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Algorithms with predictions is a new research direction that leverages machine learned predictions for algorithm design. So far a plethora of recent works have incorporated predictions to improve on worst-case bounds for online problems. In this paper, we initiate the study of complexity of dynamic data structures with predictions, including dynamic graph algorithms. Unlike online algorithms, the goal in dynamic data structures is to maintain the solution efficiently with every update. We investigate three natural models of prediction: (1) δ-accurate predictions where each predicted request matches the true request with probability δ, (2) list-accurate predictions where a true request comes from a list of possible requests, and (3) bounded delay predictions where the true requests are a permutation of the predicted requests. We give general reductions among the prediction models, showing that bounded delay is the strongest prediction model, followed by list-accurate, and δ-accurate. Further, we identify two broad problem classes based on lower bounds due to the Online Matrix Vector (OMv) conjecture. Specifically, we show that locally correctable dynamic problems have strong conditional lower bounds for list-accurate predictions that are equivalent to the non-prediction setting, unless list-accurate predictions are perfect. Moreover, we show that locally reducible dynamic problems have time complexity that degrades gracefully with the quality of bounded delay predictions. We categorize problems with known OMv lower bounds accordingly and give several upper bounds in the delay model that show that our lower bounds are almost tight. We note that concurrent work by v.d.Brand et al. [SODA '24] and Liu and Srinivas [arXiv:2307.08890] independently study dynamic graph algorithms with predictions, but their work is mostly focused on showing upper bounds. 

The edit distance between strings classically assigns unit cost to every character insertion, deletion, and substitution, whereas the Hamming distance only allows substitutions. In many real-life scenarios, insertions and deletions (abbreviated indels) appear frequently but significantly less so than substitutions. To model this, we consider substitutions being cheaper than indels, with cost 1/a for a parameter a ≥ 1. This basic variant, denoted ED_a, bridges classical edit distance (a = 1) with Hamming distance (a → ∞), leading to interesting algorithmic challenges: Does the time complexity of computing ED_a interpolate between that of Hamming distance (linear time) and edit distance (quadratic time)? What about approximating ED_a? We first present a simple deterministic exact algorithm for ED_a and further prove that it is near-optimal assuming the Orthogonal Vectors Conjecture. Our main result is a randomized algorithm computing a (1+ε)-approximation of ED_a(X,Y), given strings X,Y of total length n and a bound k ≥ ED_a(X,Y). For simplicity, let us focus on k ≥ 1 and a constant ε > 0; then, our algorithm takes Õ(n/a + ak³) time. Unless a = Õ(1), in which case ED_a resembles the standard edit distance, and for the most interesting regime of small enough k, this running time is sublinear in n. We also consider a very natural version that asks to find a (k_I, k_S)-alignment, i.e., an alignment with at most k_I indels and k_S substitutions. In this setting, we give an exact algorithm and, more importantly, an Õ((nk_I)/k_S + k_S k_I³)-time (1,1+ε)-bicriteria approximation algorithm. The latter solution is based on the techniques we develop for ED_a for a = Θ(k_S/k_I), and its running time is again sublinear in n whenever k_I ≪ k_S and the overall distance is small enough. These bounds are in stark contrast to unit-cost edit distance, where state-of-the-art algorithms are far from achieving (1+ε)-approximation in sublinear time, even for a favorable choice of k.