Bridging Lifelong and Multi-Task Representation Learning via Algorithm and Complexity Measure

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Zhi, Zhang, Chicheng, Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wang, Zhi
Zhang, Chicheng
Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
author_facet Wang, Zhi
Zhang, Chicheng
Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
contents In lifelong learning, a learner faces a sequence of tasks with shared structure and aims to identify and leverage it to accelerate learning. We study the setting where such structure is captured by a common representation of data. Unlike multi-task learning or learning-to-learn, where tasks are available upfront to learn the representation, lifelong learning requires the learner to make use of its existing knowledge while continually gathering partial information in an online fashion. In this paper, we consider a generalized framework of lifelong representation learning. We propose a simple algorithm that uses multi-task empirical risk minimization as a subroutine and establish a sample complexity bound based on a new notion we introduce--the task-eluder dimension. Our result applies to a wide range of learning problems involving general function classes. As concrete examples, we instantiate our result on classification and regression tasks under noise.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_01847
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bridging Lifelong and Multi-Task Representation Learning via Algorithm and Complexity Measure
Wang, Zhi
Zhang, Chicheng
Vinayak, Ramya Korlakai
Machine Learning
In lifelong learning, a learner faces a sequence of tasks with shared structure and aims to identify and leverage it to accelerate learning. We study the setting where such structure is captured by a common representation of data. Unlike multi-task learning or learning-to-learn, where tasks are available upfront to learn the representation, lifelong learning requires the learner to make use of its existing knowledge while continually gathering partial information in an online fashion. In this paper, we consider a generalized framework of lifelong representation learning. We propose a simple algorithm that uses multi-task empirical risk minimization as a subroutine and establish a sample complexity bound based on a new notion we introduce--the task-eluder dimension. Our result applies to a wide range of learning problems involving general function classes. As concrete examples, we instantiate our result on classification and regression tasks under noise.
title Bridging Lifelong and Multi-Task Representation Learning via Algorithm and Complexity Measure
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01847