# Orchestrate Latent Expertise: Advancing Online Continual Learning with Multi-Level Supervision and Reverse Self-Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.00417 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00417/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Distillation for continual learning, one of 12 directions in Knowledge distillation.
- Builds on 45 of its 75 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Knowledge distillation / [Distillation for continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/distill/distillation-for-continual-learning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [iCaRL: Incremental Classifier and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07725/) (2016)
- [Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07569/) (2018)
- [Efficient Lifelong Learning with A-GEM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00420/) (2018)
- [Dark Experience for General Continual Learning: a Strong, Simple Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07211/) (2020)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Continual Learning: Theory, Method and Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00487/) (2023)
- [An Empirical Investigation of Catastrophic Forgetting in Gradient-Based Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6211/) (2013)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting with hard attention to the task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01423/) (2018)
- [Gradient based sample selection for online continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08671/) (2019)
- [Be Your Own Teacher: Improve the Performance of Convolutional Neural Networks via Self Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08094/) (2019)
- [Do Deep Nets Really Need to be Deep?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6184/) (2013)
- [Class-incremental learning: survey and performance evaluation on image classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.15277/) (2020)
- [Online Continual Learning with Maximally Interfered Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.04742/) (2019)
- [Expert Gate: Lifelong Learning with a Network of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.06194/) (2016)
- [On Tiny Episodic Memories in Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.10486/) (2019)
- [Online Continual Learning in Image Classification: An Empirical Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10423/) (2021)
- [Supermasks in Superposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14769/) (2020)
- [New Insights on Reducing Abrupt Representation Change in Online Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05025/) (2021)
- [Class-Incremental Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03648/) (2023)
- [Learning to Remember: A Synaptic Plasticity Driven Framework for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03137/) (2019)
- [Supervised Contrastive Replay: Revisiting the Nearest Class Mean Classifier in Online Class-Incremental Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13885/) (2021)
- [SS-IL: Separated Softmax for Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13947/) (2020)
- [Hierarchical Decomposition of Prompt-Based Continual Learning: Rethinking Obscured Sub-optimality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07234/) (2023)
- [Memory Replay with Data Compression for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06592/) (2022)
- [Rehearsal revealed: The limits and merits of revisiting samples in continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07446/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Enhancing Online Continual Learning with Plug-and-Play State Space Model and Class-Conditional Mixture of Discretization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18177/) (2024)
- [VA-MoE: Variables-Adaptive Mixture of Experts for Incremental Weather Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02503/) (2024)
- [Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Continual Learning: A Neural Tangent Kernel Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17120/) (2024)
- [Domain Generalizable Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16914/) (2025)
- [ConSurv: Multimodal Continual Learning for Survival Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.09853/) (2025)
- [FlyPrompt: Brain-Inspired Random-Expanded Routing with Temporal-Ensemble Experts for General Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01976/) (2026)
- [Right Time to Learn:Promoting Generalization via Bio-inspired Spacing Effect in Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06192/) (2025)
- [MePo: Meta Post-Refinement for Rehearsal-Free General Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07940/) (2026)
- [CATFormer: When Continual Learning Meets Spiking Transformers With Dynamic Thresholds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15184/) (2026)
- [Multi-level Collaborative Distillation Meets Global Workspace Model: A Unified Framework for OCIL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08677/) (2025)
- [Teaching Prompts to Coordinate: Hierarchical Layer-Grouped Prompt Tuning for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12090/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Feedback Engines: Layer-Wise Control for Self-Regulating Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21743/) (2025)
- [We Need a More Robust Classifier: Dual Causal Learning Empowers Domain-Incremental Time Series Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10312/) (2026)
- [Preventing Latent Rehearsal Decay in Online Continual SSL with SOLAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10586/) (2026)
- [Online Continual Learning with Dynamic Label Hierarchies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11742/) (2026)
- [Parameter Efficient Continual Learning for Sparse Event-Based Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26720/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To accommodate real-world dynamics, artificial intelligence systems need to cope with sequentially arriving content in an online manner. Beyond regular Continual Learning (CL) attempting to address catastrophic forgetting with offline training of each task, Online Continual Learning (OCL) is a more challenging yet realistic setting that performs CL in a one-pass data stream. Current OCL methods primarily rely on memory replay of old training samples. However, a notable gap from CL to OCL stems from the additional overfitting-underfitting dilemma associated with the use of rehearsal buffers: the inadequate learning of new training samples (underfitting) and the repeated learning of a few old training samples (overfitting). To this end, we introduce a novel approach, Multi-level Online Sequential Experts (MOSE), which cultivates the model as stacked sub-experts, integrating multi-level supervision and reverse self-distillation. Supervision signals across multiple stages facilitate appropriate convergence of the new task while gathering various strengths from experts by knowledge distillation mitigates the performance decline of old tasks. MOSE demonstrates remarkable efficacy in learning new samples and preserving past knowledge through multi-level experts, thereby significantly advancing OCL performance over state-of-the-art baselines (e.g., up to 7.3% on Split CIFAR-100 and 6.1% on Split Tiny-ImageNet).