arXiv Machine Learning

PMCTS: Principled Parallelized Inference Time Scaling with Particle Monte Carlo Tree Search

The paper introduces Particle MCTS (PMCTS), a parallelized version of Monte Carlo Tree Search designed for GPU acceleration and batch-parallel neural network evaluations. PMCTS preserves policy improvement guarantees of modern MCTS algorithms while scaling efficiently with parallel compute. Empirical results show that PMCTS consistently outperforms or matches heuristic-based baselines across various MCTS and reinforcement learning domains, including chess, Go, and both discrete and continuous control benchmarks.

arXiv AI
Sep 17

Online Robust Reinforcement Learning Through Monte-Carlo Planning

The paper introduces a robust variant of Monte Carlo Tree Search that addresses ambiguities in transition dynamics and reward distributions, bridging the gap between simulation-based planning and real-world deployment. It incorporates a robust power mean backup operator and exploration bonuses to guarantee finite-sample convergence at every node, achieving an ≠O(n−1/2) convergence rate for root value estimation comparable to standard MCTS. Empirical results demonstrate robust performance in planning tasks even under significant model mismatches.

By Tuan Dam, Kishan Panaganti, Brahim Driss, Adam Wierman
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Is Monte Carlo Tree Search Just Every-Visit Monte Carlo Control?

The article argues that Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and every‑visit Monte Carlo (MC) control are essentially the same method, differing only in terminology and presentation. It shows that MCTS’s four stages—selection, expansion, simulation, and backup—can be reduced to two core operations: sampling trajectories under the current policy and performing every‑visit MC updates. The note aims to make this equivalence explicit and easier to recognize.

By Xianyi Wu
arXiv AI
Jul 10

Principled Analysis of Deep Reinforcement Learning Evaluation and Design Paradigms

arXiv:2607. 07769v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Starting from the utilization of deep neural networks to approximate the state-action value function that led to winning one of the most challenging games, to algorithmic advancements that allowed solving problems without even explicitly stating the rules of the challenge at hand, reinforcement learning research has been the center of remarkable scientific progress for the past decade.

By Ezgi Korkmaz
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

Agentic Monte Carlo: Simulating Reinforcement Learning for Black-Box Agents

arXiv:2606. 05296v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM agents operate in two distinct regimes: open-weight agents amenable to reinforcement learning (RL) and black-box agents whose behaviour must be controlled purely at test time.

By Dae Yon Hwang, Raunaq Suri, Valentin Villecroze, Anthony L. Caterini, Jesse C. Cresswell, No\"el Vouitsis, Brendan Leigh Ross
arXiv AI
Sep 30

Learn from the Gap: Differential-Aware Advantage Pruning with Adaptive Rollout Sampling for GRPO

The paper introduces FastRL, a reinforcement learning framework designed to enhance the efficiency of Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and its variants. FastRL employs an advantage-aware pruning strategy that retains high-advantage trajectories while preserving gradient diversity, and an adaptive rollout sampling mechanism that adjusts sampling scale during training based on historical pruning data. Experiments show that FastRL can be integrated into GRPO, DAPO, and GSPO, yielding a 2.07× speedup on Geometry3K and GeoQA8K-R1V and a 1.64% accuracy improvement on visual reasoning benchmarks.

By Jiahua Yang, Zhiwei Yang, Xianpeng Zhang, Dongyu Chen, Xing Chen, Tianhuang Su, Haonan Lu, Quanlong Guan, Kai Tang, Chuangchuang Wang