What are the real problems of continual learning?

Reflections on catastrophic interference, plasticity, and learning for the future in the era of large language models

What are the real problems of continual learning? Reflections on catastrophic interference, plasticity, and learning for the future in the era of large language models Andrew Lampinen May 29, 2026 61 8 4 Share Lately, there’s been a surge of interest in continual learning . In particular, there’s been an increasing sense that continual learning is one of the areas where the gap between humans and AI is largest. 1 In this post, I want to explain what continual learning is, and some of the past perspectives on it — including how I think the field focused on what in retrospect turned out to be th

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related reading

• You can’t imitation-learn how to continual-learn — LessWronglesswrong.com
• The Continual Learning Problemjessylin.com
• Why We Need Continual Learning | Andreessen Horowitza16z.com
• What's so hard about continuous learning?seangoedecke.com
• Trying to actually define continual learningcharlesponeill.com
• Lil'Loglilianweng.github.io
• augustus odena on X: "I have a bunch of thoughts about continual learning and nothing to do with them (I'm working on something else) so I figured I'd just turn them into a post: First: I think people use "continual learning" to point at a cluster of issues that are related but distinct. I'll list" / Xx.com
• Challenges of governing continually learning AIruntimeverification.blog
• Language Models, World Models, and Human Model-Buildinglingo.csail.mit.edu
• NL.pdfabehrouz.github.io
• Loss of plasticity in deep continual learning | Naturenature.com
• Q-learning is not yet scalableseohong.me