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Related papers: Risk-Averse Learning with Varying Risk Levels

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In decision-making problems such as the multi-armed bandit, an agent learns sequentially by optimizing a certain feedback. While the mean reward criterion has been extensively studied, other measures that reflect an aversion to adverse…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-03-28 Patrick Saux , Odalric-Ambrym Maillard

We study a first-order primal-dual subgradient method to optimize risk-constrained risk-penalized optimization problems, where risk is modeled via the popular conditional value at risk (CVaR) measure. The algorithm processes independent and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-03 Avinash N. Madavan , Subhonmesh Bose

This paper develops a safety analysis method for stochastic systems that is sensitive to the possibility and severity of rare harmful outcomes. We define risk-sensitive safe sets as sub-level sets of the solution to a non-standard optimal…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-06-28 Margaret P. Chapman , Riccardo Bonalli , Kevin M. Smith , Insoon Yang , Marco Pavone , Claire J. Tomlin

This paper proposes a safety analysis method that facilitates a tunable balance between the worst-case and risk-neutral perspectives. First, we define a risk-sensitive safe set to specify the degree of safety attained by a stochastic…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-07-28 Margaret P. Chapman , Jonathan P. Lacotte , Kevin M. Smith , Insoon Yang , Yuxi Han , Marco Pavone , Claire J. Tomlin

We study risk-sensitive planning under partial observability using the dynamic risk measure Iterated Conditional Value-at-Risk (ICVaR). A policy evaluation algorithm for ICVaR is developed with finite-time performance guarantees that do not…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-29 Yaacov Pariente , Vadim Indelman

Though deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has obtained substantial success, it may encounter catastrophic failures due to the intrinsic uncertainty of both transition and observation. Most of the existing methods for safe reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-20 Chengyang Ying , Xinning Zhou , Hang Su , Dong Yan , Ning Chen , Jun Zhu

Risk measures are important key figures to measure the adequacy of the reserves of a company. The most common risk measures in practice are Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR). Recently, quantum-based algorithms are…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-01-29 Christian Laudagé , Ivica Turkalj

Risk-sensitive reinforcement learning (RL) aims to optimize policies that balance the expected reward and risk. In this paper, we present a novel risk-sensitive RL framework that employs an Iterated Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-05 Yu Chen , Yihan Du , Pihe Hu , Siwei Wang , Desheng Wu , Longbo Huang

Several authors have recently developed risk-sensitive policy gradient methods that augment the standard expected cost minimization problem with a measure of variability in cost. These studies have focused on specific risk-measures, such as…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-06-09 Aviv Tamar , Yinlam Chow , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Shie Mannor

Deep reinforcement learning has recently made significant progress in solving computer games and robotic control tasks. A known problem, though, is that policies overfit to the training environment and may not avoid rare, catastrophic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-04-02 Xinlei Pan , Daniel Seita , Yang Gao , John Canny

Risk-averse Constrained Reinforcement Learning (RaCRL) aims to learn policies that minimise the likelihood of rare and catastrophic constraint violations caused by an environment's inherent randomness. In general, risk-aversion leads to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-28 James McCarthy , Radu Marinescu , Elizabeth Daly , Ivana Dusparic

Mainstream approximate action-value iteration reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms suffer from overestimation bias, leading to suboptimal policies in high-variance stochastic environments. Quantile-based action-value iteration methods…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-09 Clinton Enwerem , Aniruddh G. Puranic , John S. Baras , Calin Belta

In the classical Reinforcement Learning (RL) setting, one aims to find a policy that maximizes its expected return. This objective may be inappropriate in safety-critical domains such as healthcare or autonomous driving, where intrinsic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-19 M. Godbout , M. Heuillet , S. Chandra , R. Bhati , A. Durand

Safety is a critical concern when deploying reinforcement learning agents for realistic tasks. Recently, safe reinforcement learning algorithms have been developed to optimize the agent's performance while avoiding violations of safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-05 Baiming Chen , Zuxin Liu , Jiacheng Zhu , Mengdi Xu , Wenhao Ding , Ding Zhao

We present the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) in the context of Markov chains and Markov decision processes with reachability and mean-payoff objectives. CVaR quantifies risk by means of the expectation of the worst p-quantile. As such it…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-05-09 Jan Křetínský , Tobias Meggendorfer

Risk-averse reinforcement learning (RARL) is critical for decision-making under uncertainty, which is especially valuable in high-stake applications. However, most existing works focus on risk measures, e.g., conditional value-at-risk…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Yudong Luo , Yangchen Pan , Jiaqi Tan , Pascal Poupart

Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) aims to maximize the expected total reward, while the risk of uncertain outcomes needs to be controlled to ensure reliable performance in a risk-averse setting. In this paper, we consider the problem…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-18 Xian Yu , Siqian Shen

Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is a family of "coherent risk measures" which generalize the traditional mathematical expectation. Widely used in mathematical finance, it is garnering increasing interest in machine learning, e.g., as an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-17 Zakaria Mhammedi , Benjamin Guedj , Robert C. Williamson

Risk sensitive decision making finds important applications in current day use cases. Existing risk measures consider a single or finite collection of random variables, which do not account for the asymptotic behaviour of underlying…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2024-05-24 Shivam Patel , Vivek Borkar

We consider reinforcement learning with performance evaluated by a dynamic risk measure. We construct a projected risk-averse dynamic programming equation and study its properties. Then we propose risk-averse counterparts of the methods of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-03-03 Umit Kose , Andrzej Ruszczynski