David Abel

@inproceedings{sanati2026forgetting, title={Forgetting is Everywhere}, author={Sanati, Ben and Lee, Thomas L. and McInroe, Trevor and Scannell, Aidan and Malkin, Nikolay and Abel, David and Storkey, Amos}, booktitle={Proceedings of the Conference on Lifelong Learning Agents}, year={2026} }

@inproceedings{demir2026fairness, title={Fairness over Equality: Correcting Social Incentives in Asymmetric Sequential Social Dilemmas}, author={Alper Demir and Hüseyin Aydın and Kale-ab Abebe Tessera and David Abel and Stefano V. Albrecht}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems}, year={2026} }

@inproceedings{tessera2026probing, title={Probing Dec-POMDP Reasoning in Cooperative MARL}, author={Kale-ab Tessera, Leonard Hinckeldey, Riccardo Zamboni, David Abel, Amos Storkey}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems}, year={2026} }

@inproceedings{steleac2026coordinated, title={Inter-Agent Relative Representations for Multi-Agent Option Discovery}, author={Raul D Steleac, Mohan Sridharan, David Abel}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Learning Representations}, year={2026} }

@inproceedings{abel2025plasticity, title={Plasticity as the Mirror of Empowerment}, author={David Abel and Michael Bowling and André Barreto and Will Dabney and Shi Dong and Steven Hansen and Anna Harutyunyan and Khimya Khetarpal and Clare Lyle and Razvan Pascanu and Georgios Piliouras and Doina Precup and Jonathan Richens and Mark Rowland and Tom Schaul and Satinder Singh}, booktitle={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{miller2025enhancing, title={Enhancing Tactile-based Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Control}, author={Miller, Elle and McInroe, Trevor and Abel, David and Mac Aodha, Oisin and Vijayakumar, Sethu}, booktitle={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{ahmetoglu2025skill, title={Skill-Driven Neurosymbolic State Abstractions}, author={Ahmetoglu, Alper and James, Steven and Allen, Cameron and Lobel, Sam and Abel, David and Konidaris, George}, booktitle={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{richens2025general, title={General Agents Contain World Models}, author={Richens, Jonathan and Abel, David and Bellot, Alexis and Everitt, Tom}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{lee2025black, title={A Black Swan Hypothesis: The Role of Human Irrationality in AI Safety}, author={Lee, Hyunin and Park, Chanwoo and Abel, David and Jin, Ming}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Learning Representations}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{garcin2025studying, title={Studying the Interplay Between the Actor and Critic Representations in Reinforcement Learning}, author={Garcin, Samuel and McInroe, Trevor and Castro, Pablo Samuel and Lucas, Christopher G. and Abel, David and Panangaden, Prakash and Albrecht, Stefano V.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Learning Representations}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{abel2024three, title={Three Dogmas of Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David and Ho, Mark K. and Harutyunyan, Anna}, booktitle={Proceedings of the Reinforcement Learning Conference}, year={2024} }

@inproceedings{peng2024pragmatic, title={Pragmatic Feature Preferences: Learning Reward-Relevant Preferences from Human Feedback}, author={Peng, Andi and Sun, Yuying and Shu, Tianmin and Abel, David}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2024} }

@inproceedings{abel2023definition, title={A Definition of Continual Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David and Barreto, Andr{\'e} and Van Roy, Benjamin and Precup, Doina and van Hasselt, Hado and Singh, Satinder}, booktitle={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems}, year={2023} }

@inproceedings{bowling2023settling, title={Settling the Reward Hypothesis}, author={Bowling, Michael and Martin, John D. and Abel, David and Dabney, Will}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2023} }

@inproceedings{luketina2022meta, title={Meta-Gradients in Non-Stationary Environments}, author={Luketina, Jelena and Flennerhag, Sebastian and Schroecker, Yannick and Abel, David and Zahavy, Tom and Singh, Satinder}, booktitle={Proceedings of the Conference on Lifelong Learning Agents}, year={2022} }

@inproceedings{abel2021expressivity, title={On the Expressivity of Markov Reward}, author={Abel, David and Dabney, Will and Harutyunyan, Anna and Ho, Mark K. and Littman, Michael L. and Precup, Doina and Singh, Satinder}, booktitle={Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems}, year={2021} }

@inproceedings{kozuno2021revisiting, title={Revisiting Peng's Q($\lambda$) for Modern Reinforcement Learning}, author={Kozuno, Tadashi and Tang, Yunhao and Rowland, Mark and Munos, R{\'e}mi and Kapturowski, Steven and Dabney, Will and Valko, Michal and Abel, David}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2021} }

@inproceedings{lecarpentier2021lipschitz, title={Lipschitz Lifelong Reinforcement Learning}, author={Lecarpentier, Erwan and Abel, David and Asadi, Kavosh and Jinnai, Yuu and Rachelson, Emmanuel and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, year={2021} }

@inproceedings{khetarpal2020what, title={What can I do here? A Theory of Affordances in Reinforcement Learning}, author={Khetarpal, Khimya and Ahmed, Zafarali and Comanici, Gheorghe and Abel, David and Precup, Doina}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2020} }

@inproceedings{abel2020value, title={Value Preserving State-Action Abstractions}, author={Abel, David and Umbanhowar, Nathan and Khetarpal, Khimya and Arumugam, Dilip and Precup, Doina and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics}, year={2020} }

@inproceedings{ho2020efficiency, title={The Efficiency of Human Cognition Reflects Planned Use of Information Processing}, author={Ho, Mark K. and Abel, David and Cohen, Jonathan D. and Littman, Michael L. and Griffiths, Thomas L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, year={2020} }

@inproceedings{abel2019expected, title={The Expected-Length Model of Options}, author={Abel, David and Winder, John and desJardins, Marie and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, year={2019} }

@inproceedings{jinnai2019finding, title={Finding Options that Minimize Planning Time}, author={Jinnai, Yuu and Abel, David and Hershkowitz, D. Ellis and Littman, Michael L. and Konidaris, George}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2019} }

@inproceedings{jinnai2019discovering, title={Discovering Options for Exploration by Minimizing Cover Time}, author={Jinnai, Yuu and Park, Jee Won and Abel, David and Konidaris, George}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2019} }

@inproceedings{abel2019state, title={State Abstraction as Compression in Apprenticeship Learning}, author={Abel, David and Arumugam, Dilip and Asadi, Kavosh and Jinnai, Yuu and Littman, Michael L. and Wong, Lawson L.S.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, year={2019} }

@inproceedings{abel2018state, title={State Abstractions for Lifelong Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David and Arumugam, Dilip and Lehnert, Lucas and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2018} }

@inproceedings{abel2018policy, title={Policy and Value Transfer in Lifelong Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David and Jinnai, Yuu and Guo, Yue and Konidaris, George and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2018} }

@inproceedings{abel2018bandit, title={Bandit-Based Solar Panel Control}, author={Abel, David and Williams, Edward C. and Brawner, Stephen and Reif, Emily and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference}, year={2018} }

@inproceedings{abel2016near, title={Near Optimal Behavior via Approximate State Abstraction}, author={Abel, David and Hershkowitz, D. Ellis and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, year={2016} }

@inproceedings{abel2015goal, title={Goal Based Action Priors}, author={Abel, David and Hershkowitz, D. Ellis and Barth-Maron, Gabriel and Brawner, Stephen and O'Farrell, Kevin and MacGlashan, James and Tellex, Stefanie}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling}, year={2015} }

@article{abel2026goals, title={The syntax and semantics of goals}, author={Abel, David and Ho, Mark K.}, journal={Topics in Cognitive Science}, year={2026} }

@article{pires2025optimizing, title={Optimizing Return Distributions with Distributional Dynamic Programming}, author={{\'{A}}vila Pires, Bernardo and Rowland, Mark and Borsa, Diana and Guo, Zhaohan Daniel and Khetarpal, Khimya and Barreto, Andr{\'{e}} and Abel, David and Munos, R{\'{e}}mi and Dabney, Will}, journal={Journal of Machine Learning Research}, volume={26}, number={52}, pages={1--56}, year={2025} }

@article{ho2022people, title={People construct simplified mental representations to plan}, author={Ho, Mark K. and Abel, David and Correa, Carlos G. and Littman, Michael L. and Cohen, Jonathan D. and Griffiths, Thomas L.}, journal={Nature}, volume={606}, number={7912}, pages={129--136}, year={2022} }

@article{ho2019value, title={The value of abstraction}, author={Ho, Mark K. and Abel, David and Griffiths, Thomas L. and Littman, Michael L.}, journal={Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences}, volume={29}, pages={111--116}, year={2019} }

@phdthesis{abel2020theory, title={A Theory of Abstraction in Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David}, school={Brown University}, year={2020} }

@mastersthesis{abel2019concepts, title={Concepts in Bounded Rationality: Perspectives from Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David}, school={Brown University}, year={2019} }

@mastersthesis{abel2015learning, title={Learning to Plan in Complex Stochastic Domains}, author={Abel, David}, school={Brown University}, year={2015} }

@inproceedings{tamborski2026transitions, title={Transitions Decompose as Passive and Agent Dynamics}, author={Tamborski, Massimiliano and Ek, Carl Henrik and Abel, David}, booktitle={Finding the Frame Workshop at the Reinforcement Learning Conference}, year={2026} }

@inproceedings{tamborski2025memory, title={Memory Allocation in Resource-Constrained Reinforcement Learning}, author={Tamborski, Massimiliano and Abel, David}, booktitle={Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{abel2025agency, title={Agency Is Frame-Dependent}, author={Abel, David and Barreto, Andr{\'e} and Bowling, Michael and Dabney, Will and Dong, Shi and Hansen, Steven and Harutyunyan, Anna and Khetarpal, Khimya and Lyle, Clare and Pascanu, Razvan and Piliouras, Georgios and Precup, Doina and Richens, Jonathan and Rowland, Mark and Schaul, Tom and Singh, Satinder}, booktitle={Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making}, year={2025} }

@inproceedings{abel2022expressing, title={Expressing Non-Markov Reward to a Markov Agent}, author={Abel, David and Barreto, Andr{\'e} and Bowling, Michael and Dabney, Will vibrand and Hansen, Steven and Harutyunyan, Anna and Ho, Mark K. and Kumar, Ramana and Littman, Michael L. and Precup, Doina and Singh, Satinder}, booktitle={Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making}, year={2022} }

@inproceedings{luketina2022metaiclr, title={Meta-Gradients in Non-Stationary Environments}, author={Luketina, Jelena and Flennerhag, Sebastian and Schroecker, Yannick and Abel, David and Zahavy, Tom and Singh, Satinder}, booktitle={ICLR Workshop on Agent Learning in Open-Endedness}, year={2022} }

@inproceedings{abel2022expressivityea, title={On the Expressivity of Markov Reward (Extended Abstract)}, author={Abel, David and Dabney, Will and Harutyunyan, Anna and Ho, Mark K. and Littman, Michael L. and Precup, Doina and Singh, Satinder}, booktitle={Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Sister Conferences Best Papers Track)}, year={2022} }

@inproceedings{abel2021bad, title={Bad-Policy Density: A Measure of Reinforcement Learning Hardness}, author={Abel, David and Allen, Cameron and Arumugam, Dilip and Hershkowitz, D. Ellis and Littman, Michael L. and Wong, Lawson L.S.}, booktitle={ICML Workshop on Reinforcement Learning Theory}, year={2021} }

@inproceedings{jinnai2019skill, title={Skill Discovery with Well-Defined Objectives}, author={Jinnai, Yuu and Abel, David and Park, Jee Won and Hershkowitz, D. Ellis and Littman, Michael L. and Konidaris, George}, booktitle={ICLR Workshop on Structure and Priors in RL}, year={2019} }

@inproceedings{abel2019simplerl, title={simple\_rl: Reproducible Reinforcement Learning in Python}, author={Abel, David}, booktitle={ICLR Workshop on Reproducibility in Machine Learning}, year={2019} }

@inproceedings{abel2019theorysa, title={A Theory of State Abstraction for Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David}, booktitle={AAAI Doctoral Consortium}, year={2019} }

@inproceedings{abel2017toward, title={Toward Good Abstractions for Lifelong Learning}, author={Abel, David and Arumugam, Dilip and Lehnert, Lucas and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={NeurIPS Workshop on Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning}, year={2017} }

@inproceedings{abel2016agent, title={Agent-Agnostic Human-In-The-Loop Reinforcement Learning}, author={Abel, David and Salvatier, John and Stuhlm{\"u}ller, Andreas and Evans, Owain}, booktitle={NeurIPS Workshop on the Future of Interactive Learning Machines}, year={2016} }

@inproceedings{abel2016exploratory, title={Exploratory Gradient Boosting for Reinforcement Learning in Complex Domains}, author={Abel, David and Agarwal, Alekh and Diaz, Fernando and Krishnamurthy, Akshay and Schapire, Robert}, booktitle={ICML Workshop on Abstraction in Reinforcement Learning}, year={2016} }

@inproceedings{abel2016reinforcement, title={Reinforcement Learning as a Framework for Ethical Decision Making}, author={Abel, David and MacGlashan, James and Littman, Michael L.}, booktitle={AAAI Workshop on AI, Ethics, and Society}, year={2016} }

@inproceedings{barthmaron2014affordances, title={Affordances as Transferrable Knowledge for Planning Agents}, author={Barth-Maron, Gabriel and Abel, David and MacGlashan, James and Tellex, Stefanie}, booktitle={AAAI Symposium on Knowledge and Skill Transfer}, year={2014} }

@inproceedings{abel2014toward, title={Toward Affordance-Aware Planning}, author={Abel, David and Barth-Maron, Gabriel and MacGlashan, James and Tellex, Stefanie}, booktitle={RSS Workshop on Affordances in Vision for Cognitive Robotics}, year={2014} }

@article{abel2023convergence, title={On the Convergence of Bounded Agents}, author={Abel, David and Barreto, Andr{\'e} and van Hasselt, Hado and Van Roy, Benjamin and Precup, Doina and Singh, Satinder}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.11044}, year={2023} }

@article{asadi2020learning, title={Learning State Abstractions for Transfer in Continuous Control}, author={Asadi, Kavosh and Abel, David and Littman, Michael L.}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.05518}, year={2020} }

@article{arumugam2018mitigating, title={Mitigating Planner Overfitting in Model-Based Reinforcement Learning}, author={Arumugam, Dilip and Abel, David and Asadi, Kavosh and Gopalan, Nakul and Grimm, Christopher and Lee, Jun Ki and Lehnert, Lucas and Littman, Michael L.}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.01129}, year={2018} }

@article{grimm2017modeling, title={Modeling Latent Attention Within Neural Networks}, author={Grimm, Christopher and Arumugam, Dilip and Karamcheti, Siddharth and Abel, David and Wong, Lawson L.S. and Littman, Michael L.}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.00536}, year={1706} }