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arXiv · 2307.10524

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

Tongxin Li·Yiheng Lin·Shaolei Ren·Adam Wierman
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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.

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Tongxin Li, Yiheng Lin, Shaolei Ren, Adam Wierman. 2023-07-20. Beyond Black-Box Advice: Learning-Augmented Algorithms for MDPs with Q-Value Predictions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.10524

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