不同微调方式让持续学习效果大不相同,选错方法可能白忙一场。
Fine-Tuning Regimes Define Distinct Continual Learning Problems

- 将可训练参数范围视为关键变量,用投影优化统一建模微调策略。
- 深度越深更新越大,遗忘越严重,二者关系更强,方法排名随深度变化。
- 建议评估时明确指定微调深度,避免结论误导,适合研究持续学习的学者。
持续学习(CL)研究模型如何顺序学习任务并保留旧知识。尽管基准测试已有进展,但多数比较固定微调方式。本文指出,微调方式(由可训练参数子空间定义)本身是关键评估变量。我们将适应策略形式化为固定可训练子空间上的投影优化,发现改变可训练深度会通过影响当前任务拟合与知识保留的有效更新信号。该分析支持一个假设:方法比较不应在不同微调方式下保持不变。我们在任务增量学习中验证了这一假设,涵盖五种可训练深度、四种标准方法(在线EWC、LwF、SI、GEM),以及五个基准数据集(MNIST、Fashion MNIST、KMNIST、QMNIST、CIFAR-100)和每数据集11种任务顺序。结果表明,方法相对表现并不在所有微调方式下一致。进一步发现,更深的适应方式伴随更大的更新幅度、更高的遗忘率,并且两者关联更强。这说明持续学习的比较结论强烈依赖于所选微调方式,呼吁采用将可训练深度作为显式实验因子的评估协议。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Continual learning (CL) studies how models acquire tasks sequentially while retaining previously learned knowledge. Despite substantial progress in benchmarking CL methods, comparative evaluations typically keep the fine-tuning regime fixed. In this paper, we argue that the fine-tuning regime, defined by the trainable parameter subspace, is itself a key evaluation variable. We formalize adaptation regimes as projected optimization over fixed trainable subspaces, showing that changing the trainable depth alters the effective update signal through which both current task fitting and knowledge preservation operate. This analysis motivates the hypothesis that method comparisons need not be invariant across regimes. We test this hypothesis in task incremental CL, five trainable depth regimes, and four standard methods: online EWC, LwF, SI, and GEM. Across five benchmark datasets, namely MNIST, Fashion MNIST, KMNIST, QMNIST, and CIFAR-100, and across 11 task orders per dataset, we find that the relative ranking of methods is not consistently preserved across regimes. We further show that deeper adaptation regimes are associated with larger update magnitudes, higher forgetting, and a stronger relationship between the two. These results show that comparative conclusions in CL can depend strongly on the chosen fine-tuning regime, motivating regime-aware evaluation protocols that treat trainable depth as an explicit experimental factor.
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