arXiv AI

Beyond Single-Model Optimization: Preserving Plasticity in Continual Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2604. 15414v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Continual reinforcement learning must balance retention with adaptation, yet many methods still rely on \emph{single-model preservation}, committing to one evolving policy as the main reusable solution across tasks.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 2

Simple Recipe Works: Vision-Language-Action Models are Natural Continual Learners with Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2603. 11653v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Continual Reinforcement Learning (CRL) for Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models is a promising direction toward self-improving embodied agents that can adapt in openended, evolving environments.

By Jiaheng Hu, Jay Shim, Chen Tang, Yoonchang Sung, Bo Liu, Peter Stone, Roberto Martin-Martin
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

Continual Reinforcement Learning with Neuroevolution

The paper investigates continual reinforcement learning using neuroevolution, comparing evolution strategies (ES) and genetic algorithms (GAs) across diverse environments and network sizes. ES consistently achieves a better balance between stability and plasticity, while GAs are more plastic but forget more. The authors attribute this to ES finding wider neighborhoods in weight space, with overlap between consecutive tasks correlating with the stability-plasticity trade‑off, and note that common RL plasticity issues do not transfer to neuroevolution.

By Eleni Nisioti, Andrea Cossu, Kathrin Korte, Sebastian Risi
arXiv AI
Aug 20

Harness Continual Learning: Continual Adaptation Beyond Model Parameters

The paper introduces Harness Continual Learning (HCL), a paradigm where an agent’s state evolves through prompts, memories, tools, skills, and routing rules while keeping the underlying foundation model frozen. HCL defines harness-level forgetting and proposes a guarded evolution process involving a Continual Optimizer and Evaluator to ensure improvements without losing prior behavior. Experiments across textual reasoning, multimodal perception, and open‑world interaction show over 10% performance gains and demonstrate how the stability–plasticity trade‑off can be explicitly tuned.

By Borui Kang, Jinrui Gu, Junhan Lv, Wenbin Li, Lei Wang, Yang Gao
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

Toward Plasticity-Preserving KL Regularization for Capability Retention in LLM Reinforcement Learning

arXiv:2608. 01743v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a central paradigm for large language model (LLM) post-training, but optimization toward new objectives can degrade capabilities already present in the base model.

By Li Wang, Xiaodong Lu, Xiaohan Wang, Jiajun Chai, Wei Lin, Tianhao Peng, Guojun Yin