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Hauptverfasser: Benyamine, Axel, Grand-Clément, Julien, Petrik, Marek, Jordan, Michael I., Durmus, Alain
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03381
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author Benyamine, Axel
Grand-Clément, Julien
Petrik, Marek
Jordan, Michael I.
Durmus, Alain
author_facet Benyamine, Axel
Grand-Clément, Julien
Petrik, Marek
Jordan, Michael I.
Durmus, Alain
contents In this paper, we propose a general theory of ambiguity-averse MDPs, which treats the uncertain transition probabilities as random variables and evaluates a policy via a risk measure applied to its random return. This ambiguity-averse MDP framework unifies several models of MDPs with epistemic uncertainty for specific choices of risk measures. We extend the concepts of value functions and Bellman operators to our setting. Based on these objects, we establish the consequences of dynamic programming principles in this framework (existence of stationary policies, value and policy iteration algorithms), and we completely characterize law-invariant risk measures compatible with dynamic programming. Our work draws connections among several variants of MDP models and fully delineates what is possible under the dynamic programming paradigm and which risk measures require leaving it.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_03381
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamic Programming for Epistemic Uncertainty in Markov Decision Processes
Benyamine, Axel
Grand-Clément, Julien
Petrik, Marek
Jordan, Michael I.
Durmus, Alain
Computer Science and Game Theory
In this paper, we propose a general theory of ambiguity-averse MDPs, which treats the uncertain transition probabilities as random variables and evaluates a policy via a risk measure applied to its random return. This ambiguity-averse MDP framework unifies several models of MDPs with epistemic uncertainty for specific choices of risk measures. We extend the concepts of value functions and Bellman operators to our setting. Based on these objects, we establish the consequences of dynamic programming principles in this framework (existence of stationary policies, value and policy iteration algorithms), and we completely characterize law-invariant risk measures compatible with dynamic programming. Our work draws connections among several variants of MDP models and fully delineates what is possible under the dynamic programming paradigm and which risk measures require leaving it.
title Dynamic Programming for Epistemic Uncertainty in Markov Decision Processes
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03381