One-Step Bellman Alignment Enables Provably Efficient Transfer in Online RL
Researchers have introduced a new method called One-Step Bellman Alignment (RWT) to improve transfer learning in online reinforcement learning. This technique addresses the challenge of using data from related source tasks when learning a new target task, which can introduce bias and invalidate performance guarantees. RWT corrects for mismatches in task transitions, allowing for statistically sound reuse of source data and leading to improved regret bounds, especially when using complex function approximations like RKHS. Empirical results in both tabular and neural network settings show that RWT outperforms single-task learning and naive data pooling. AI
IMPACT Enhances transfer learning efficiency in RL, potentially accelerating agent training across related tasks.