arXiv AI

Rethinking GFlowNet Training: Negative Reinforce Dynamics

The paper introduces Negative Reinforce Dynamics (NRD), a new training approach for Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) that addresses the exploration–correctness trade‑off inherent in standard semi‑gradient updates. By linking the full gradient to a min‑min dynamic between a GFlowNet and a decoupled sampler, NRD effectively reduces balance errors in high‑error regions while preserving a single‑policy framework. Experiments on standard benchmarks show that NRD speeds up convergence and improves exploration efficiency compared to existing methods, without requiring a separate teacher or auxiliary policy.

arXiv AI
Jun 6

Retry Policy Gradients in Continuous Action Spaces

arXiv:2606. 05888v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Retry-based objectives such as pass@K and max@K optimize the best return obtained from multiple sampled trajectories, and recent work has shown that they can promote exploration without explicit exploration bonuses.

By Soichiro Nishimori, Paavo Parmas
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 6

Stable GFlowNets with TV Monitoring and Probabilistic Guarantees

arXiv:2605. 01729v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) learn to sample states proportional to an unnormalized reward.

By Zengxiang Lei, Ananth Shreekumar, Jonathan Rosenthal, Ruoyu Song, Alvaro A. Cardenas, Daniel J. Fremont, Dongyan Xu, Satish Ukkusuri, Z. Berkay Celik
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 7

IFlowNets: Extending Generative Samplers to Learn Strategies in Incomplete Information Games

arXiv:2608. 05422v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: While many algorithms blend reinforcement learning (RL) with counterfactual regret (CFR) methods to leverage tradeoffs in computational speed and performance, there are fewer investigations into generative sampling frameworks in game theoretic applications in incomplete information games.

By Conor M. Artman, Nicholas Di, Scott Perkins
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 12

Towards Understanding the Training of GFlowNets: A Theoretical Perspective

The paper presents a theoretical framework linking balance objectives in Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets) to sampling accuracy. It establishes bounds on terminal symmetric KL divergence in terms of expected balance loss and shows how approximate stationarity controls distribution error, accounting for parameterization incompleteness. The authors prove finite‑time convergence rates under various sampling and backward‑policy regimes, clarifying the roles of coverage, parameterization, and moving components in GFlowNet training.

By Rui Hu, Yu Chen, Zhuoran Li, Longbo Huang
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Trajectory balance: Improved credit assignment in GFlowNets

The paper introduces a new learning objective called trajectory balance for Generative Flow Networks (GFlowNets), aiming to improve credit assignment across long action sequences. It demonstrates that minimizing this objective yields a policy that samples exactly from the target distribution. Experiments on four domains show that trajectory balance enhances convergence, sample diversity, and robustness to long sequences and large action spaces.

By Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Moksh Jain, Emmanuel Bengio, Chen Sun, Yoshua Bengio
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
Oct 12

DiffusionART: Efficient, Stable and Scalable Reinforcement of Diffusion Models

DiffusionART introduces a new reinforcement learning framework for diffusion models that aggregates prompt rewards into a shared direction, eliminating consistency forces inherent in prior methods. It employs a trust‑region‑masked second update for drift‑adaptive restoration, removing the need for EMA tuning and differentiable reward models. Experiments on image and video generation show that DiffusionART trains more efficiently and stably, achieving higher mean rewards with significantly fewer GPU hours compared to existing approaches.

By Zhenglin Wan, Jiayu Chen, Zhengfeiyang Zhang, Pengfei Zhou, Wangbo Zhao, Fangyuan Kong, Pengfei Wan, Kun Gai, Yang You
arXiv AI
Sep 3

Action abstractions for amortized sampling

The paper introduces a method that integrates action abstraction into policy optimization for reinforcement learning and generative flow networks. By iteratively identifying frequently used action subsequences in high‑reward trajectories and treating them as single high‑level actions, the approach expands the action space and improves sample efficiency. Experiments on synthetic and real‑world tasks show that this technique discovers diverse high‑reward states more effectively, especially on challenging exploration problems, and yields interpretable abstract actions that reflect the underlying reward structure.

By Oussama Boussif, L\'ena N\'ehale Ezzine, Joseph D Viviano, Micha{\l} Koziarski, Moksh Jain, Esmeralda S. Whitammer, Emmanuel Bengio, Rim Assouel, Yoshua Bengio
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