{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"TalkRL: The Reinforcement Learning Podcast","title":"David Abel on the Science of Agency @ RLDM 2025","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3582,"description":"David Abel is a Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind on the Agency team, and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. His research blends computer science and philosophy, exploring foundational questions about reinforcement learning, definitions, and the nature of agency.  \n\nFeatured References  \n\nPlasticity as the Mirror of Empowerment  \nDavid Abel, Michael Bowling, André Barreto, Will Dabney, Shi Dong, Steven Hansen, Anna Harutyunyan, Khimya Khetarpal, Clare Lyle, Razvan Pascanu, Georgios Piliouras, Doina Precup, Jonathan Richens, Mark Rowland, Tom Schaul, Satinder Singh  \n\nA Definition of Continual RL  \nDavid Abel, André Barreto, Benjamin Van Roy, Doina Precup, Hado van Hasselt, Satinder Singh  \n\nAgency is Frame-Dependent  \nDavid Abel, André Barreto, Michael Bowling, Will Dabney, Shi Dong, Steven Hansen, Anna Harutyunyan, Khimya Khetarpal, Clare Lyle, Razvan Pascanu, Georgios Piliouras, Doina Precup, Jonathan Richens, Mark Rowland, Tom Schaul, Satinder Singh  \n\nOn the Expressivity of Markov Reward  \nDavid Abel, Will Dabney, Anna Harutyunyan, Mark Ho, Michael Littman, Doina Precup, Satinder Singh — Outstanding Paper Award, NeurIPS 2021  \n\nAdditional References  \nBidirectional Communication Theory — Marko 1973  \nCausality, Feedback and Directed Information — Massey 1990  \nThe Big World Hypothesis — Javed et al. 2024  \nLoss of plasticity in deep continual learning — Dohare et al. 2024  \nThree Dogmas of Reinforcement Learning — Abel 2024  \nExplaining dopamine through prediction errors and beyond — Gershman et al. 2024  \nDavid Abel Google Scholar  \nDavid Abel personal website  ","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/jXB1-VPK-A9v1epzc4aG4pFxqlvo2vbQ_Ytyuar_gPI/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzIwNDcvMTcwNzk1/NDcxMS1hcnR3b3Jr/LmpwZw.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}