Verifying Learning-augmented Systems

Abstract

The application of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to computer and networked systems has recently gained significant popularity. However, the obscurity of decisions by DRL policies renders it hard to ascertain that learning-augmented systems are safe to deploy, posing a significant obstacle to their real-world adoption. We observe that specific characteristics of recent applications of DRL to systems contexts give rise to an exciting opportunity: applying formal verification to establish that a given system provably satisfies designer/user-specified requirements, or to expose concrete counter-examples. We present whiRL, a platform for verifying DRL policies for systems, which combines recent advances in the verification of deep neural networks with scalable model checking techniques. To exemplify its usefulness, we employ whiRL to verify natural equirements from recently introduced learning-augmented systems for three real-world environments: Internet congestion control, adaptive video streaming, and job scheduling in compute clusters. Our evaluation shows that whiRL is capable of guaranteeing that natural requirements from these systems are satisfied, and of exposing specific scenarios in which other basic requirements are not.