Research Program: Theory of Learning in Dynamical Systems

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hazan, Elad, Shwartz, Shai Shalev, Srebro, Nathan
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866909973577990144
author Hazan, Elad
Shwartz, Shai Shalev
Srebro, Nathan
author_facet Hazan, Elad
Shwartz, Shai Shalev
Srebro, Nathan
contents Modern learning systems increasingly interact with data that evolve over time and depend on hidden internal state. We ask a basic question: when is such a dynamical system learnable from observations alone? This paper proposes a research program for understanding learnability in dynamical systems through the lens of next-token prediction. We argue that learnability in dynamical systems should be studied as a finite-sample question, and be based on the properties of the underlying dynamics rather than the statistical properties of the resulting sequence. To this end, we give a formulation of learnability for stochastic processes induced by dynamical systems, focusing on guarantees that hold uniformly at every time step after a finite burn-in period. This leads to a notion of dynamic learnability which captures how the structure of a system, such as stability, mixing, observability, and spectral properties, governs the number of observations required before reliable prediction becomes possible. We illustrate the framework in the case of linear dynamical systems, showing that accurate prediction can be achieved after finite observation without system identification, by leveraging improper methods based on spectral filtering. We survey the relationship between learning in dynamical systems and classical PAC, online, and universal prediction theories, and suggest directions for studying nonlinear and controlled systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_19410
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Research Program: Theory of Learning in Dynamical Systems
Hazan, Elad
Shwartz, Shai Shalev
Srebro, Nathan
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Modern learning systems increasingly interact with data that evolve over time and depend on hidden internal state. We ask a basic question: when is such a dynamical system learnable from observations alone? This paper proposes a research program for understanding learnability in dynamical systems through the lens of next-token prediction. We argue that learnability in dynamical systems should be studied as a finite-sample question, and be based on the properties of the underlying dynamics rather than the statistical properties of the resulting sequence. To this end, we give a formulation of learnability for stochastic processes induced by dynamical systems, focusing on guarantees that hold uniformly at every time step after a finite burn-in period. This leads to a notion of dynamic learnability which captures how the structure of a system, such as stability, mixing, observability, and spectral properties, governs the number of observations required before reliable prediction becomes possible. We illustrate the framework in the case of linear dynamical systems, showing that accurate prediction can be achieved after finite observation without system identification, by leveraging improper methods based on spectral filtering. We survey the relationship between learning in dynamical systems and classical PAC, online, and universal prediction theories, and suggest directions for studying nonlinear and controlled systems.
title Research Program: Theory of Learning in Dynamical Systems
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.19410