arXiv Machine Learning

Position: RL Researchers Need to Distinguish Between Solving Simulators and Using Simulators as a Proxy

arXiv:2606. 28433v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: One goal in reinforcement learning (RL) research is to understand general-purpose sequential decision-making, using benchmark simulators as a proxy for learning in deployment settings.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 14

Reinforcement Learning in the Real World: A Survey of Statistical Challenges and Future Directions

arXiv:2601. 15353v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved remarkable success in real-world decision-making across diverse domains, including gaming, robotics, online advertising, public health, and natural language processing.

By Asim H. Gazi, Yongyi Guo, Daiqi Gao, Ziping Xu, Kelly W. Zhang, Susan A. Murphy
arXiv AI
Sep 12

SimSkill: A Self-Evolving LLM Agent for Skill and Knowledge Accumulation in Traffic Simulation

SimSkill is a self‑evolving large‑language‑model agent designed for the SUMO traffic simulator. It continuously detects capability gaps, creates and solves environment‑grounded tasks, verifies solutions via an action–critic loop, and stores experiences in episodic, procedural, and semantic memory. Evaluations on two held‑out benchmarks across three LLM backbones show up to a 25‑percentage‑point improvement in verified success, with procedural and semantic memory contributing complementarily.

By Qi Liu, Qinzheng Wang, Can Li, Yiming Bie, Wanjng Ma
arXiv AI
Jun 30

Hierarchical Experimentalist Agents

arXiv:2606. 29315v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to take actions in the real world and support human decision-making, yet most agents rely on parametric knowledge, fixed post-training data, retrieval, or search.

By Abhranil Chandra, Sankaran Vaidyanathan, Utsav Dhanuka, Varun Gandhi, Scott Niekum