基础模型时代仍需持续学习,三大方向重塑AI进化路径。
The Future of Continual Learning in the Era of Foundation Models: Three Key Directions
- 通过持续预训练保持模型知识新鲜度,应对数据分布变化。
- 持续微调实现个性化与领域适配,无需全量重训。
- 模块化动态组合让多模型协作更灵活,推动智能演化。
持续学习——随时间不断获取、保留并优化知识的能力——对人类和人工智能的智能至关重要。尽管深度学习时代侧重于构建可复用的表示,但大语言模型(LLMs)和基础模型的兴起引发疑问:当中心化模型能借助互联网级知识解决多样化任务时,是否还需持续学习?我们提出三个核心理由:(i) 持续预训练仍必要,以缓解知识陈旧与分布漂移,整合新信息;(ii) 持续微调支持模型专业化与个性化,适应特定任务、用户偏好及现实约束,避免昂贵的长上下文计算;(iii) 持续组合性提供可扩展的模块化智能路径,使基础模型与智能体可动态编排、重组与调整。尽管持续预训练与微调仍是小众研究方向,我们认为持续组合性将标志持续学习的复兴。未来AI不会由单一静态模型定义,而是由持续演化的互动模型生态构成,持续学习因此比以往更具意义。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Continual learning--the ability to acquire, retain, and refine knowledge over time--has always been fundamental to intelligence, both human and artificial. Historically, different AI paradigms have acknowledged this need, albeit with varying priorities: early expert and production systems focused on incremental knowledge consolidation, while reinforcement learning emphasised dynamic adaptation. With the rise of deep learning, deep continual learning has primarily focused on learning robust and reusable representations over time to solve sequences of increasingly complex tasks. However, the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and foundation models has raised the question: Do we still need continual learning when centralised, monolithic models can tackle diverse tasks with access to internet-scale knowledge? We argue that continual learning remains essential for three key reasons: (i) continual pre-training is still necessary to ensure foundation models remain up to date, mitigating knowledge staleness and distribution shifts while integrating new information; (ii) continual fine-tuning enables models to specialise and personalise, adapting to domain-specific tasks, user preferences, and real-world constraints without full retraining, avoiding the need for computationally expensive long context-windows; (iii) continual compositionality offers a scalable and modular approach to intelligence, enabling the orchestration of foundation models and agents to be dynamically composed, recombined, and adapted. While continual pre-training and fine-tuning are explored as niche research directions, we argue it is continual compositionality that will mark the rebirth of continual learning. The future of AI will not be defined by a single static model but by an ecosystem of continually evolving and interacting models, making continual learning more relevant than ever.
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