David Abel

Hello world! This is the RL & Agents Reading Group

We organise regular meetings to discuss recent papers in Reinforcement Learning (RL), Multi-Agent RL and related areas (open-ended learning, LLM agents, robotics, etc).

Meetings take place online and are open to everyone 😊

Workshops day! 8 parallel sessions from gamification to chess, social inference, and AI + brains. Dive deep from 9–1 at Trinity Business & Hamilton. Full
line-up rldm.org/workshops-20...

#RLDM2025 officially starts tomorrow! 🚀 Have you checked out our program? See details below, full program is available at rldm.org 👀

New to RLDM? Join our first-timers gathering tonight, 6-7pm, at Kennedy's Pub (30-32 Westland Row) 😊

Only ONE WEEK until #RLDM2025 ☘️ We can’t wait to welcome brilliant minds from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond for cutting-edge talks on reinforcement learning & decision making. Spaces are disappearing quickly so grab your spot before it’s gone! Register now 👉 rldm.org

Are world models necessary to achieve human-level agents, or is there a model-free short-cut?
Our new #ICML2025 paper tackles this question from first principles, and finds a surprising answer, agents _are_ world models… 🧵
arxiv.org/abs/2506.01622

New paper with Iason Gabriel on "Characterizing AI agents" is out! 2025 is being called the year of AI agents, with overwhelming headlines about them every day. But we lack a shared vocabulary to distinguish their fundamental properties. Our paper aims to bridge this gap. A 🧵

Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton are the recipients of the 2024 ACM A.M. Turing Award for developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning. Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton as the recipients of the 2024 ACM A.M. Turing Award for developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning. In a series of papers beginning...

Barto and Sutton receive the Turing award!

Amazing recognition for two kind, pioneering, and genuinely inspiring scientists. Congratulations!!

awards.acm.org/about/2024-t...

new paper: "Evolution and the Knightian Blindspot of Machine Learning"

Our ever-changing world bubbles with surprise and complexity. General AI must include handling unforeseen situations with grace. Yet this issue largely lies outside AI's formalisms: a blind spot. (1/n)

The abstract submission deadline is Jan. 15 at 11.59pm US pacific time, so you should be able to submit (and revise your submission) until then — hope that helps!

And, a reminder: the deadline to submit an extended abstract to RLDM is this coming Wednesday (Jan. 15)!

Details at rldm.org/call-for-abs...

The RLDM workshop list is now up! Have a look: rldm.org/call-for-wor...

More workshop details coming soon :)

There were so many wonderful submissions---this was really tough for the committee. Huge thanks to all involved, and looking forward to seeing folks in Dublin

Call to action requesting poster abstracts be submitted to the RLDM 2025 conference by the January 15th deadline. Poster is stylised in the pink and blue RLDM colours, and features the RLDM brain/robot mascot standing on a "submit now" sticker.

📢 Call for Abstracts 📢

Submit your extended abstracts on "learning and decision-making over time to achieve a goal" to #RLDM2025. Successful applications will be selected for poster or oral presentation to an interdisciplinary audience.

🗓️ Deadline: Jan 15th
🔗 Learn more: rldm.org/call-for-abs...

📚🧵1/7 It is finally here!! Only one more week until the print release of our textbook “Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Foundations and Modern Approaches” with @mitpress.bsky.social!

What you get, why you should be interested and more, all below in a short 🧵👇

I'm hiring PhD students at Brown CS! If you're interested in human-robot or AI interaction, human-centered reinforcement learning, and/or AI policy, please apply. Or get your students to apply :). Deadline Dec 15, link: cs.brown.edu/degrees/doct.... Research statement on my website, www.slbooth.com

Hey 👋 the deadline for submitting workshop proposals to #RLDM is fast approaching! We would especially love creative structures for workshops, like hackathons, debates or other traditional formats. Follow @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social for more updates!

We're looking for nominations for speakers to give a tutorial on RLDM topics to mixed audience of psychologist, neuroscientists and AI folks. Please contribute!

Boundless Socratic Learning with Language Games An agent trained within a closed system can master any desired capability, as long as the following three conditions hold: (a) it receives sufficiently informative and aligned feedback, (b) its covera...

Are there limits to what you can learn in a closed system? Do we need human feedback in training? Is scale all we need? Should we play language games? What even is "recursive self-improvement"?

Thoughts about this and more here:
arxiv.org/abs/2411.16905

Have ideas for an interdisciplinary workshop? Get involved at RLDM to tackle key challenges, open problems, or controversial topics!

🎤 Formats: Talks, panels, hackathons, debates—your choice!
👥 All career stages welcome to lead.
🗓️ Deadline to apply: 10th December.

Link 🔽
rldm.org/call-for-wor...

🙏😁

RLDM will be held next year in Dublin!

A reminder that the call for workshops is out: rldm.org/call-for-wor...

The workshops are one of my favourite parts of the conference :) please get in touch if you have any questions!

Picture of Trinity College Dublin's campanile in the front square of the college. Writing overlayed to indicate that the RLDM conference will take place from the 11th to the 14th of June, 2025. Logos for Trinity College and the RLDM conference at the bottom of the image.

Come join us at Trinity College Dublin for the 6th Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2025)

Abstract deadline January 15: rldm.org/submit