🚨The Formalism-Implementation Gap in RL research🚨 Lots of progress in RL research over last 10 years, but too much performance-driven => overfitting to benchmarks (like the ALE). 1⃣ Let's advance science of RL 2⃣ Let's be explicit about how benchmarks map to formalism 1/X

Proud to announce that Meta-World+ was accepted to NeurIPs, Datasets and Benchmarks! Meta-World is a common benchmark for multi-task and meta-RL research! However, it was very difficult to do effective science with Meta-World as different versions produce different results.

🔊Simplicial Embeddings (SEMs) Improve Sample Efficiency in Actor-Critic Agents🔊 In our recent preprint we demonstrate that the use of well-structured representations (SEMs) can dramatically improve sample efficiency in RL agents. 1/X

Very excited to be able to talk about something I've been working on for a while now - we're working with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, IMO the leading fusion startup in the world, to take our work on AI and tokamaks and make it work at the frontier of fusion energy. deepmind.google/discover/blo...

Hello everyone 👋 Good news! 🚨 Our Game Theory & Multiagent Systems team at Google DeepMind is hiring! 🚨 .. and we have not one, but two open positions! One Research Scientist role and one Research Engineer role. 😁 Please repost and tell anyone who might be interested! Details in thread below 👇

this was a really great workshop at @rl-conference.bsky.social , and i enjoyed giving a talk and moderating a panel there. everything was recorded, so if you weren't able to join, you can watch it now, link below.

Today's wordle covered me Wordle 1,559 2/6 🟩🟩🟨🟨⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

📢MARK YOUR CALENDARS!🗓️ The Summit of AI in Latin America (SALA, formerly RIIAA) is happening in Quito, Ecuador, March 9-12, 2026, at USFQ! Want to attend and apply for travel grants? Do so here before October 1st: forms.gle/PgYUQ2urGNTs... More details in thread 👇🏾🧵

Very happy this work got into #NeurIPS2025, it was a big effort that Reggie led, and I'm glad it was worth the work! We've already been using Meta world+ in a lot of our research, and so should you! Let's chat at #NeurIPS2025 !

Caught my 11yo reading this, I'm so proud.

want to help shape the future of AI in latin america? then don't miss out on @lasalaai.bsky.social next march! the past instances of this event have been truly fantastic, and i'm super pumped for the next one next year. don't miss out and apply today! hope to see you in quito!! ♥️🇪🇨

Today's wordle was pretty minimal Wordle 1,535 2/6 ⬛🟩🟩⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Software engineering isn't dead, it just smells funny.

Yesterday I did a 28.4k trail run and 1300m climb with some good friends (& colleagues). It was absolutely incredible! This was my first trail run, but now I think I'm hooked! #trailrunpostconference

Once again, I leave @rl-conference.bsky.social convinced that it's the best conference out there for RL researchers, such a great week! It was also so great getting the opportunity to see so many of my students shine while presenting and discussing their research!

Did the last #runconference @rl-conference.bsky.social this morning, fun as always. Until the next time (NeurIPS?)!

Was great listening to Turing award winner Rich Sutton tell us about his vision for the future of RL (and AI) @rl-conference.bsky.social !

Great talk by Peter Dayan @rl-conference.bsky.social exploring the "open marriage" between natural and engineered reinforcement learning.

Great #runconference @rl-conference.bsky.social today (even with a little rain), join for the last one tomorrow morning, 6:30am, meet at Garneau Lamp!

😁

today (thu) @rl-conference.bsky.social come see our paper "Optimistic critics can empower small actors" olya and dhruv will present the oral at 11:45am in the deep RL track (CCIS 1-430) and we'll present the poster (poster#8) 3-5:45pm come chat with us about asymmetric actor-critics!

Very honoured that our paper was granted an outstanding paper award for scientific understanding in RL during the @rl-conference.bsky.social banquet! @reggiemclean.bsky.social and Evangelos deserve the bulk of the credit, so congrats to them and all the other awards winners!

Super thought-provoking talk by Dale Schuurmans @rl-conference.bsky.social on LLMs and computation, and why value-based RL doesn't (or can't?) work for post-training.

Second #runconference today went well, join us tomorrow same place (Garneau Lamp), same time (6:30am)!

today (wed) @rl-conference.bsky.social come see our paper "Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning Enables Parameter Scaling" @reggiemclean.bsky.social will give oral at 10:20am in CCIS 1-160 and we'll present the poster 3-5:45pm come chat! rlj.cs.umass.edu/2025/papers/... bsky.app/profile/regg...

Great first #runconference @rl-conference.bsky.social this morning! Join us tomorrow, 6:30am at the Garneau Lamp for a run (see screenshot or pin below): maps.app.goo.gl/pcD8rELSMBaz...

(mostly) unrelated to workshops, i'll be going for a run tomorrow at 6:30am. i know it's super early, but i want to make it in time for the workshops! if you want to join, i'll be starting my run outside the metterra hotel maps.app.goo.gl/v7yDV4dZAwve... #runconference #rlc2025

in edmonton for @rl-conference.bsky.social ! i'm giving a couple of talks in two workshops tomorrow, and moderating a panel in one of them. looking forward to all the discussions! details in thread 👇🏾🧵

Kids, this is the precursor to the save icon 💾

Looking forward to this workshop @rl-conference.bsky.social ! I wish I could clone myself, because there are so many good workshops that will be happening at the same time

it's extra work, but i really enjoy making creative posters. these are the two i made for #ICML2025 last week. i just sent another poster to get printed with a design i'm excited to hang on the poster boards @rl-conference.bsky.social next month! 😃

One of my favorite things at #ICML2025 was seeing so many Ecuadorians! These were taken at the LatinX in AI workshop at the start of the week. 🇪🇨

Last #runconference at #ICML2025 (at least for me). Was great running with new and old friends this week, and looking forward to another set of runs at @RL_Conference in August!

Third #runconference ! Last one (for me) tomorrow, join us at 7am in tourist info booth just outside convention center!

Second #runconference also fun, beautiful running next to ocean! Join us tomorrow at 7am again, same place!

Come by West Exhibition Hall B2-B3 #W-702 at 11am to talk to @johanobandoc.bsky.social and me about churn and plasticity loss in RL!

First #runconference was great! Come by tomorrow at same time (7am) for another great run! #icml2025

Come by West Exhibition Hall B2-B3 W-711 at 11am to talk to @waltermayor.bsky.social @johanobandoc.bsky.social and me about the impact of parallelized data collection for training RL agents! #ICML2025

At #ICML2025 ? Like running? 🏃🏾🤖 Come to the first #runconference tomorrow (Tuesday) morning! We'll meet at Canada Place Welcome Center (pin linked below) at 7am and will run for about an hour. Very inclusive, so all speeds welcome! maps.app.goo.gl/LxyinYmXXXPz...

@waltermayor.bsky.social presenting our paper at the LatinX in AI workshop

Excited for #ICML2025 ! Today (Monday) I'll be at the LatinX in AI @_LXAI workshop (West Meeting Room 118-120) most of the day, where two works I'm involved in will be presented (see thread) so hope to see you there! 1/4

YVR

Thrilled to share our #ICML2025 paper “The Courage to Stop: Overcoming Sunk Cost Fallacy in Deep RL”, led by Jiashun Liu and with other great collaborators! We teach RL agents when to quit wasting effort, boosting efficiency with our proposed method LEAST. Here's the story 🧵👇🏾

Today's wordle filled my heart. ❤️ Wordle 1,478 2/6 🟨🟨🟨🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

proud to share a survey of state representation learning in RL that my student ayoub echchahed and i prepared, that was just published on @tmlrorg.bsky.social ! this was the bulk of ayoub's masters thesis and he put a lot of work and care into it! a few details in thread below... 1/

really excited about this new work we just put out, led by my students @roger-creus.bsky.social & @johanobandoc.bsky.social , where we examine the challenges of gradient propagation when scaling deep RL nets. roger & johan put in a lot of work and care in this work, check out more details in 🧵👇🏾 !

The Impact of On-Policy Parallelized Data Collection on Deep Reinforcement Learning Networks thrilled to share our #ICML2025 paper led by Walter Mayor & @johanobandoc.bsky.social , with Aaron Courville, where we explore how data collection affects agents in parallelized setups. 1/

📢optimistic critics can empower small actors📢 new @rl-conference.bsky.social paper led by my students @olyamhina.bsky.social & dhruv! we study actor-critic agents w/ asymmetric setups and find that, while smaller actors have advantages, they can degrade performance and result in overfit critics 1/

if you were waiting for workshop acceptance notifications before registering to @rl-conference.bsky.social , don't fret, you can still benefit from early registration!

If you do end up deciding to run these experiments, do reach out! Would be very interested to see what results you get, and on discussing more.