Researchers identify "Forking": train loss falls while validation loss turns up

ZimingLiu11 · x · 2026-10-26

Ziming Liu and MetaCircleAI report a newly named phenomenon called "Forking," caused by mis-generalizing a trick found by AutoResearch. Forking appears in over-encoding methods (akin to DeepSeek v4.1's Engram memory trick): under data replay, train loss keeps falling while validation loss turns upward, with the two curves splitting like a fork. The authors argue Forking deserves attention on the same level as grokking and double descent.

Related event: KAN author Ziming Liu uncovers "forking" overfitting and warns against AutoResearch(7 posts)→

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