arXiv Machine Learning By Silviu Pitis

Rationalizing Boltzmann Rationality: An Axiomatic Characterization of Entropy-Regularized Policies

Read the original on arXiv Machine Learning →

arXiv:2607. 17316v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The softmax policy $\pi(a \mid s) \propto \exp(\beta Q(s,a))$ is the default model of stochastic choice in reinforcement learning (RL).

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arXiv AI
Aug 14

Annealed Softmax Greedy in Many-Armed Bayesian Bandits

arXiv:2605. 31034v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) and group-based policy optimization methods such as GRPO update a stochastic policy by sampling multiple completions per prompt and increasing the policy's probability on those with higher reward, regularized by a KL penalty toward a reference policy.

By William Overman, Mohsen Bayati
arXiv AI
Aug 19

Quantifying Risk Under Evolving Uncertainty: Belief-Dependent Robustness for Safe Sequential Decision Making

The paper introduces RATTL (Risk-Adversarial Total-Reward Learning), a framework that adjusts an agent’s caution based on epistemic uncertainty by using a Bayesian posterior over dynamics and a Wasserstein ambiguity set whose radius depends on that posterior. As evidence accumulates, the radius shrinks, smoothly transitioning the agent’s behavior from worst-case robustness to risk-neutral reward maximization. The authors prove a Safety Sandwich theorem showing RATTL’s value lies between the uninformed robust value and the full-knowledge optimum, and demonstrate the method on a binary-hazard example where the criterion reduces to Conditional Value-at-Risk.

By Deep Kumar Ganguly, Jan Kretinsky