Settling the Reward Hypothesis

Michael Bowling; John D Martin; David Abel; Will Dabney

ICML 2023oral50 citations

Settling the Reward Hypothesis

Michael Bowling, John D Martin, David Abel, Will Dabney

Abstract

The *reward hypothesis* posits that, "all of what we mean by goals and purposes can be well thought of as maximization of the expected value of the cumulative sum of a received scalar signal (reward)." We aim to fully settle this hypothesis. This will not conclude with a simple affirmation or refutation, but rather specify completely the implicit requirements on goals and purposes under which the hypothesis holds.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{icml2023_settlingtherewar,
  title = {Settling the Reward Hypothesis},
  author = {Michael Bowling and John D Martin and David Abel and Will Dabney},
  booktitle = {ICML 2023},
  year = {2023}
}