Beyond Black-Box Advice: Learning-Augmented Algorithms for MDPs with Q-Value Predictions

Abstract:We study the tradeoff between consistency and robustness in the context of a single-trajectory time-varying Markov Decision Process (MDP) with untrusted machine-learned advice. Our work departs from the typical approach of treating advice as coming from black-box sources by instead considering a setting where additional information about how the advice is generated is available. We prove a first-of-its-kind consistency and robustness tradeoff given Q-value advice under a general MDP model that includes both continuous and discrete state/action spaces. Our results highlight that utilizing Q-value advice enables dynamic pursuit of the better of machine-learned advice and a robust baseline, thus result in near-optimal performance guarantees, which provably improves what can be obtained solely with black-box advice.

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Performance (cs.PF)

arXiv:2307.10524 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2307.10524v3 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.10524 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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