Nonparametric Variance-Penalized Actor-Critic: Statistical Inference for Risk-Sensitive Reinforcement Learning
Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →The Flow has not summarised this story yet — read it at arXiv Machine Learning.
The Flow has not summarised this story yet — read it at arXiv Machine Learning.
arXiv:2602. 05379v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Effective reinforcement learning (RL) for complex stochastic systems requires leveraging historical data to improve sample efficiency and accelerate policy optimization.
arXiv:2607. 26509v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Deep off-policy reinforcement learning algorithms for continuous control typically rely on neural value function approximation to guide policy improvement.
BCPPO is a new variant of Proximal Policy Optimization that uses Bachelier-inspired cost‑prediction networks to generate a smooth penalty based on disagreement among critics. The method keeps temporal‑difference learning unchanged, applies a saturation‑aware controller to manage cost penalties, and deploys only the policy network. Across extensive experiments, BCPPO outperforms comparators in achieving higher mean returns while maintaining lower or comparable CVaR in all tested tasks.
The paper introduces state abstractions that preserve the difference of Q‑functions for offline reinforcement learning, aiming to exclude irrelevant dynamics from rich state data. It proposes a dynamic generalization of the R‑learner that uses orthogonal estimation and sparse learning to estimate the Q‑function contrast, achieving faster convergence and consistency under a margin condition. Experiments on simulated and simulator‑augmented real data show variance reductions and demonstrate that the necessary information for sequential decision‑making can be smaller than that required for full state prediction.
arXiv:2511. 23310v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has emerged as an effective paradigm for post-training large language models, yet the design of its baselines and learning-rate schedules remains largely heuristic.
arXiv:2603. 09344v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning (RL) enables data-efficient and safe policy learning without online exploration, but its performance often degrades under distribution shift.