待翻译：Inference-Time Policy Alignment for Fair Reinforcement Learning
AI 服务暂时不可用，以下为来源摘要，待恢复后补全翻译：arXiv:2608.00175v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents achieve strong performance by optimizing scalar reward functions. However, once deployed, the policies of these RL agents are often rigid and costly to adapt to new performance criteria. For instance, an agent trained to maximize expected cumulative reward may not accommodate previously unknown stakeholder preferences. Existing approaches to achieve fairness, a type of preference, in RL typically assume that such preferences are known a priori and require complete retraining of the policy under a fairness-oriented metric. Inspired by inference-time alignment in large language models, we investigate the problem of steering a pretrained RL policy toward welfare-based fairness objectives at inference time without updating the base policy's parameters. We formalize inference-time fairness alignment as a policy shaping problem and propose a multiplicative policy shaping framework that adjusts action probabilities using action-dependent welfare scores, thus requiring no modification to the base policy. Our framework is general and compatible with any deep RL agent. Through extensive experiments across multiple domains, we demonstrate that inference-time policy shaping substantially improves welfare-based fairness objectives while preserving core task performance.
AI 服务暂时不可用，以下为来源正文，待恢复后补全翻译。
--> [Submitted on 31 Jul 2026] Title:Inference-Time Policy Alignment for Fair Reinforcement Learning View a PDF of the paper titled Inference-Time Policy Alignment for Fair Reinforcement Learning, by Umer Siddique and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents achieve strong performance by optimizing scalar reward functions. However, once deployed, the policies of these RL agents are often rigid and costly to adapt to new performance criteria. For instance, an agent trained to maximize expected cumulative reward may not accommodate previously unknown stakeholder preferences. Existing approaches to achieve fairness, a type of preference, in RL typically assume that such preferences are known a priori and require complete retraining of the policy under a fairness-oriented metric. Inspired by inference-time alignment in large language models, we investigate the problem of steering a pretrained RL policy toward welfare-based fairness objectives at inference time without updating the base policy's parameters. We formalize inference-time fairness alignment as a policy shaping problem and propose a multiplicative policy shaping framework that adjusts action probabilities using action-dependent welfare scores, thus requiring no modification to the base policy. Our framework is general and compatible with any deep RL agent. Through extensive experiments across multiple domains, we demonstrate that inference-time policy shaping substantially improves welfare-based fairness objectives while preserving core task performance. Comments: Accepted at the Reinforcement Learning Conference (RLC) 2026. 13 pages main + appendix, 5 figures, 6 tables Subjects: Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) Cite as: arXiv:2608.00175 [cs.LG] (or arXiv:2608.00175v1 [cs.LG] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.00175 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Umer Siddique [view email] [v1] Fri, 31 Jul 2026 18:00:50 UTC (829 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Inference-Time Policy Alignment for Fair Reinforcement Learning, by Umer Siddique and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: cs.LG new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs cs.AI References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Loading... Data provided by: Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender (What is IArxiv?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)