Anytime-Constrained Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: McMahan, Jeremy, Zhu, Xiaojin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author McMahan, Jeremy
Zhu, Xiaojin
author_facet McMahan, Jeremy
Zhu, Xiaojin
contents We introduce and study constrained Markov Decision Processes (cMDPs) with anytime constraints. An anytime constraint requires the agent to never violate its budget at any point in time, almost surely. Although Markovian policies are no longer sufficient, we show that there exist optimal deterministic policies augmented with cumulative costs. In fact, we present a fixed-parameter tractable reduction from anytime-constrained cMDPs to unconstrained MDPs. Our reduction yields planning and learning algorithms that are time and sample-efficient for tabular cMDPs so long as the precision of the costs is logarithmic in the size of the cMDP. However, we also show that computing non-trivial approximately optimal policies is NP-hard in general. To circumvent this bottleneck, we design provable approximation algorithms that efficiently compute or learn an arbitrarily accurate approximately feasible policy with optimal value so long as the maximum supported cost is bounded by a polynomial in the cMDP or the absolute budget. Given our hardness results, our approximation guarantees are the best possible under worst-case analysis.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_05511
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Anytime-Constrained Reinforcement Learning
McMahan, Jeremy
Zhu, Xiaojin
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Data Structures and Algorithms
We introduce and study constrained Markov Decision Processes (cMDPs) with anytime constraints. An anytime constraint requires the agent to never violate its budget at any point in time, almost surely. Although Markovian policies are no longer sufficient, we show that there exist optimal deterministic policies augmented with cumulative costs. In fact, we present a fixed-parameter tractable reduction from anytime-constrained cMDPs to unconstrained MDPs. Our reduction yields planning and learning algorithms that are time and sample-efficient for tabular cMDPs so long as the precision of the costs is logarithmic in the size of the cMDP. However, we also show that computing non-trivial approximately optimal policies is NP-hard in general. To circumvent this bottleneck, we design provable approximation algorithms that efficiently compute or learn an arbitrarily accurate approximately feasible policy with optimal value so long as the maximum supported cost is bounded by a polynomial in the cMDP or the absolute budget. Given our hardness results, our approximation guarantees are the best possible under worst-case analysis.
title Anytime-Constrained Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.05511