E2PL: Effective and Efficient Prompt Learning for Incomplete Multi-view Multi-Label Class Incremental Learning

Abstract

Multi-view multi-label classification (MvMLC) is indispensable for modern web applications aggregating information from diverse sources. However, real-world web-scale settings are rife with missing views and continuously emerging classes, which pose significant obstacles to robust learning. Prevailing methods are ill-equipped for this reality, as they either lack adaptability to new classes or incur exponential parameter growth when handling all possible missing-view patterns, severely limiting their scalability in web environments. To systematically address this gap, we formally introduce a novel task, termed \emph{incomplete multi-view multi-label class incremental learning} (IMvMLCIL), which requires models to simultaneously address heterogeneous missing views and dynamic class expansion. To tackle this task, we propose \textsf{E2PL}, an Effective and Efficient Prompt Learning framework for IMvMLCIL. \textsf{E2PL} unifies two novel prompt designs: \emph{task-tailored prompts} for class-incremental adaptation and \emph{missing-aware prompts} for the flexible integration of arbitrary view-missing scenarios. To fundamentally address the exponential parameter explosion inherent in missing-aware prompts, we devise an \emph{efficient prototype tensorization} module, which leverages atomic tensor decomposition to elegantly reduce the prompt parameter complexity from exponential to linear w.r.t. the number of views. We further incorporate a \emph{dynamic contrastive learning} strategy explicitly model the complex dependencies among diverse missing-view patterns, thus enhancing the model's robustness. Extensive experiments on three benchmarks demonstrate that \textsf{E2PL} consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both effectiveness and efficiency. The codes and datasets are available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/code-for-E2PL.