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Catastrophic Forgetting

Reviewed 19 July 2026Canonical definitionPart of: Agent Evaluation Terms →

Catastrophic forgetting is when a neural network loses previously learned knowledge after being trained on new data. For agents, this means fine-tuning or updates can degrade performance on earlier tasks, requiring regression testing and governance review.

§01 / QUESTIONSterm: Catastrophic Forgetting
Questions

Common questions.

What is Catastrophic Forgetting?

Catastrophic forgetting is when a neural network loses previously learned knowledge after being trained on new data.

How does Catastrophic Forgetting work?

For agents, this means fine-tuning or updates can degrade performance on earlier tasks, requiring regression testing and governance review.

Which terms are related to Catastrophic Forgetting?

Closely related concepts include Regression Detection (Agent), Fine-Tuning, Regression Testing (Agent), Automated Evaluation. Each is defined in the Prefactor glossary.

§02 / RELATEDnext: where this fits
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Where this fits.

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