Paper Detail

Socialized Division and Collaboration: Rethinking Class-Incremental Learning under Optimization Conflicts

Xinjie Yao, Zhihe Fan, Yunqi Zhu, Jiaqi Zhou, Dengyu Zhao, Zhoupeng Guo, Yan Fan, Guosong Jiang, Pengfei Zhu

arxiv Score 15.0

Published 2026-08-21 · First seen 2026-08-24

Research Track A

Abstract

Class-incremental learning is commonly instantiated as a single-model paradigm, where a unified model sequentially adapts to an unbounded stream of sessions. While effective under mild distributional shifts, this formulation becomes strained when successive sessions induce incompatible optimization directions, leading to destructive interference and catastrophic forgetting. We argue that such forgetting reflects a structural limitation of enforcing heterogeneous learning dynamics within a single parameter space. Motivated by social solidarity theory, we propose Socialized Division and Collaboration (SDC) as a reformulation of continual learning that decomposes session learning across specialized models in response to optimization conflicts, while enabling coordinated collaboration. To support this formulation with a principled allocation mechanism, we introduce an energy-based session-model compatibility criterion grounded in Helmholtz free energy, which guides adaptive session allocation and model evolution under conflicting objectives. This framework integrates session assignment, model evolution, and collaborative inference into a unified pipeline, offering an alternative to monolithic continual learning formulations and highlighting a broader design principle for learning under persistent optimization conflicts.

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BibTeX

@article{yao2026socialized,
  title = {Socialized Division and Collaboration: Rethinking Class-Incremental Learning under Optimization Conflicts},
  author = {Xinjie Yao and Zhihe Fan and Yunqi Zhu and Jiaqi Zhou and Dengyu Zhao and Zhoupeng Guo and Yan Fan and Guosong Jiang and Pengfei Zhu},
  year = {2026},
  abstract = {Class-incremental learning is commonly instantiated as a single-model paradigm, where a unified model sequentially adapts to an unbounded stream of sessions. While effective under mild distributional shifts, this formulation becomes strained when successive sessions induce incompatible optimization directions, leading to destructive interference and catastrophic forgetting. We argue that such forgetting reflects a structural limitation of enforcing heterogeneous learning dynamics within a single},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21044},
  keywords = {cs.AI},
  eprint = {2608.21044},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
}

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