arXiv:2601.19766cs.LG2026-01

让神经网络动态调整结构,显著减少持续学习中的遗忘问题。

The Effect of Architecture During Continual Learning

  • 将架构与权重联合建模于Sobolev空间,实现同步优化。
  • 同步学习架构与权重可降低灾难性遗忘,性能提升达两个数量级。
  • 提出低秩迁移机制解决不同结构间参数维度不匹配问题,适合高鲁棒性需求场景。

持续学习对固定结构的模型构成挑战,因其难以适应任务间数据分布变化。本文引入一个数学框架,将神经网络架构与权重联合建模于Sobolev空间,从而严格分析架构在持续学习中的作用及其对遗忘损失的影响。推导出持续学习解的必要条件,证明仅更新权重不足以缓解分布漂移下的灾难性遗忘。因此,证明在每个任务中同时学习架构与权重可有效降低遗忘。为此,将持续学习建模为双层优化问题:上层为每项任务选择最优架构,下层通过动态规划求解所有任务的最优权重。为求解上层问题,提出一种无导数的直接搜索算法以确定最优架构。找到后需将知识从当前架构迁移到最优架构,但二者权重空间维度不一致。为此,设计低秩迁移机制,实现跨异构维度的参数映射。在回归与分类任务中,涵盖前馈、卷积与图神经网络的实证研究显示,同步学习最优架构与权重能显著提升性能(最高提升两个数量级)、减少遗忘,并增强对噪声的鲁棒性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Continual learning is a challenge for models with static architecture, as they fail to adapt to when data distributions evolve across tasks. We introduce a mathematical framework that jointly models architecture and weights in a Sobolev space, enabling a rigorous investigation into the role of neural network architecture in continual learning and its effect on the forgetting loss. We derive necessary conditions for the continual learning solution and prove that learning only model weights is insufficient to mitigate catastrophic forgetting under distribution shifts. Consequently, we prove that by learning the architecture and weights simultaneously at each task, we can reduce catastrophic forgetting. To learn weights and architecture simultaneously, we formulate continual learning as a bilevel optimization problem: the upper level selects an optimal architecture for a given task, while the lower level computes optimal weights via dynamic programming over all tasks. To solve the upper level problem, we introduce a derivative-free direct search algorithm to determine the optimal architecture. Once found, we must transfer knowledge from the current architecture to the optimal one. However, the optimal architecture will result in a weights parameter space different from the current architecture (i.e., dimensions of weights matrices will not match). To bridge the dimensionality gap, we develop a low-rank transfer mechanism to map knowledge across architectures of mismatched dimensions. Empirical studies across regression and classification problems, including feedforward, convolutional, and graph neural networks, demonstrate that learning the optimal architecture and weights simultaneously yields substantially improved performance (up to two orders of magnitude), reduced forgetting, and enhanced robustness to noise compared with static architecture approaches.

持续学习架构优化遗忘抑制双层优化

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。