AUPO - Abstracted until proven otherwise: A reward distribution based abstraction algorithm

ICLR 2026 Conference Submission19100 Authors

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Abstractions, Sequential Decision-making

TL;DR: A detection of approximately value-equivalent state-action pairs by comparing their empirical layerwise reward distributions

Abstract: We introduce a novel, drop-in modification to Monte Carlo Tree Search's (MCTS) decision policy that we call AUPO. Comparisons based on a range of IPPC benchmark problems show that AUPO clearly outperforms MCTS. AUPO is an automatic action abstraction algorithm that solely relies on reward distribution statistics acquired during the MCTS. Thus, unlike other automatic abstraction algorithms, AUPO requires neither access to transition probabilities nor does AUPO require a directed acyclic search graph to build its abstraction, allowing AUPO to detect symmetric actions that state-of-the-art frameworks like ASAP struggle with when the resulting symmetric states are far apart in state space. Furthermore, as AUPO only affects the decision policy, it is not mutually exclusive with other abstraction techniques that only affect the tree search.

Primary Area: probabilistic methods (Bayesian methods, variational inference, sampling, UQ, etc.)

Submission Number: 19100