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Paper proposes modeling forgetting as interference between tasks in continual learning

A new arXiv paper argues that forgetting in continual learning should be modeled directly as interference between tasks, rather than relying on post-hoc mechanisms like replay or regularization. The authors show that in the frozen-feature regime, forgetting equals the interference energy induced on the old task, and they recover this quantity in deep networks via path-averaged curvature with minimal extra computation.

0 engagement·1 source·Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 08:48 AM
The paper, titled 'Interference and Retention in Continual Learning' and posted on arXiv on 2026-07-10, challenges common continual learning approaches that use replay, elastic regularization, or distillation. Instead, it proposes that forgetting is fundamentally interference between tasks. In the frozen-feature regime, forgetting from learning a new task is exactly the interference energy induced on the old task. For deep networks, the same quantity can be recovered through path-averaged curvature with minimal additional forward passes. The authors note that when task supports are disjoint, forgetting can be eliminated structurally, but when they overlap in conflicting directions, a non-... (excerpt cut off). This work provides a theoretical framework that could lead to more principled continual learning algorithms.

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Interference and Retention in Continual Learning(paper)continual learning(concept)forgetting(concept)interference(concept)

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Paper proposes correlation-aware bandits with surrogate rewards for LLM routing

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0 engagement·1 source·arxiv
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