TaSL: Task Skill Localization and Consolidation for Language Model Continual Learning

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2408.05200v2
• Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 11:14:17 GMT
• Title: TaSL: Task Skill Localization and Consolidation for Language Model Continual Learning
• Authors: Yujie Feng, Xu Chu, Yongxin Xu, Zexin Lu, Bo Liu, Philip S. Yu, Xiao-Ming Wu,
• Abstract summary: Language model continual learning (CL) has recently attracted significant interest for its ability to adapt large language models (LLMs) to dynamic real-world scenarios without retraining. Existing approaches commonly utilize multiple parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) blocks to acquire task-specific knowledge, yet these methods are inefficient and fail to leverage potential knowledge transfer across tasks. We introduce a novel CL framework for language models, named Task Skill Localization and Consolidation (TaSL), which boosts knowledge transfer without depending on memory replay.
• Score: 41.28933724210434
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Language model continual learning (CL) has recently attracted significant interest for its ability to adapt large language models (LLMs) to dynamic real-world scenarios without retraining. A major challenge in this domain is catastrophic forgetting, where models lose previously acquired knowledge upon learning new tasks. Existing approaches commonly utilize multiple parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) blocks to acquire task-specific knowledge, yet these methods are inefficient and fail to leverage potential knowledge transfer across tasks. In this paper, we introduce a novel CL framework for language models, named Task Skill Localization and Consolidation (TaSL), which boosts knowledge transfer without depending on memory replay. TaSL initially segregates the model into 'skill units' based on parameter dependencies, allowing for more precise control. Subsequently, it employs a novel group-wise skill localization technique to ascertain the importance distribution of skill units for a new task. By comparing this importance distribution with those from previous tasks, we implement a fine-grained skill consolidation strategy that retains task-specific knowledge, thereby preventing forgetting, and updates task-shared knowledge, which facilitates bi-directional knowledge transfer. As a result, TaSL achieves an optimal balance between retaining prior knowledge and excelling in new tasks. TaSL also demonstrates strong generalizability, making it suitable for various base models and adaptable to PEFT methods like LoRA. Furthermore, it offers notable extensibility, supporting enhancements through integration with memory replay techniques. Comprehensive experiments conducted on two CL benchmarks, involving models ranging from 220M to 7B parameters, affirm the effectiveness of TaSL and its variants across different settings.

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