arXiv Machine Learning

Bilinear Optimization Divergence: Diagnosing Factor-Constrained LoRA Continual Learning

arXiv AI
Sep 15

LayerRoute: Adaptive Layer-Skipping with LoRA-Preserved Quality for Efficient LLM Inference

LayerRoute is a parameter‑efficient technique that enables adaptive skipping of transformer layers in large language models. It adds a lightweight per‑layer router (~21.5K parameters) and LoRA adapters (rank 8, ~1.08M parameters) to each of the 24 blocks in Qwen2.5‑0.5B‑Instruct, training them jointly with a gate‑regularized language‑modeling objective. Across ten independent runs, the method consistently identifies nine middle layers as skip‑eligible, achieves a verified wall‑clock speedup of 1.02x–1.06x, and improves perplexity by an average of 1.16 points, while the router’s decisions vary per input, confirming genuine adaptive behavior.

By Prateek Kumar Sikdar
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Muon Can Outperform Dedicated Continual Learning Methods

arXiv:2609.24678v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Continual learning with Low-Rank Adapters (LoRA) typically mitigates forgetting by penalizing the overlap between a new update and the accumulated past...

By Sebastian George Sincari (Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania), Bogdan Alexandru Gheorghe (Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania), Antonio Barbalau (Bitdefender, Bucharest, Romania)
arXiv AI
Jul 21

First-Order Predictable but Pairwise Fragile: Local Task Adaptation in Trained Transformers

arXiv:2607. 16821v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Task arithmetic, sequential fine-tuning, activation steering, and first-order random search all operate through relatively small perturbations around an already trained checkpoint, and they rely on different local approximations: individual perturbations should be first-order predictable, task updates should compose with controlled interference, useful tangent structure should be stable and possible to estimate, and weight edits should have counterparts in representation space.

By Irina Piontkovskaia, Sergey Nikolenko
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 15

Task-Driven Subspace Decomposition for Knowledge Sharing and Isolation in LoRA-based Continual Learning

The paper introduces LoDA, a LoRA-based continual learning method that decomposes update spaces into task‑shared and truly task‑specific subspaces using energy‑based objectives. By fixing down‑projections and learning up‑projections with Gradient‑Aligned Optimization, LoDA recalibrates general updates in closed form after each task, aiming to improve knowledge sharing and isolation. Experiments show that LoDA outperforms existing CL methods.

By Lingfeng He, De Cheng, Huaijie Wang, Xi Yang, Nannan Wang, Xinbo Gao
arXiv Computer Vision
Aug 31

Activation Boundary Matching: Task-Informed Initialization for Low-Rank Adaptation

The paper introduces Activation Boundary Matching for Low‑Rank Adaptation (ABM‑LoRA), a task‑informed initialization strategy that uses the signs of layer‑wise pre‑activations from a brief probe adapter as targets for a fresh adapter. By training with a margin‑based hinge objective on these activation boundaries, ABM‑LoRA captures useful adaptation directions that standard LoRA initializers miss, while requiring only a few forward passes. Experiments show that ABM‑LoRA outperforms or matches existing LoRA, SVD, and gradient‑based initializers across multiple models and benchmarks, including T5‑base/GLUE, ConvNeXt‑T, Swin‑T, Qwen2.5‑1.5B, and LLaMA2‑7B.

By Dongha Lee, Jinhee Park, Minjun Kim, Junseok Kwon
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 29

New LoRA Skills Should Read but Never Write

The paper introduces READ, a method for composing low‑rank adapters (LoRA) in large language models. By rewriting each adapter into a balanced canonical form and enforcing a one‑directional coupling, READ allows new skills to read but never write into the output subspaces of existing skills, eliminating interference. Experiments on four benchmark suites and two model families show that READ consistently outperforms existing baselines, improving SuperGLUE scores by over twenty points and domain suite scores by more than seven points.

By Zeyan Li, Panqi Yang, Qirong Guo, Shengda Zhuo, SIyuan Qiu, Hu Xu, Chun Li, Jianfeng Xu
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 5

The Conflict Between Logic and Memory: Training Conditions for Optimizer-Dependent Rule Acquisition

The paper investigates how different optimizers acquire distinct generalizing relations in single‑hidden‑layer ReLU networks. By manipulating nuisance‑connected weights and performing a strict‑parity sweep, the authors show that training conditions reshape both shared failures and relative optimizer advantages, with specific interventions improving accuracy on hard stages. The study also compares optimizer behavior across tasks and an external architecture (CIFAR‑10).

By Gongyue Zhang, Honghai Liu