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Main Authors: Ye, Dayong, Zhu, Tianqing, Zhu, Congcong, Wang, Derui, Gao, Kun, Shi, Zewei, Shen, Sheng, Zhou, Wanlei, Xue, Minhui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.15910
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_version_ 1866915392445743104
author Ye, Dayong
Zhu, Tianqing
Zhu, Congcong
Wang, Derui
Gao, Kun
Shi, Zewei
Shen, Sheng
Zhou, Wanlei
Xue, Minhui
author_facet Ye, Dayong
Zhu, Tianqing
Zhu, Congcong
Wang, Derui
Gao, Kun
Shi, Zewei
Shen, Sheng
Zhou, Wanlei
Xue, Minhui
contents Machine unlearning refers to the process of mitigating the influence of specific training data on machine learning models based on removal requests from data owners. However, one important area that has been largely overlooked in the research of unlearning is reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning focuses on training an agent to make optimal decisions within an environment to maximize its cumulative rewards. During the training, the agent tends to memorize the features of the environment, which raises a significant concern about privacy. As per data protection regulations, the owner of the environment holds the right to revoke access to the agent's training data, thus necessitating the development of a novel and pressing research field, known as \emph{reinforcement unlearning}. Reinforcement unlearning focuses on revoking entire environments rather than individual data samples. This unique characteristic presents three distinct challenges: 1) how to propose unlearning schemes for environments; 2) how to avoid degrading the agent's performance in remaining environments; and 3) how to evaluate the effectiveness of unlearning. To tackle these challenges, we propose two reinforcement unlearning methods. The first method is based on decremental reinforcement learning, which aims to erase the agent's previously acquired knowledge gradually. The second method leverages environment poisoning attacks, which encourage the agent to learn new, albeit incorrect, knowledge to remove the unlearning environment. Particularly, to tackle the third challenge, we introduce the concept of ``environment inference attack'' to evaluate the unlearning outcomes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_15910
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reinforcement Unlearning
Ye, Dayong
Zhu, Tianqing
Zhu, Congcong
Wang, Derui
Gao, Kun
Shi, Zewei
Shen, Sheng
Zhou, Wanlei
Xue, Minhui
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
Machine unlearning refers to the process of mitigating the influence of specific training data on machine learning models based on removal requests from data owners. However, one important area that has been largely overlooked in the research of unlearning is reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning focuses on training an agent to make optimal decisions within an environment to maximize its cumulative rewards. During the training, the agent tends to memorize the features of the environment, which raises a significant concern about privacy. As per data protection regulations, the owner of the environment holds the right to revoke access to the agent's training data, thus necessitating the development of a novel and pressing research field, known as \emph{reinforcement unlearning}. Reinforcement unlearning focuses on revoking entire environments rather than individual data samples. This unique characteristic presents three distinct challenges: 1) how to propose unlearning schemes for environments; 2) how to avoid degrading the agent's performance in remaining environments; and 3) how to evaluate the effectiveness of unlearning. To tackle these challenges, we propose two reinforcement unlearning methods. The first method is based on decremental reinforcement learning, which aims to erase the agent's previously acquired knowledge gradually. The second method leverages environment poisoning attacks, which encourage the agent to learn new, albeit incorrect, knowledge to remove the unlearning environment. Particularly, to tackle the third challenge, we introduce the concept of ``environment inference attack'' to evaluate the unlearning outcomes.
title Reinforcement Unlearning
topic Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.15910