Adversarially Diversified Rehearsal Memory (ADRM): Mitigating Memory Overfitting Challenge in Continual Learning

Abstract

Continual learning focuses on learning non-stationary data distribution without forgetting previous knowledge. Rehearsal-based approaches are commonly used to combat catastrophic forgetting. However, these approaches suffer from a problem called "rehearsal memory overfitting, " where the model becomes too specialized on limited memory samples and loses its ability to generalize effectively. As a result, the effectiveness of the rehearsal memory progressively decays, ultimately resulting in catastrophic forgetting of the learned tasks. We introduce the Adversarially Diversified Rehearsal Memory (ADRM) to address the memory overfitting challenge. This novel method is designed to enrich memory sample diversity and bolster resistance against natural and adversarial noise disruptions. ADRM employs the FGSM attacks to introduce adversarially modified memory samples, achieving two primary objectives: enhancing memory diversity and fostering a robust response to continual feature drifts in memory samples. Our contributions are as follows: Firstly, ADRM addresses overfitting in rehearsal memory by employing FGSM to diversify and increase the complexity of the memory buffer. Secondly, we demonstrate that ADRM mitigates memory overfitting and significantly improves the robustness of CL models, which is crucial for safety-critical applications. Finally, our detailed analysis of features and visualization demonstrates that ADRM mitigates feature drifts in CL memory samples, significantly reducing catastrophic forgetting and resulting in a more resilient CL model. Additionally, our in-depth t-SNE visualizations of feature distribution and the quantification of the feature similarity further enrich our understanding of feature representation in existing CL approaches. Our code is publically available at https://github.com/hikmatkhan/ADRM.