arXiv Machine Learning

Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Regret Optimization for Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

arXiv:2605. 00155v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is a central post-training tool for aligning large language models, but its training reward is only a learned proxy for true human utility.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 30

Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Regret Optimization

arXiv:2504. 10796v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Distributionally robust optimization (DRO) is widely used for decision-making under uncertainty, but its adversarial focus on worst-case loss can lead to overly conservative policies.

By Lukas-Benedikt Fiechtner, Jose Blanchet
arXiv AI
Jun 9

A Unifying Lens on Reward Uncertainty in RLHF

arXiv:2606. 09073v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is bottlenecked by \emph{reward hacking}, where the policy exploits errors in a proxy reward model (RM) and produces high RM scores without genuine quality gains.

By Ely Hahami, Yoel Zimmermann, Ray Zhou, Jack Benarroch Jedlicki
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

WTF?! Simulation-Free Reinforcement Learning with Wasserstein-Tilted Flow Maps

The paper introduces Wasserstein‑Tilted Flow Maps (WTF), a simulation‑free reinforcement learning method that fine‑tunes pre‑trained flow‑based generative models by adding an optimal transport regularizer derived from the model’s drift. Unlike traditional KL‑reward tilting, WTF transports individual samples toward higher reward, framing the problem as a deterministic optimal control task on the flow map. Experiments on ImageNet‑256 and text‑to‑image demonstrate that WTF achieves higher reward and comparable or better diversity while reducing training compute by up to 280×.

By Abbas Mammadov, Jerry Y. Huang, Justin Lin, Partha Kaushik, Sheel Shah, Kartik Nair, Yee Whye Teh, Nicholas M. Boffi
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 12

Risk-Averse Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Online Learning

arXiv:2602. 20403v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study distributionally robust online learning, where a risk-averse learner updates decisions sequentially to guard against worst-case distributions drawn from a Wasserstein ambiguity set centered at past observations.

By Guixian Chen, Salar Fattahi, Soroosh Shafiee