Conservative Dueling Bandits: Preference Learning under Baseline Constraints
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The paper introduces conservative contextual dueling bandits, which enforce that each displayed item’s cumulative score remains above a specified fraction of a trusted baseline’s score. It presents algorithms—MaxInP-BC for linear utilities and BTIGW-BC for general utilities—that guarantee safety with high probability while achieving sublinear regret. Experiments show these methods satisfy the safety constraint more reliably than unconstrained counterparts, with only a moderate increase in regret.
arXiv:2606. 19883v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study a multi-agent multi-armed bandit problem in the competitive setup with two-sided matching markets under a human centric decision making model.
arXiv:2605. 01961v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Learning from human preference data is becoming a useful tool, from fine-tuning large language models to training reinforcement learning agents.
The paper introduces a new approach to safety in contextual bandits with continuous actions, focusing on high‑probability constraints on the realized cost rather than expected cost. It presents the High‑Probability Constrained UCB algorithm, which balances reward exploration with conservative safety estimation, and provides theoretical regret guarantees for linear models and extensions to general function classes. Experiments demonstrate that this realized‑cost safety framework significantly reduces safety violations compared to expected‑cost constrained methods.
The paper introduces a new approach to safety in contextual bandits with continuous actions by enforcing high‑probability constraints on the realized cost rather than on its expectation. It proposes the High‑Probability Constrained UCB algorithm, which balances optimistic reward exploration with pessimistic safety estimation. The authors provide theoretical regret guarantees for linear models and extend the analysis to general function classes, demonstrating experimentally that realized‑cost constraints significantly reduce safety violations compared to expected‑cost baselines.
The paper investigates preference-based bandits where a learner selects pairs of arms and receives binary preference feedback modeled by Bradley–Terry. It introduces the locally sensitive eluder dimension, a new complexity measure for logistic preference feedback, and proposes the GINOP algorithm that uses log-loss confidence sets to balance optimism and exploration. The authors prove a first-order regret bound showing that learning with preference feedback can be as statistically efficient as learning from direct rewards, and they validate their theory with empirical experiments.