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Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is essential for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values. However, RLHF is susceptible to \emph{reward hacking}, where the agent exploits flaws in the reward function rather…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-22 Jiayi Fu , Xuandong Zhao , Chengyuan Yao , Heng Wang , Qi Han , Yanghua Xiao

We introduce Random Reward Perturbation (RRP), a novel exploration strategy for reinforcement learning (RL). Our theoretical analyses demonstrate that adding zero-mean noise to environmental rewards effectively enhances policy diversity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-11 Haozhe Ma , Guoji Fu , Zhengding Luo , Jiele Wu , Tze-Yun Leong

While Large Language Models (LLMs) excel at generating human-like text, aligning their outputs with complex, qualitative goals like pedagogical soundness remains a significant challenge. Standard reinforcement learning techniques often rely…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-17 Francesco Pappone , Ruggero Marino Lazzaroni , Federico Califano , Niccolò Gentile , Roberto Marras

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an effective approach to motion planning in autonomous driving, where an optimal driving policy can be automatically learned using the interaction data with the environment. Nevertheless, the reward function…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-08-28 Lin-Chi Wu , Zengjie Zhang , Sofie Haesaert , Zhiqiang Ma , Zhiyong Sun

Integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) with external tools via multi-agent systems offers a promising new paradigm for decomposing and solving complex problems. However, training these systems remains notoriously difficult due to the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Yanming Li , Xuelin Zhang , WenJie Lu , Ziye Tang , Maodong Wu , Haotian Luo , Tongtong Wu , Zijie Peng , Hongze Mi , Yibo Feng , Naiqiang Tan , Chao Huang , Hong Chen , Li Shen

An autonomous agent embodied in a humanoid robot, in order to learn from the overwhelming flow of raw and noisy sensory, has to effectively reduce the high spatial-temporal data dimensionality. In this paper we propose a novel method of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-04-11 Wojciech Skaba

Both entropy-minimizing and entropy-maximizing (curiosity) objectives for unsupervised reinforcement learning (RL) have been shown to be effective in different environments, depending on the environment's level of natural entropy. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-19 Adriana Hugessen , Roger Creus Castanyer , Faisal Mohamed , Glen Berseth

Reward shaping is critical in reinforcement learning (RL), particularly for complex tasks where sparse rewards can hinder learning. However, choosing effective shaping rewards from a set of reward functions in a computationally efficient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-26 Chen Bo Calvin Zhang , Zhang-Wei Hong , Aldo Pacchiano , Pulkit Agrawal

Goal-conditioned reinforcement learning (RL) is an interesting extension of the traditional RL framework, where the dynamic environment and reward sparsity can cause conventional learning algorithms to fail. Reward shaping is a practical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Hongyu Ding , Yuanze Tang , Qing Wu , Bo Wang , Chunlin Chen , Zhi Wang

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is a key paradigm for aligning large language models (LLMs) with human values, yet the reward models at its core remain largely opaque. In this work, we present Sparse Autoencoder For…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Wei Shi , Ziyuan Xie , Sihang Li , Xiang Wang

Designing reward functions for continuous-control robotics often leads to subtle misalignments or reward hacking, especially in complex tasks. Preference-based RL mitigates some of these pitfalls by learning rewards from comparative…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-03-19 Anukriti Singh , Amisha Bhaskar , Peihong Yu , Souradip Chakraborty , Ruthwik Dasyam , Amrit Bedi , Pratap Tokekar

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has progressed from simple control tasks to complex real-world challenges with large state spaces. While RL excels in these tasks, training time remains a limitation. Reward shaping is a popular solution, but…

Designing reward functions for efficiently guiding reinforcement learning (RL) agents toward specific behaviors is a complex task. This is challenging since it requires the identification of reward structures that are not sparse and that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-01 Dhawal Gupta , Yash Chandak , Scott M. Jordan , Philip S. Thomas , Bruno Castro da Silva

We study reinforcement learning (RL) with no-reward demonstrations, a setting in which an RL agent has access to additional data from the interaction of other agents with the same environment. However, it has no access to the rewards or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-11 Angelos Filos , Clare Lyle , Yarin Gal , Sergey Levine , Natasha Jaques , Gregory Farquhar

Reinforcement learning (RL) has successfully automated the complex process of mining formulaic alpha factors, for creating interpretable and profitable investment strategies. However, existing methods are hampered by the sparse rewards…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Junjie Zhao , Chengxi Zhang , Chenkai Wang , Peng Yang

Today, the optimal performance of existing noise-suppression algorithms, both data-driven and those based on classic statistical methods, is range bound to specific levels of instantaneous input signal-to-noise ratios. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-07-30 Rasool Fakoor , Xiaodong He , Ivan Tashev , Shuayb Zarar

When a person is not satisfied with how a robot performs a task, they can intervene to correct it. Reward learning methods enable the robot to adapt its reward function online based on such human input, but they rely on handcrafted…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-01-13 Andreea Bobu , Marius Wiggert , Claire Tomlin , Anca D. Dragan

This paper presents an approach for accelerated learning of optimal plans for a given task represented using Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) in multi-agent systems. Given a set of options (temporally abstract actions) available to each agent,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-10-29 Nishant Doshi

Tool-using agents based on Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in tasks such as mathematical reasoning and multi-hop question answering. However, in long trajectories, agents often trigger excessive and low-quality tool calls, increasing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-25 Zeping Li , Hongru Wang , Yiwen Zhao , Guanhua Chen , Yixia Li , Keyang Chen , Yixin Cao , Guangnan Ye , Hongfeng Chai , Zhenfei Yin

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents are trained through trial-and-error interactions with the environment. This leads to a long training time for dense neural networks to achieve good performance. Hence, prohibitive computation and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-09 Ghada Sokar , Elena Mocanu , Decebal Constantin Mocanu , Mykola Pechenizkiy , Peter Stone