IADD-TR: Intervention-Aware Dynamics Decoupling with Targeted Regularization for Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL), which learns environment dynamics to generate synthetic experience, is a promising approach to sample-efficient decision making. Numerous methods have been developed to improve dynamics prediction and policy optimization for MBRL through uncertainty estimation, model regularization, and conservative value learning. However, these methods typically treat the transition model and critic as monolithic predictors, overlooking the policy-induced data bias. Consequently, action can become entangled with environmental evolution, while uneven action coverage may distort the counterfactual value estimates used for policy improvement. To address this, we propose IADD-TR, a unified framework combining Intervention-Aware Dynamics Decoupling (IADD) and Targeted Regularization (TR). IADD factorizes transitions into an action-intervention stage and an action-free natural evolution stage, using a zero-action anchor to resolve the non-uniqueness of this two-stage factorization for robust generalization. Its latent and state-aligned components are identifiable up to an invertible within-block transformation and pointwise, respectively. For policy learning, we derive TR from the efficient influence function of a replay-state policy-gradient functional. TR augments the critic with an action-density-scaled residual correction and optimizes a targeted loss, yielding doubly robust policy-gradient estimation when either the critic or the replay action density is consistently specified. Extensive experiments on five MuJoCo tasks show that IADD-TR achieves competitive returns with improved sample efficiency.

Where and How to Attack? A Causality-Inspired Recipe for Generating Counterfactual Adversarial Examples

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have been demonstrated to be vulnerable to well-crafted \emph{adversarial examples}, which are generated through either well-conceived $\mathcal{L}_p$-norm restricted or unrestricted attacks. Nevertheless, the majority of those approaches assume that adversaries can modify any features as they wish, and neglect the causal generating process of the data, which is unreasonable and unpractical. For instance, a modification in income would inevitably impact features like the debt-to-income ratio within a banking system. By considering the underappreciated causal generating process, first, we pinpoint the source of the vulnerability of DNNs via the lens of causality, then give theoretical results to answer \emph{where to attack}. Second, considering the consequences of the attack interventions on the current state of the examples to generate more realistic adversarial examples, we propose CADE, a framework that can generate \textbf{C}ounterfactual \textbf{AD}versarial \textbf{E}xamples to answer \emph{how to attack}. The empirical results demonstrate CADE's effectiveness, as evidenced by its competitive performance across diverse attack scenarios, including white-box, transfer-based, and random intervention attacks.