Knowledge Accumulation in Continually Learned Representations and the Issue of Feature Forgetting

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Hess, Timm, Verwimp, Eli, van de Ven, Gido M., Tuytelaars, Tinne
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Hess, Timm
Verwimp, Eli
van de Ven, Gido M.
Tuytelaars, Tinne
author_facet Hess, Timm
Verwimp, Eli
van de Ven, Gido M.
Tuytelaars, Tinne
contents Continual learning research has shown that neural networks suffer from catastrophic forgetting "at the output level", but it is debated whether this is also the case at the level of learned representations. Multiple recent studies ascribe representations a certain level of innate robustness against forgetting -- that they only forget minimally in comparison with forgetting at the output level. We revisit and expand upon the experiments that revealed this difference in forgetting and illustrate the coexistence of two phenomena that affect the quality of continually learned representations: knowledge accumulation and feature forgetting. Taking both aspects into account, we show that, even though forgetting in the representation (i.e. feature forgetting) can be small in absolute terms, when measuring relative to how much was learned during a task, forgetting in the representation tends to be just as catastrophic as forgetting at the output level. Next we show that this feature forgetting is problematic as it substantially slows down the incremental learning of good general representations (i.e. knowledge accumulation). Finally, we study how feature forgetting and knowledge accumulation are affected by different types of continual learning methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2304_00933
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Knowledge Accumulation in Continually Learned Representations and the Issue of Feature Forgetting
Hess, Timm
Verwimp, Eli
van de Ven, Gido M.
Tuytelaars, Tinne
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Continual learning research has shown that neural networks suffer from catastrophic forgetting "at the output level", but it is debated whether this is also the case at the level of learned representations. Multiple recent studies ascribe representations a certain level of innate robustness against forgetting -- that they only forget minimally in comparison with forgetting at the output level. We revisit and expand upon the experiments that revealed this difference in forgetting and illustrate the coexistence of two phenomena that affect the quality of continually learned representations: knowledge accumulation and feature forgetting. Taking both aspects into account, we show that, even though forgetting in the representation (i.e. feature forgetting) can be small in absolute terms, when measuring relative to how much was learned during a task, forgetting in the representation tends to be just as catastrophic as forgetting at the output level. Next we show that this feature forgetting is problematic as it substantially slows down the incremental learning of good general representations (i.e. knowledge accumulation). Finally, we study how feature forgetting and knowledge accumulation are affected by different types of continual learning methods.
title Knowledge Accumulation in Continually Learned Representations and the Issue of Feature Forgetting
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.00933