Non-Stationary Representation Learning in Sequential Linear Bandits

Abstract

In this paper, we study representation learning for multi-task decision-making in non-stationary environments. We consider the framework of sequential linear bandits, where the agent performs a series of tasks drawn from different environments. The embeddings of tasks in each environment share a low-dimensional feature extractor called <i>representation</i>, and representations are different across environments. We propose an online algorithm that facilitates efficient decision-making by learning and transferring non-stationary representations in an adaptive fashion. We prove that our algorithm significantly outperforms the existing ones that treat tasks independently. We also conduct experiments using both synthetic and real data to validate our theoretical insights and demonstrate the efficacy of our algorithm.