mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Stochastic Generative Flow Networks

arXiv 2302.09465 ↗First posted 19 Feb 2023cs.LGcited by 32

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Abstract (arXiv)

Generative Flow Networks (or GFlowNets for short) are a family of probabilistic agents that learn to sample complex combinatorial structures through the lens of "inference as control". They have shown great potential in generating high-quality and diverse candidates from a given energy landscape. However, existing GFlowNets can be applied only to deterministic environments, and fail in more general tasks with stochastic dynamics, which can limit their applicability. To overcome this challenge, this paper introduces Stochastic GFlowNets, a new algorithm that extends GFlowNets to stochastic environments. By decomposing state transitions into two steps, Stochastic GFlowNets isolate environmental stochasticity and learn a dynamics model to capture it. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that Stochastic GFlowNets offer significant advantages over standard GFlowNets as well as MCMC- and RL-based approaches, on a variety of standard benchmarks with stochastic dynamics.

Key facts. Cited by 32 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 35 of its 50 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 Feb 2023.

Builds on

35 of 50 references.

References · 35

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 37,240
  3. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
  4. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  5. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,885
  6. 2013Auto-Encoding Variational Bayescited by 4,053
  7. 2015Continuous control with deep reinforcement learningcited by 3,407
  8. 2018Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methodscited by 2,417
  9. 2016Asynchronous Methods for Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 2,258
  10. 2019Dream to Control: Learning Behaviors by Latent Imaginationcited by 1,653
  11. 2019Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Modelcited by 1,353
  12. 2017Reinforcement Learning with Deep Energy-Based Policiescited by 669
23 more
  1. 2021Flow Network based Generative Models for Non-Iterative Diverse Candidate Generationcited by 392
  2. 2021GFlowNet Foundationscited by 290
  3. 2017Revisiting the Arcade Learning Environment: Evaluation Protocols and Open Problems for General Agentscited by 269
  4. 2022Trajectory balance: Improved credit assignment in GFlowNetscited by 251
  5. 2022Biological Sequence Design with GFlowNetscited by 174
  6. 2015Learning Continuous Control Policies by Stochastic Value Gradientscited by 162
  7. 2022Bayesian Structure Learning with Generative Flow Networkscited by 153
  8. 2022Learning GFlowNets from partial episodes for improved convergence and stabilitycited by 132
  9. 2021MARS: Markov Molecular Sampling for Multi-objective Drug Discoverycited by 125
  10. 2022Generative Flow Networks for Discrete Probabilistic Modelingcited by 114
  11. 2022GFlowNets and variational inferencecited by 106
  12. 2022Multi-Objective GFlowNetscited by 101
  13. 2022Design-Bench: Benchmarks for Data-Driven Offline Model-Based Optimizationcited by 97
  14. 2023Better Training of GFlowNets with Local Credit and Incomplete Trajectoriescited by 85
  15. 2023Robust Scheduling with GFlowNetscited by 69
  16. 2022You Can't Count on Luck: Why Decision Transformers and RvS Fail in Stochastic Environmentscited by 63
  17. 2022Generative Augmented Flow Networkscited by 50
  18. 2022Dichotomy of Control: Separating What You Can Control from What You Cannotcited by 47
  19. 2020Softmax Deep Double Deterministic Policy Gradientscited by 32
  20. 2022Bayesian learning of Causal Structure and Mechanisms with GFlowNets and Variational Bayescited by 30
  21. 2023Distributional GFlowNets with Quantile Flowscited by 28
  22. 2022Unifying Generative Models with GFlowNets and Beyondcited by 24
  23. 2022GFlowOut: Dropout with Generative Flow Networkscited by 22

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 8; 2024: 14; 2025: 8; 2026: 2.

32 papers.

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  1. 2023Policy Representation via Diffusion Probability Model for Reinforcement Learningcited by 112
  2. 2023Diffusion Generative Flow Samplers: Improving learning signals through partial trajectory optimizationcited by 57
  3. 2023Local Search GFlowNetscited by 48
  4. 2024Discrete Probabilistic Inference as Control in Multi-path Environmentscited by 44
  5. 2023Let the Flows Tell: Solving Graph Combinatorial Optimization Problems with GFlowNetscited by 40
  6. 2025FlowRL: Matching Reward Distributions for LLM Reasoningcited by 40
  7. 2024Efficient Diversity-Preserving Diffusion Alignment via Gradient-Informed GFlowNetscited by 32
  8. 2023Maximum entropy GFlowNets with soft Q-learningcited by 30
  9. 2023Learning to Scale Logits for Temperature-Conditional GFlowNetscited by 27
  10. 2024Improving GFlowNets for Text-to-Image Diffusion Alignmentcited by 27
  11. 2024QGFN: Controllable Greediness with Action Valuescited by 18
  12. 2023Pre-Training and Fine-Tuning Generative Flow Networkscited by 17
20 more
  1. 2025Learning to Sample Effective and Diverse Prompts for Text-to-Image Generationcited by 17
  2. 2025Generative Models in Decision Making: A Surveycited by 15
  3. 2025Value Gradient Guidance for Flow Matching Alignmentcited by 14
  4. 2024Beyond Squared Error: Exploring Loss Design for Enhanced Training of Generative Flow Networkscited by 11
  5. 2025Nabla-R2D3: Effective and Efficient 3D Diffusion Alignment with 2D Rewardscited by 11
  6. 2024Looking Backward: Retrospective Backward Synthesis for Goal-Conditioned GFlowNetscited by 8
  7. 2023Expected flow networks in stochastic environments and two-player zero-sum gamescited by 7
  8. 2024Baking Symmetry into GFlowNetscited by 7
  9. 2024On Divergence Measures for Training GFlowNetscited by 6
  10. 2024Random Policy Evaluation Uncovers Policies of Generative Flow Networkscited by 5
  11. 2025Loss-Guided Auxiliary Agents for Overcoming Mode Collapse in GFlowNetscited by 5
  12. 2024Evolution Guided Generative Flow Networkscited by 4
  13. 2024Streaming Bayes GFlowNetscited by 4
  14. 2024Embarrassingly Parallel GFlowNetscited by 3
  15. 2024Enhance Eye Disease Detection using Learnable Probabilistic Discrete Latents in Machine Learning Architecturescited by 1
  16. 2024Bifurcated Generative Flow Networkscited by 1
  17. 2026Partial GFlowNet: Accelerating Convergence in Large State Spaces via Strategic Partitioningcited by 1
  18. 2025Beyond the Proxy: Trajectory-Distilled Guidance for Offline GFlowNet Trainingcited by 0
  19. 2025Planning-Augmented Sampling with Early Guidance for High-Reward Discoverycited by 0
  20. 2026WINFlowNets: Warm-up Integrated Networks Training of Generative Flow Networks for Robotics and Machine Fault Adaptationcited by 0