组合多种学习机制,让模型长期记住100个问答任务
Continual Learning Mechanisms Compose for Long-Horizon Memorization

- 用数据、函数、权重三类锚点+低秩分配,组合不同遗忘应对策略
- 最终平均记忆率从1.2%提升至34.9%,提升28倍
- 适合需要持续学习新知识的长时序应用场景
语言模型需随时间持续内化信息并保留更新后的知识。我们提出长时程记忆任务设置:模型通过100个问答任务的连续监督微调,在不保留旧数据且推理时无任务标识的情况下学习。连续更新导致灾难性遗忘,单一持续学习机制无法在该时长下保持强记忆。我们假设互补遗忘机制组合更有效,据此构建两个设计维度:锚点类型(数据、函数、权重)决定应保留的信息,低秩分配规则决定更新的存储位置。为系统验证,我们创建了三个独立的100任务记忆数据集,采用任务级逐次减半法搜索组合空间,并使用析因实验评估各因素及交互效应。最优方法结合三类锚点与合并LoRA,在所有数据集上位列前三,平均最终记忆率由原始顺序微调的1.2%提升至34.9%,实现28倍改善。数据锚点与合并LoRA带来最大平均增益,并在所有数据集上呈现超加成交互作用。结果表明,组合互补机制显著优于单一机制。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Language models may need to internalize information that arrives over time and retain it through many subsequent updates. To study this challenge, we introduce long-horizon memorization, a setting in which a model learns 100 query-answer tasks through continual supervised fine-tuning without retaining earlier training examples or receiving task identifiers at inference. Sequential updates cause catastrophic forgetting, and no single continual learning mechanism we evaluate maintains strong retention at this horizon. We hypothesize that mechanisms addressing complementary sources of forgetting will be more effective when composed. We organize these compositions along two design dimensions. Data, function, and weight anchors specify what prior information each update should preserve, while low-rank allocation rules determine where successive updates are retained. To test this hypothesis systematically, we construct three distinct 100-task memorization datasets. We introduce task-level successive halving to search the combinatorial design space and use a factorial experiment to measure individual and interaction effects. Our best method combines all three anchors with merged LoRA, ranks among the top 3 methods in all datasets, and raises average final retention from 1.2% under naive sequential fine-tuning to 34.9%, a 28-fold improvement. The data anchor and merged LoRA provide the largest average gains and interact super-additively on all three datasets. Together, these results show that composing complementary mechanisms substantially improves long-horizon memorization beyond what any individual mechanism achieves.
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