A Six-Dimensional Taxonomy of Post-Training Adaptation Techniques with Applications in AI Governance

2026-08-06

AI Summary

This work addresses the fragmented landscape of post-training adaptation techniques, which suffer from inconsistent terminology and a lack of unified comparative or governance frameworks. To resolve this, the paper introduces the first six-dimensional taxonomy—spanning mechanism, objective, data requirements, persistence, structural scope, and model type—that systematically integrates mainstream approaches such as fine-tuning, retrieval augmentation, prompt engineering, model editing, and machine unlearning. This framework clarifies conceptual boundaries and reveals evolutionary and compositional relationships among methods. Beyond standardizing terminology, it enables standardized technical documentation, model change tracking, and AI governance analysis. The study further identifies critical challenges, including evaluation rigor, reproducibility, continual adaptation, multimodal alignment, and governance-aware workflows.

Abstract

Post-training adaptation has become central to modern machine learning practice and includes techniques such as retraining, fine-tuning, parameter-efficient adaptation, alignment, retrieval augmentation, model editing, unlearning, calibration, and Multimodal Instruction Tuning. However, the literature remains fragmented across technique families, model classes, and deployment contexts, making it difficult to compare methods or describe how a trained model has been modified. This survey synthesizes the post-training adaptation literature and introduces a six-dimensional taxonomy organized by mechanism, goal, data requirement, persistence, structural scope, and model type. The taxonomy distinguishes commonly conflated terms such as fine-tuning, retrieval augmentation, and prompting, and shows how adaptation strategies evolve from traditional machine learning through deep learning, foundation models, large language models, and multimodal large language models. It also maps relationships among techniques, including inheritance, supersession, hybridization, and layered deployment stacks. The resulting vocabulary can support technical documentation, model-change tracking, and governance analysis. The survey concludes by identifying open challenges in evaluation, reproducibility, persistent inference-time adaptation, unlearning, multimodal adaptation, and governance-aware post-training workflows.

Problem

• post-training adaptation
• taxonomy
• AI governance
• model modification
• foundation models

Innovation

• post-training adaptation
• six-dimensional taxonomy
• AI governance
• foundation models
• model editing