analiza aiqbench
This research introduces condition-anchored generative distillation (CAGD) as a method to mitigate catastrophic forgetting in language models during continual learning. By separating the roles of conditions, teacher generations, and soft targets, the approach significantly reduces loss on prior tasks while adapting to new ones across both autoregressive and masked-diffusion architectures. The technique demonstrates improved stability without requiring the retention of every historical prompt-answer pair, offering a scalable solution for evolving model capabilities.
Stabilizing language models under continual learning via condition-anchored distillation
arXiv:2610.06940v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Continual adaptation of language models can change their output distribution on prompts learned earlier, while retaining every old prompt-answer pair may be undesirable or impossible. We study condition-anchored generative distillation (CAGD): retain a small set of old prompts, use a frozen previous model to reconstruct completions and generation states, and match its predictive distributions while learning the next task. The formulation separates three roles that ordinary replay conflates: conditions select the behavior to protect, teacher generations locate relevant states, and soft targets specify how predictions may change. For autoregressive language generation, teacher-rollout distillation admits an exact chain-rule decomposition of sequence divergence. For masked-diffusion language modeling, our implementation directly controls local denoising drift on teacher-generated completions. In continual adaptation of a 219M masked diffusion language model, CAGD reduces four-task final held-out loss from 2.927 to 1.114 in one task order and from 2.168 to 0.891 in exact reverse. The same soft targets lower final average loss by 0.055 over hard replay when teacher-generated support is held identical. The direction persists on fresh facts and natural instructions across SMDM and Qwen3. On GSM8K, Qwen adaptation preserves answer-format compliance, but exact-match retention is seed-mixed at 0.6B and worsens at 1.7B. These results support condition-anchored functional preservation as a common design principle across the tested language-generation objectives.
Abstract:Continual adaptation of language models can change their output distribution on prompts learned earlier, while retaining every old prompt-answer pair may be undesirable or impossible. We study condition-anchored generative distillation (CAGD): retain a small set of old prompts, use a frozen previous model to reconstruct completions and generation states, and match its predictive distributions while learning the next task. The formulation separates three roles that ordinary replay conflates: conditions select the behavior to protect, teacher generations locate relevant states, and soft targets specify how predictions may change. For autoregressive language generation, teacher-rollout distillation admits an exact chain-rule decomposition of sequence divergence. For masked-diffusion language modeling, our implementation directly controls local denoising drift on teacher-generated completions. In continual adaptation of a 219M masked diffusion language model, CAGD reduces four-task final held-out loss from 2.927 to 1.114 in one task order and from 2.168 to 0.891 in exact reverse. The same soft targets lower final average loss by 0.055 over hard replay when teacher-generated support is held identical. The direction persists on fresh facts and natural instructions across SMDM and Qwen3. On GSM8K, Qwen adaptation preserves answer-format compliance, but exact-match retention is seed-mixed at 0.6B and worsens at 1.7B. These results support condition-anchored functional preservation as a common design principle across the tested language-generation objectives.
Computation and Language (cs.CL)
arXiv:2610.06940 [cs.CL]
(or arXiv:2610.06940v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.06940 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Text integral sub licența deschisă a publicației · 308 cuvinte
Subiecte conexe
News
Quantum Computing Report · 25 iul. 2026
Models Can't Remember Their Training. Neither Can You.
LessWrong · 19 iul. 2026
SpikeOPD: Stable On-Policy Distillation for Autoregressive Spiking Language Models
arXiv · 1 sept. 2026
Informe de riesgos de la IA de frontera (febrero–marzo de 2026)
METR · 19 mai 2026