arXiv Machine Learning

Q-Learning Lab: Teaching Reinforcement Learning Through Learner-Generated Trace Analysis

arXiv:2607. 10802v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning is usually introduced through the Bellman update, yet the equation often remains abstract to undergraduates: they watch policy arrows converge but rarely observe how each value is computed or why an action is chosen.

arXiv AI
Jul 3

Procedural Memory Distillation: Online Reflection for Self-Improving Language Models

arXiv:2607. 01480v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR), along with recent selfdistillation variants such as SDPO, evaluates each rollout against a verifier and updates the policy from that episode-level signal.

By Ye Liu, Srijan Bansal, Bo Pang, Yang Li, Zeyu Leo Liu, Yifei Ming, Zixuan Ke, Shafiq Joty, Semih Yavuz
arXiv AI
Jun 3

What Makes Interaction Trajectories Effective for Training Terminal Agents?

arXiv:2606. 03461v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Stronger code agents are commonly assumed to be superior teachers for post-training, yet this assumption remains poorly disentangled from task difficulty, harness design, and student capacity.

By Sidi Yang, Chaofan Tao, Jierun Chen, Tiezheng Yu, Ruoyu Wang, Yuxin Jiang, Yiming Du, Wendong Xu, Jing Xiong, Taiqiang Wu, Lifeng Shang, Xiaohui Li, Ngai Wong, Haoli Bai
arXiv AI
Aug 6

Instruction-Conditioned Exploration for Reinforcement Learning with Self-Distillation to an Unconditioned Policy

arXiv:2608. 02087v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Post-training Large Language Models (LLMs) with Reinforcement Learning (RL) has become an important tool for improving model capabilities, but the LLM action-space structure introduces challenges distinct from classical RL, with implications for inducing exploration.

By Jim Dilkes, Vahid Yazdanpanah, Sebastian Stein