Scott Niekum
@scottniekum.bsky.social
Associate prof @ UMass Amherst CICS.
AIignment, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and robotics.
AIignment, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and robotics.
Reposted by Scott Niekum
Where do some of Reinforcement Learning's great thinkers stand today?
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
August 27, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Where do some of Reinforcement Learning's great thinkers stand today?
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
Reposted by Scott Niekum
One more day! One more day!
August 5, 2025 at 1:45 AM
One more day! One more day!
Reposted by Scott Niekum
Propose some socials for RLC! Research topics, affinity groups, niche interests, whatever comes to mind!
rl-conference.cc/call_for_soc...
rl-conference.cc/call_for_soc...
RLC Call for Workshops
rl-conference.cc
June 25, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Propose some socials for RLC! Research topics, affinity groups, niche interests, whatever comes to mind!
rl-conference.cc/call_for_soc...
rl-conference.cc/call_for_soc...
Reposted by Scott Niekum
Reminder that early registration for RLC closes on the 30th! Please register early to save yourself some money and help us get the word out.
May 27, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reminder that early registration for RLC closes on the 30th! Please register early to save yourself some money and help us get the word out.
It’s about time! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/t...
Turing Award Goes to A.I. Pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton
Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton developed reinforcement learning, a technique vital to chatbots like ChatGPT.
www.nytimes.com
March 5, 2025 at 1:05 PM
It’s about time! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/t...
Reposted by Scott Niekum
Science will take a huge hit; academic stars will leave; university reputations will crumble, and homegrown talent will be even harder to find.
Asia and Europe will profit.
Epic unforced errors, all in the overly narrow pursuit of cutting costs.
Asia and Europe will profit.
Epic unforced errors, all in the overly narrow pursuit of cutting costs.
February 8, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Science will take a huge hit; academic stars will leave; university reputations will crumble, and homegrown talent will be even harder to find.
Asia and Europe will profit.
Epic unforced errors, all in the overly narrow pursuit of cutting costs.
Asia and Europe will profit.
Epic unforced errors, all in the overly narrow pursuit of cutting costs.
Reposted by Scott Niekum
Check out some of the exciting changes to the RLC reviewing process! We're always trying new things to perfect it
We just released extensive instructions for all the reviewing roles at @rl-conference.bsky.social; ranging from SAC to TR. We are trying something different here that we believe can be better.
To ensure we are open about it, we made those instructions public:
rl-conference.cc/reviewinstru...
To ensure we are open about it, we made those instructions public:
rl-conference.cc/reviewinstru...
RLC Review Instructions 2025
rl-conference.cc
January 26, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Check out some of the exciting changes to the RLC reviewing process! We're always trying new things to perfect it
Reposted by Scott Niekum
RLHF algorithms assume humans generate preferences according to normative models. We propose a new method for model alignment: influence humans to conform to these assumptions through interface design. Good news: it works!
#AI #MachineLearning #RLHF #Alignment (1/n)
#AI #MachineLearning #RLHF #Alignment (1/n)
January 14, 2025 at 11:51 PM
RLHF algorithms assume humans generate preferences according to normative models. We propose a new method for model alignment: influence humans to conform to these assumptions through interface design. Good news: it works!
#AI #MachineLearning #RLHF #Alignment (1/n)
#AI #MachineLearning #RLHF #Alignment (1/n)
I'm quite excited about this and still a bit shocked that it works as well as it does. Imitation via distribution matching has always felt like a clunky, brittle way to command agents. Language + zero-shot RL is natural, instantaneous, and scales well, due to the unsupervised nature of RL Zero.
🤖 Introducing RL Zero 🤖: a new approach to transform language into behavior zero-shot for embodied agents without labeled datasets!
December 11, 2024 at 11:42 AM
I'm quite excited about this and still a bit shocked that it works as well as it does. Imitation via distribution matching has always felt like a clunky, brittle way to command agents. Language + zero-shot RL is natural, instantaneous, and scales well, due to the unsupervised nature of RL Zero.
Reposted by Scott Niekum
If you're at NeurIPS, RLC is hosting an RL event from 8 till late at The Pearl on Dec. 11th. Join us, meet all the RL researchers, and spread the word!
December 10, 2024 at 9:55 PM
If you're at NeurIPS, RLC is hosting an RL event from 8 till late at The Pearl on Dec. 11th. Join us, meet all the RL researchers, and spread the word!
Reposted by Scott Niekum
The call for papers for RLC is now up! Abstract deadline of 2/14, submission deadline of 2/21!
Please help us spread the word.
rl-conference.cc/callforpaper...
Please help us spread the word.
rl-conference.cc/callforpaper...
RLJ | RLC Call for Papers
rl-conference.cc
December 2, 2024 at 3:39 PM
The call for papers for RLC is now up! Abstract deadline of 2/14, submission deadline of 2/21!
Please help us spread the word.
rl-conference.cc/callforpaper...
Please help us spread the word.
rl-conference.cc/callforpaper...
Reposted by Scott Niekum
RLC will be held at the Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, in 2025. I'm happy to say that we now have the conference's website out: rl-conference.cc/index.html
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
@rl-conference.bsky.social
#reinforcementlearning
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
@rl-conference.bsky.social
#reinforcementlearning
November 22, 2024 at 10:46 PM
RLC will be held at the Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, in 2025. I'm happy to say that we now have the conference's website out: rl-conference.cc/index.html
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
@rl-conference.bsky.social
#reinforcementlearning
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
@rl-conference.bsky.social
#reinforcementlearning
Thrilled to announce the first annual Reinforcement Learning Conference @RL_Conference, which will be held at UMass Amherst August 9-12! RLC is the first strongly peer-reviewed RL venue with proceedings, and our call for papers is now available: rl-conference.cc.
November 19, 2024 at 9:49 PM
Thrilled to announce the first annual Reinforcement Learning Conference @RL_Conference, which will be held at UMass Amherst August 9-12! RLC is the first strongly peer-reviewed RL venue with proceedings, and our call for papers is now available: rl-conference.cc.