The paper introduces a Fisher-guided submodular data selection method for continual pre‑training of large language models, addressing the forgetting problem that arises when a target‑domain corpus overwrites pretrained knowledge. By decomposing candidate gradients into anchor and frontier components and optimizing a log‑determinant submodular objective, the method selects data that both improves target‑domain performance and limits forgetting. Experiments on TinyLlama‑1.1B and Llama‑3.1‑8B show that the selector achieves superior adaptation and forgetting control while using ten times fewer tokens than traditional replay strategies.
By Zhenghao Zhao, Gaowen Liu, Zhiling Lan, Yan Yan
arXiv:2609.37076v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models trained on vast corpora inherently risk memorizing harmful content that may later re-emerge in their outputs. To mitigate this is...
By Puning Yang, Qizhou Wang, Junchi Yu, Bo Han, Xiuying Chen
The paper introduces EoupCT, a framework that estimates and orthogonalizes unknown pre‑training gradients to mitigate catastrophic forgetting during continual fine‑tuning of large language models. It generates pseudo data most susceptible to forgetting using a learnable soft prompt with Gumbel‑Softmax, then jointly optimizes model parameters and the prompt via a first‑order Pareto optimizer to enforce orthogonality between new task updates and the estimated gradients. Experiments on multiple LLMs show that EoupCT preserves both task‑specific performance and the models’ inherent general‑purpose knowledge.
By Bing Wang, Changchun Li, Xin-Qiang Cai, Lin Yuanbo Wu, Ximing Li, Gang Niu, Masashi Sugiyama
arXiv:2604. 26170v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Adapting large language models (LLMs) to a targeted task efficiently and effectively remains a fundamental challenge.
By Ting-Wei Li, Sirui Chen, Jiaru Zou, Yingbing Huang, Tianxin Wei, Jingrui He, Hanghang Tong
The paper investigates how the choice of Transformer layers for fine‑tuning affects both task performance and the preservation of pre‑trained capabilities. By measuring layer sensitivity with a forward‑only input–output cosine similarity metric, the authors identify layers that are more suitable for adaptation. They introduce Layer‑Selective LoRA (LS‑LoRA), which trains adapters only in low‑similarity layers, and demonstrate that this approach improves target‑task results while better retaining commonsense reasoning compared to standard all‑layer LoRA.
By Zhiqiang Pang, Zihong Sun, Qi Xie, Jun Shu, Deyu Meng, Zongben Xu
The paper introduces Skill Schema Transport (SST), a post‑training framework that mitigates catastrophic forgetting in continual domain adaptation by translating new domain knowledge into a model’s existing skill space. SST abstracts each example type into a reusable skill schema, preserving essential operations while removing domain‑specific surface forms, thereby turning knowledge updates into procedural reuse rather than trajectory memorization. Experiments on two 3B instruction‑tuned backbones show that SST consistently reduces forgetting and improves generalization, achieving up to a 5.75‑point performance gain and a dramatic drop in maximum forgetting from 42.41 to 7.10 points on the Qwen‑3B MATH stream.
By Zijie Liu, Zhen Tan, Charles Fleming, Tianlong Chen
arXiv:2606. 00132v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: While finetuning effectively adapts foundation models to specialized downstream tasks, it can degrade nontarget capabilities acquired during pretraining.
By Dongjun Kim, Adrian de Wynter, Huancheng Chen, Heasung Kim, Haris Vikalo
The paper introduces SFT-as-context, a training‑free method that lets a parent large language model (LLM) use the response of a supervised fine‑tuned (SFT) model as context to answer queries. This approach preserves the parent model’s general capabilities while acquiring the SFT model’s specialized skills, achieving performance close to the SFT model on fine‑tuned benchmarks and near the parent model on general tasks. Experiments across 19 parent‑SFT pairs and 11 benchmarks show minimal gaps in performance, and the method can solve problems requiring both specialized and general knowledge, even when neither model alone succeeds.
By Kenan Tang, Andong Hua, Chengxuan Qian, Saket Tiwari, Yao Qin
arXiv:2610.18572v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Automated post-training transforms pre-trained large language models (LLMs) into models capable of handling diverse domains by automatically constructi...
By Ruohong Liu, Bohan Tang, Lekang Jiang, Jack Umenberger, Yiwen Guo
arXiv:2607. 04733v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) is the standard approach for adapting pretrained language models to downstream domains, yet it often improves target-domain behavior at the cost of degrading pre-existing capabilities.
By Yueyang Wang, Baolong Bi, Shuo Lu, Jingyuan Zhang
arXiv:2607. 02010v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multimodal large language models must adapt to evolving tasks and domains, yet continual improvement under bounded deployment footprint remains difficult because repeated parameter updates or growing replay stores can accumulate adaptation state over time.
By Qianyu Chen, Ziteng Feng, Canran Xiao, Runxuan Tang
arXiv:2602. 14696v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Instruction fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs) often involves selecting a subset of instruction training data from a large candidate pool, using a small query set from the target task.
By Nihal V. Nayak, Paula Rodriguez-Diaz, Neha Hulkund, Sara Beery, David Alvarez-Melis