catastrophic forgetting
/ˌkætəˈstrɒfɪk fərˈɡetɪŋ/
losing previously learned capabilities when trained on new data
catastrophic forgetting in a sentence
“Fine-tuning on legal texts caused catastrophic forgetting of medical knowledge.”
Origin of catastrophic forgetting
Greek katastrophē overturning + Old English forgiettan to lose from memory
Related Words
repetition loop
getting stuck generating the same phrase or pattern repeatedly
context overflow
exceeding the model's context window, causing earlier content to be lost
semantic drift
subtle shifts in meaning of key terms through a conversation
overconfidence
expressing certainty beyond what the model's actual knowledge warrants
hallucination
generating plausible-sounding but factually incorrect or fabricated information
sycophancy
over-agreeing with users and telling them what they want to hear rather than the truth