Theoretical Foundations and Effective Algorithms for Policy-Aware Simulator Learning
Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) agents typically learn world models by minimizing predictive loss. However, powerful RL optimizers inevitably exploit minor model inaccuracies, leading to simulator exploitation and a reality gap where policies succeed in simulation but fail in the real world. We propose that the objective for learning simulators should be strategic robustness rather than predictive accuracy, and formulate this as a zero-sum minimax game between a model player and an adversarial policy player. We provide a comprehensive theoretical analysis: (1) an online learning guarantee showing the game is learnable with sublinear regret bounds; (2) a tractable critic-based si...
| Authors | Christoph Dann, Yishay Mansour, Mehryar Mohri |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 27 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 2 September 2026 |
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