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Selecting Decision-Relevant Concepts in Reinforcement Learning

Naveen Raman, Stephanie Milani, Fei Fang · Apr 6, 2026 · Citations: 0

How to use this paper page

Coverage: Recent

Use this page to decide whether the paper is strong enough to influence an eval design. It summarizes the abstract plus available structured metadata. If the signal is thin, use it as background context and compare it against stronger hub pages before making protocol choices.

Best use

Background context only

Metadata: Recent

Trust level

Low

Signals: Recent

What still needs checking

Extraction confidence is 0.45 (below strong-reference threshold).

Signal confidence: 0.45

Abstract

Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions. This selection demands domain expertise, is time-consuming and costly, scales poorly with the number of candidates, and provides no performance guarantees. To overcome this limitation, we propose the first algorithms for principled automatic concept selection in sequential decision-making. Our key insight is that concept selection can be viewed through the lens of state abstraction: intuitively, a concept is decision-relevant if removing it would cause the agent to confuse states that require different actions. As a result, agents should rely on decision-relevant concepts; states with the same concept representation should share the same optimal action, which preserves the optimal decision structure of the original state space. This perspective leads to the Decision-Relevant Selection (DRS) algorithm, which selects a subset of concepts from a candidate set, along with performance bounds relating the selected concepts to the performance of the resulting policy. Empirically, DRS automatically recovers manually curated concept sets while matching or exceeding their performance, and improves the effectiveness of test-time concept interventions across reinforcement learning benchmarks and real-world healthcare environments.

Use caution before copying this protocol

Use this page for context, then validate protocol choices against stronger HFEPX references before implementation decisions.

  • Extraction confidence is 0.45 (below strong-reference threshold).
  • No explicit evaluation mode was extracted from available metadata.
  • No benchmark/dataset or metric anchors were extracted.

HFEPX Relevance Assessment

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

Background context only.

Main weakness

Extraction confidence is 0.45 (below strong-reference threshold).

Trust level

Low

Eval-Fit Score

40/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Detected

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

HFEPX Fit

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence: Low

What This Page Found In The Paper

Each field below shows whether the signal looked explicit, partial, or missing in the available metadata. Use this to judge what is safe to trust directly and what still needs full-paper validation.

Human Feedback Types

partial

Expert Verification

Confidence: Low Direct evidence

Directly usable for protocol triage.

Evidence snippet: Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Confidence: Low Not found

Validate eval design from full paper text.

Evidence snippet: Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

Confidence: Low Not found

No explicit QC controls found.

Evidence snippet: Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

Confidence: Low Not found

No benchmark anchors detected.

Evidence snippet: Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

Confidence: Low Not found

No metric anchors detected.

Evidence snippet: Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.

Rater Population

partial

Domain Experts

Confidence: Low Direct evidence

Helpful for staffing comparability.

Evidence snippet: This selection demands domain expertise, is time-consuming and costly, scales poorly with the number of candidates, and provides no performance guarantees.

Human Data Lens

  • Uses human feedback: Yes
  • Feedback types: Expert Verification
  • Rater population: Domain Experts
  • Unit of annotation: Unknown
  • Expertise required: General
  • Signal basis: Structured extraction plus abstract evidence.

Evaluation Lens

  • Evaluation modes:
  • Agentic eval: None
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Signal confidence: 0.45
  • Known cautions: ambiguous

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.
  • This selection demands domain expertise, is time-consuming and costly, scales poorly with the number of candidates, and provides no performance guarantees.
  • To overcome this limitation, we propose the first algorithms for principled automatic concept selection in sequential decision-making.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.
  • To overcome this limitation, we propose the first algorithms for principled automatic concept selection in sequential decision-making.
  • Our key insight is that concept selection can be viewed through the lens of state abstraction: intuitively, a concept is decision-relevant if removing it would cause the agent to confuse states that require different actions.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Training interpretable concept-based policies requires practitioners to manually select which human-understandable concepts an agent should reason with when making sequential decisions.
  • Our key insight is that concept selection can be viewed through the lens of state abstraction: intuitively, a concept is decision-relevant if removing it would cause the agent to confuse states that require different actions.

Researcher Checklist

  • Pass: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    Detected: Expert Verification

  • Gap: Evaluation mode is explicit

    No clear evaluation mode extracted.

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Gap: Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.

Related Papers

Papers are ranked by protocol overlap, extraction signal alignment, and semantic proximity.

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