Identifiable Latent Bandits: Leveraging observational data for personalized decision-making

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Balcıoğlu, Ahmet Zahid, Mwai, Newton, Carlsson, Emil, Johansson, Fredrik D.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Balcıoğlu, Ahmet Zahid
Mwai, Newton
Carlsson, Emil
Johansson, Fredrik D.
author_facet Balcıoğlu, Ahmet Zahid
Mwai, Newton
Carlsson, Emil
Johansson, Fredrik D.
contents Sequential decision-making algorithms such as multi-armed bandits can find optimal personalized decisions, but are notoriously sample-hungry. In personalized medicine, for example, training a bandit from scratch for every patient is typically infeasible, as the number of trials required is much larger than the number of decision points for a single patient. To combat this, latent bandits offer rapid exploration and personalization beyond what context variables alone can offer, provided that a latent variable model of problem instances can be learned consistently. However, existing works give no guidance as to how such a model can be found. In this work, we propose an identifiable latent bandit framework that leads to optimal decision-making with a shorter exploration time than classical bandits by learning from historical records of decisions and outcomes. Our method is based on nonlinear independent component analysis that provably identifies representations from observational data sufficient to infer optimal actions in new bandit instances. We verify this strategy in simulated and semi-synthetic environments, showing substantial improvement over online and offline learning baselines when identifying conditions are satisfied.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_16239
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Identifiable Latent Bandits: Leveraging observational data for personalized decision-making
Balcıoğlu, Ahmet Zahid
Mwai, Newton
Carlsson, Emil
Johansson, Fredrik D.
Machine Learning
Sequential decision-making algorithms such as multi-armed bandits can find optimal personalized decisions, but are notoriously sample-hungry. In personalized medicine, for example, training a bandit from scratch for every patient is typically infeasible, as the number of trials required is much larger than the number of decision points for a single patient. To combat this, latent bandits offer rapid exploration and personalization beyond what context variables alone can offer, provided that a latent variable model of problem instances can be learned consistently. However, existing works give no guidance as to how such a model can be found. In this work, we propose an identifiable latent bandit framework that leads to optimal decision-making with a shorter exploration time than classical bandits by learning from historical records of decisions and outcomes. Our method is based on nonlinear independent component analysis that provably identifies representations from observational data sufficient to infer optimal actions in new bandit instances. We verify this strategy in simulated and semi-synthetic environments, showing substantial improvement over online and offline learning baselines when identifying conditions are satisfied.
title Identifiable Latent Bandits: Leveraging observational data for personalized decision-making
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16239