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Johan Källström

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

4 papers
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4

AAMAS Conference 2024 Conference Paper

Utility-Based Reinforcement Learning: Unifying Single-objective and Multi-objective Reinforcement Learning

  • Peter Vamplew
  • Cameron Foale
  • Conor F. Hayes
  • Patrick Mannion
  • Enda Howley
  • Richard Dazeley
  • Scott Johnson
  • Johan Källström

Research in multi-objective reinforcement learning (MORL) has introduced the utility-based paradigm, which makes use of both environmental rewards and a function that defines the utility derived by the user from those rewards. In this paper we extend this paradigm to the context of single-objective reinforcement learning (RL), and outline multiple potential benefits including the ability to perform multi-policy learning across tasks relating to uncertain objectives, risk-aware RL, discounting, and safe RL. We also examine the algorithmic implications of adopting a utility-based approach.

AAMAS Conference 2023 Conference Paper

A Brief Guide to Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning and Planning

  • Conor F. Hayes
  • Roxana Rădulescu
  • Eugenio Bargiacchi
  • Johan Källström
  • Matthew Macfarlane
  • Mathieu Reymond
  • Timothy Verstraeten
  • Luisa M. Zintgraf

Real-world sequential decision-making tasks are usually complex, and require trade-offs between multiple – often conflicting – objectives. However, the majority of research in reinforcement learning (RL) and decision-theoretic planning assumes a single objective, or that multiple objectives can be handled via a predefined weighted sum over the objectives. Such approaches may oversimplify the underlying problem, and produce suboptimal results. This extended abstract outlines the limitations of using a semi-blind iterative process to solve multi-objective decision making problems. Our extended paper [4], serves as a guide for the application of explicitly multi-objective methods to difficult problems.

AAMAS Conference 2023 Conference Paper

Model-Based Actor-Critic for Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning with Dynamic Utility Functions

  • Johan Källström
  • Fredrik Heintz

Many real-world problems require a trade-off between multiple conflicting objectives. Decision-makers’ preferences over solutions to such problems are determined by their utility functions, which convert multi-objective values to scalars. In some settings, utility functions change over time, and the goal is to find methods that can efficiently adapt an agent’s policy to changes in utility. Previous work on learning with dynamic utility functions has focused on model-free methods, which often suffer from poor sample efficiency. In this work, we instead propose a model-based actor-critic, which explores with diverse utility functions through imagined rollouts within a learned world model between interactions with the real environment. An experimental evaluation on Minecart, a well-known benchmark for multi-objective reinforcement learning, shows that by learning a model of the environment the quality of the agent’s policy is improved compared to model-free algorithms.

AAMAS Conference 2023 Conference Paper

Scalar Reward is Not Enough

  • Peter Vamplew
  • Benjamin J. Smith
  • Johan Källström
  • Gabriel Ramos
  • Roxana Rădulescu
  • Diederik M. Roijers
  • Conor F. Hayes
  • Friedrik Hentz

Silver et al. [14] posit that scalar reward maximisation is sufficient to underpin all intelligence and provides a suitable basis for artificial general intelligence (AGI). This extended abstract summarises the counter-argument from our JAAMAS paper[19].

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