arXiv:2606.24752cs.AI2026-06

大模型也会遗忘旧知识,规模越大越能延缓但无法根治。

Can Scale Save Us From Plasticity Loss in Large Language Models?

论文配图:Can Scale Save Us From Plasticity Loss in Large Language Models?
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 在多语言持续学习中测试不同规模GPT类模型的适应能力。
  • 模型参数从500万到3.14亿,均出现对越南语任务性能下降。
  • 规模增长可延迟遗忘,但无法完全避免持续学习中的能力退化。

神经网络在学习新信息后失去旧知识的能力(即塑性损失)是持续学习中的根本挑战。尽管该现象已知数十年,但主要研究集中在小型旧架构上,且极少涉及自然语言领域。为检验现代基于Transformer的大语言模型是否仍存在此问题,我们考察了在多语言持续学习任务中,参数量从500万到3.14亿(不含嵌入层)的GPT风格模型的塑性损失。结果显示,所有模型均在保留的越南语探测任务上表现下降,证实塑性损失普遍存在。进一步发现,塑性损失的出现遵循可预测的缩放规律,其影响随模型规模增加呈亚线性增长。这表明更大模型虽可延缓塑性损失的显现,但仅靠扩大参数量难以彻底解决。此外,在平稳多语言训练下也观察到塑性损失,挑战了该现象仅出现在突变任务切换中的观点。总体而言,即使在自然语言场景下长期训练,大型Transformer语言模型最终仍会丧失高效适应新数据的能力,无论是在持续学习还是平稳训练设定中。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

The loss of plasticity - the ability of a network to learn new information after having already learned older information - is a fundamental challenge in creating artificial neural networks capable of continual learning. Although this phenomenon has been known for decades, it has mostly been studied in older, relatively small architectures and rarely in natural-language domains. To determine whether loss of plasticity remains a problem in the modern transformer-based LLM paradigm, we study plasticity loss in GPT-style Transformer models trained on a multilingual continual learning problem. Consistent with prior work, we find evidence of plasticity loss across models ranging from 5M to 314M non-embedding parameters, as measured by deterioration on a held-out Vietnamese probing task. We further find that the onset of plasticity loss follows a predictable scaling law, growing sublinearly with model size. These results suggest that larger models may delay the measurable effects of plasticity loss, but that increasing parameter count alone is likely to be insufficient to completely prevent it. We also find evidence of plasticity loss under stationary multilingual training, challenging the view that the phenomenon is exclusive to continual learning with abrupt task changes. Overall, our results suggest that even large Transformer language models trained on natural-language will eventually lose the ability to efficiently adapt to new data after sufficiently long training, in both continual and stationary settings.

大模型持续学习语言模型塑性损失

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