Related papers: Mollification Effects of Policy Gradient Methods
Motivated by policy gradient methods in the context of reinforcement learning, we identify a large deviation rate function for the iterates generated by stochastic gradient descent for possibly non-convex objectives satisfying a…
Policy gradients methods apply to complex, poorly understood, control problems by performing stochastic gradient descent over a parameterized class of polices. Unfortunately, even for simple control problems solvable by standard dynamic…
Deep reinforcement learning can generate complex control policies, but requires large amounts of training data to work effectively. Recent work has attempted to address this issue by leveraging differentiable simulators. However, inherent…
Reinforcement learning offers the promise of automating the acquisition of complex behavioral skills. However, compared to commonly used and well-understood supervised learning methods, reinforcement learning algorithms can be brittle,…
Recent work has shown that augmenting environments with language descriptions improves policy learning. However, for environments with complex language abstractions, learning how to ground language to observations is difficult due to…
Reinforcement learning is a framework for learning to act sequentially in an unknown environment. We propose a natural approach for modeling policy structure in policy gradients. The key idea is to optimize for a subset of future rewards:…
State-of-the-art model-based Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches either use gradient-free, population-based methods for planning, learned policy networks, or a combination of policy networks and planning. Hybrid approaches that combine…
Deep Reinforcement Learning (Deep RL) has been receiving increasingly more attention thanks to its encouraging performance on a variety of control tasks. Yet, conventional regularization techniques in training neural networks (e.g., $L_2$…
We consider an improper reinforcement learning setting where a learner is given $M$ base controllers for an unknown Markov decision process, and wishes to combine them optimally to produce a potentially new controller that can outperform…
In the era of deep reinforcement learning, making progress is more complex, as the collected experience must be compressed into a deep model for future exploitation and sampling. Many papers have shown that training a deep learning policy…
Reinforcement learning (RL) is currently one of the most prominent methods for optimizing dynamical systems, with breakthrough results across various fields. The framework is based on the concept of a Markov decision process (MDP), leading…
Counterfactual reasoning from logged data has become increasingly important for many applications such as web advertising or healthcare. In this paper, we address the problem of learning stochastic policies with continuous actions from the…
The infinite horizon setting is widely adopted for problems of reinforcement learning (RL). These invariably result in stationary policies that are optimal. In many situations, finite horizon control problems are of interest and for such…
Machine learning (ML) methods already permeate environmental decision-making, from processing high-dimensional data on earth systems to monitoring compliance with environmental regulations. Of the ML techniques available to address pressing…
We introduce a method to verify stochastic reinforcement learning (RL) policies. This approach is compatible with any RL algorithm as long as the algorithm and its corresponding environment collectively adhere to the Markov property. In…
This paper deals with distributed policy optimization in reinforcement learning, which involves a central controller and a group of learners. In particular, two typical settings encountered in several applications are considered:…
Policy gradient methods are one of the most successful approaches for solving challenging reinforcement learning problems. Despite their empirical successes, many state-of-the-art policy gradient algorithms for discounted problems deviate…
Reinforcement Learning algorithms are primarily focused on learning a policy that maximizes expected return. As a result, the learned policy can exploit one or few reward sources. However, in many natural situations, it is desirable to…
While standard reinforcement learning optimizes a single reward signal, many applications require optimizing a nonlinear utility $f(J_1^\pi,\dots,J_M^\pi)$ over multiple objectives, where each $J_m^\pi$ denotes the expected discounted…
Climate policy development faces significant challenges due to deep uncertainty, complex system dynamics, and competing stakeholder interests. Climate simulation methods, such as Earth System Models, have become valuable tools for policy…