Unveiling and Addressing Pseudo Forgetting in Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Sun, Huashan, Yang, Yizhe, Li, Yinghao, Li, Jiawei, Gao, Yang
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Sun, Huashan
Yang, Yizhe
Li, Yinghao
Li, Jiawei
Gao, Yang
author_facet Sun, Huashan
Yang, Yizhe
Li, Yinghao
Li, Jiawei
Gao, Yang
contents Although substantial efforts have been made to mitigate catastrophic forgetting in continual learning, the intrinsic mechanisms are not well understood. In this work, we demonstrate the existence of "pseudo forgetting": the performance degradation on previous tasks is not attributed to a loss of capabilities, but rather to the failure of the instructions to activate the appropriate model abilities. We show that the model's performance on previous tasks can be restored through two simple interventions: (1) providing partial external correct rationale, and (2) appending semantically meaningless suffixes to the original instructions, to guide the generation of correct rationales. Through empirical analysis of the internal mechanisms governing rationale generation, we reveal that models exhibiting pseudo forgetting show reduced instruction dependence during rationale generation, leading to suboptimal activation of their inherent capabilities. Based on this insight, we propose Rationale-Guidance Difficulty based Replay (RGD-R) framework that dynamically allocates replay data based on the model's ability to correctly leverage the intrinsic capabilities. Experimental results demonstrate that RGD-R effectively mitigates pseudo forgetting while maintaining model plasticity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_11932
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Unveiling and Addressing Pseudo Forgetting in Large Language Models
Sun, Huashan
Yang, Yizhe
Li, Yinghao
Li, Jiawei
Gao, Yang
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Although substantial efforts have been made to mitigate catastrophic forgetting in continual learning, the intrinsic mechanisms are not well understood. In this work, we demonstrate the existence of "pseudo forgetting": the performance degradation on previous tasks is not attributed to a loss of capabilities, but rather to the failure of the instructions to activate the appropriate model abilities. We show that the model's performance on previous tasks can be restored through two simple interventions: (1) providing partial external correct rationale, and (2) appending semantically meaningless suffixes to the original instructions, to guide the generation of correct rationales. Through empirical analysis of the internal mechanisms governing rationale generation, we reveal that models exhibiting pseudo forgetting show reduced instruction dependence during rationale generation, leading to suboptimal activation of their inherent capabilities. Based on this insight, we propose Rationale-Guidance Difficulty based Replay (RGD-R) framework that dynamically allocates replay data based on the model's ability to correctly leverage the intrinsic capabilities. Experimental results demonstrate that RGD-R effectively mitigates pseudo forgetting while maintaining model plasticity.
title Unveiling and Addressing Pseudo Forgetting in Large Language Models
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11932