Reinforcement learning under circumstances beyond its control

Decision theory addresses the task of choosing an action; it provides robust decision-making criteria that support decision-making under conditions of uncertainty or risk. Decision theory has been applied to produce reinforcement learning algorithms that manage uncertainty in state-transitions. However, performance when there is uncertainty regarding the selection of future actions must also be considered, since reinforcement learning tasks are multiple-step decision problems. This work proposes beta-pessimistic Q-learning—a reinforcement learning algorithm that does not assume complete control