arXiv:2608. 06750v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Iterative refinement has significantly enhanced Large Language Model (LLM) performance; however, existing methods ranging from feedback-based Self-Refine to traditional bandit approaches often rely on static options or overlook the saturation effect.
By Shion Ishikawa, Pablo Loyola, Young-joo Chung, Yun Ching Liu
arXiv:2606. 01081v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Decision-focused learning (DFL) trains predictive models by optimizing downstream decision quality rather than standalone prediction accuracy.
By Wyame Benslimane, Tinghan Ye, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Paul Grigas
arXiv:2607. 23765v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) achieve impressive performance across multiple domains, but using the most capable model for every query is prohibitive at scale.
By Yifei Li, Zihui Gao, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan
arXiv:2604. 08149v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We consider a linear contextual bandit model where contexts and rewards are governed by a finite hidden Markov chain.
By Zhen Li (LMO, CELESTE, HEC Paris), Gilles Stoltz (LMO, CELESTE, HEC Paris)
arXiv:2604. 05859v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study Contextual Multi-Armed Bandits (CMABs) for non-episodic decision-making problems where the context includes both textual and numerical information (e.
By Uljad Berdica, Fernando Acero, Anton Ipsen, Parisa Zehtabi, Michael Cashmore, Manuela Veloso
arXiv:2608. 06559v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Contextual bandits offer a natural framework for sample-efficient personalization, but practical deployment remains difficult under sparse, biased interaction data, unreliable uncertainty estimates, and severe cold starts.
By Devansh Gupta, Shiv Tavker, Dmitry Efimov, Suchitra Sathyanarayana, Gitanjali Bhutani, Boris N. Oreshkin
The paper investigates preference-based bandits where a learner selects pairs of arms and receives binary preference feedback modeled by Bradley–Terry. It introduces the locally sensitive eluder dimension, a new complexity measure for logistic preference feedback, and proposes the GINOP algorithm that uses log-loss confidence sets to balance optimism and exploration. The authors prove a first-order regret bound showing that learning with preference feedback can be as statistically efficient as learning from direct rewards, and they validate their theory with empirical experiments.
By Ahmed Ben Yahmed (CREST, ENSAE Paris, FAIRPLAY), Marc Abeille (FAIRPLAY), Cl\'ement Calauz\`enes (FAIRPLAY)
The paper extends the idea that contexts are cheap for linear bandits from i.i.d. settings to Markovian context processes. By assuming uniform geometric ergodicity, the authors construct a stationary surrogate action set and use a delayed‑update scheme to mitigate bias from nonstationary conditional context distributions. They provide a phased algorithm for unknown stationary distributions and achieve high‑probability regret bounds comparable to standard linear bandit oracles in fast‑mixing regimes, with empirical validation showing gains over LinUCB.
By Kaan Buyukkalayci, Osama Hanna, Christina Fragouli
arXiv:2608. 16707v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as decision-making agents in settings that require sophisticated environmental exploration.
By David Eric Austin, Kaheer Suleman, Jackie Chi Kit Cheung
arXiv:2602. 17976v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In active sequential testing, also termed pure exploration, a learner is tasked with the goal to adaptively acquire information so as to identify an unknown ground-truth hypothesis with as few queries as possible.
By Alessio Russo, Yin-Ching Lee, Ryan Welch, Aldo Pacchiano
Meta-LinEXP3 is an online-within-online algorithm designed for adversarial linear contextual bandits with random action sets. It builds a task-level prior from completed tasks to guide an inner LinEXP3 learner, achieving an σO(√n) per‑task regret when context distributions are known and an σO(n^{2/3}) regret with a past‑only regularized moment estimator when they are unknown. The paper also links prior accuracy to transfer regret, showing that better priors yield sublinear, transfer‑dependent regret across tasks, and demonstrates the method on structured hyperspectral tensor sampling.
By Hao Li, Jie Xu, Zheng Xie
arXiv:2603.21716v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Efficient selection among multiple generative models is increasingly important in modern generative AI, where sampling from suboptimal models...
By Bahar Dibaei Nia, Farzan Farnia