What is reinforcement learning primarily focused on optimizing?

Reinforcement learning is fundamentally focused on optimizing the actions of a model to achieve a specific goal, often framed as maximizing some notion of cumulative reward. In this approach, an agent learns to make decisions by interacting with an environment, receiving feedback in the form of rewards or penalties based on the actions taken. The agent's objective is to develop a policy—a strategy for selecting actions that maximizes its long-term rewards based on its experiences.

In reinforcement learning, the process is iterative and involves exploring different strategies to determine which actions yield the best outcomes over time. This is particularly distinct from other machine learning paradigms, such as supervised learning, where the primary aim might be to improve the accuracy of predictions based on static datasets.

This focus on action and goal achievement is what separates reinforcement learning from considerations such as the efficiency of data processing or the volume of training data, which are more relevant to the overall machine learning framework but do not capture the essence of the reinforcement learning paradigm.