyen

Most reinforcement learning algorithms seek a single optimal strategy that solves a given task. However, it can often be valuable to learn a diverse set of solutions, for instance, to make an agent's interaction with users more engaging, or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-09 Wentse Chen , Shiyu Huang , Yuan Chiang , Tim Pearce , Wei-Wei Tu , Ting Chen , Jun Zhu

Exploration is a key problem in reinforcement learning, since agents can only learn from data they acquire in the environment. With that in mind, maintaining a population of agents is an attractive method, as it allows data be collected…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-08 Jack Parker-Holder , Aldo Pacchiano , Krzysztof Choromanski , Stephen Roberts

Policy evaluation estimates the performance of a policy by (1) collecting data from the environment and (2) processing raw data into a meaningful estimate. Due to the sequential nature of reinforcement learning, any improper data-collecting…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-21 Shuze Daniel Liu , Claire Chen , Shangtong Zhang

Recent advancements in agentic test-time scaling allow models to gather environmental feedback before committing to final actions. A key limitation of existing methods is that they typically employ undifferentiated exploration strategies,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Xingyuan Hua , Sheng Yue , Ju Ren

Inverse Reinforcement Learning addresses the problem of inferring an expert's reward function from demonstrations. However, in many applications, we not only have access to the expert's near-optimal behavior, but we also observe part of her…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-03 Giorgia Ramponi , Gianluca Drappo , Marcello Restelli

In many real-world applications, reinforcement learning (RL) agents might have to solve multiple tasks, each one typically modeled via a reward function. If reward functions are expressed linearly, and the agent has previously learned a set…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-24 Lucas N. Alegre , Ana L. C. Bazzan , Bruno C. da Silva

The ability of a reinforcement learning (RL) agent to learn about many reward functions at the same time has many potential benefits, such as the decomposition of complex tasks into simpler ones, the exchange of information between tasks,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-20 Diana Borsa , André Barreto , John Quan , Daniel Mankowitz , Rémi Munos , Hado van Hasselt , David Silver , Tom Schaul

This paper investigates estimating the variance of a temporal-difference learning agent's update target. Most reinforcement learning methods use an estimate of the value function, which captures how good it is for the agent to be in a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-02-15 Craig Sherstan , Brendan Bennett , Kenny Young , Dylan R. Ashley , Adam White , Martha White , Richard S. Sutton

Offline reinforcement learning often relies on behavior regularization that enforces policies to remain close to the dataset distribution. However, such approaches fail to distinguish between high-value and low-value actions in their…

Flow-matching policies have emerged as a powerful paradigm for generalist robotics. These models are trained to imitate an action chunk, conditioned on sensor observations and textual instructions. Often, training demonstrations are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Samuel Pfrommer , Yixiao Huang , Somayeh Sojoudi

In this paper, we consider the problem of adjusting the exploration rate when using value-of-information-based exploration. We do this by converting the value-of-information optimization into a problem of finding equilibria of a flow for a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-03 Isaac J. Sledge , Jose C. Principe

Learning optimal policies from historical data enables personalization in a wide variety of applications including healthcare, digital recommendations, and online education. The growing policy learning literature focuses on settings where…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-11-17 Ruohan Zhan , Zhimei Ren , Susan Athey , Zhengyuan Zhou

Reinforcement learning agents need exploratory behaviors to escape from local optima. These behaviors may include both immediate dithering perturbation and temporally consistent exploration. To achieve these, a stochastic policy model that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-12-27 Sirui Xie , Junning Huang , Lanxin Lei , Chunxiao Liu , Zheng Ma , Wei Zhang , Liang Lin

Arguably, intelligent agents ought to be able to discover their own questions so that in learning answers for them they learn unanticipated useful knowledge and skills; this departs from the focus in much of machine learning on agents…

Off-policy learning refers to the problem of learning the value function of a way of behaving, or policy, while following a different policy. Gradient-based off-policy learning algorithms, such as GTD and TDC/GQ, converge even when using…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-12-15 Lucas Lehnert , Doina Precup

In offline reinforcement learning, weighted regression is a common method to ensure the learned policy stays close to the behavior policy and to prevent selecting out-of-sample actions. In this work, we show that due to the limited…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-01 Huayu Chen , Cheng Lu , Chengyang Ying , Hang Su , Jun Zhu