arXiv:2504.20877stat.MLcs.LG2025-04被引 2

用偏好度量重构强化学习中的选择策略,让算法学会混合选臂而非只选最优。

Preference-centric Bandits: Optimality of Mixtures and Regret-efficient Algorithms

  • 以偏好度量替代期望值,将风险、稳健性等纳入决策考量
  • 最优策略变为混合选臂,且需动态追踪最佳混合权重
  • 提出两类高效算法,适配不同场景下的风险敏感决策

经典多臂赌博机的目标是识别并反复选择期望奖励最高的臂,但这种功利视角忽略了分布尾部行为对不确定性和风险的影响。本文提出一种基于偏好度量(PM)的全新框架,将评估标准从期望值转向可灵活调控的偏好指标,支持风险规避、鲁棒性等复杂偏好建模。在该框架下,最优策略不再是单一选臂,而是依据特定权重混合选择多个臂。由于混合组合无限,设计此类策略面临根本性挑战。本文形式化了该框架,并提出两类后悔率高效的算法(依赖时长与即时适用),均包含估计最优混合的机制和动态追踪臂选择比例的跟踪系统。在多种代数形式的偏好度量下,本文分析了这些算法的后悔率保证。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

The objective of canonical multi-armed bandits is to identify and repeatedly select an arm with the largest reward, often in the form of the expected value of the arm's probability distribution. Such a utilitarian perspective and focus on the probability models' first moments, however, is agnostic to the distributions' tail behavior and their implications for variability and risks in decision-making. This paper introduces a principled framework for shifting from expectation-based evaluation to an alternative reward formulation, termed a preference metric (PM). The PMs can place the desired emphasis on different reward realization and can encode a richer modeling of preferences that incorporate risk aversion, robustness, or other desired attitudes toward uncertainty. A fundamentally distinct observation in such a PM-centric perspective is that designing bandit algorithms will have a significantly different principle: as opposed to the reward-based models in which the optimal sampling policy converges to repeatedly sampling from the single best arm, in the PM-centric framework the optimal policy converges to selecting a mix of arms based on specific mixing weights. Designing such mixture policies departs from the principles for designing bandit algorithms in significant ways, primarily because of uncountable mixture possibilities. The paper formalizes the PM-centric framework and presents two algorithm classes (horizon-dependent and anytime) that learn and track mixtures in a regret-efficient fashion. These algorithms have two distinctions from their canonical counterparts: (i) they involve an estimation routine to form reliable estimates of optimal mixtures, and (ii) they are equipped with tracking mechanisms to navigate arm selection fractions to track the optimal mixtures. These algorithms' regret guarantees are investigated under various algebraic forms of the PMs.

强化学习偏好建模多臂赌博机风险敏感

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