Model Editing at Scale leads to Gradual and Catastrophic Forgetting

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gupta, Akshat, Rao, Anurag, Anumanchipalli, Gopala
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Gupta, Akshat
Rao, Anurag
Anumanchipalli, Gopala
author_facet Gupta, Akshat
Rao, Anurag
Anumanchipalli, Gopala
contents Editing knowledge in large language models is an attractive capability to have which allows us to correct incorrectly learnt facts during pre-training, as well as update the model with an ever-growing list of new facts. While existing model editing techniques have shown promise, they are usually evaluated using metrics for reliability, specificity and generalization over one or few edits. We argue that for model editing to have practical utility, we must be able to make multiple edits to the same model. With this in mind, we evaluate the current model editing methods at scale, focusing on two state of the art methods: ROME and MEMIT. We find that as the model is edited sequentially with multiple facts, it continually forgets previously edited facts and the ability to perform downstream tasks. This forgetting happens in two phases -- an initial gradual but progressive forgetting phase followed by abrupt or catastrophic forgetting phase. Both gradual and catastrophic forgetting limit the usefulness of model editing methods at scale -- the former making model editing less effective as multiple edits are made to the model while the latter caps the scalability of such model editing methods. Our analysis also highlights other key limitations of ROME and MEMIT at scale. With our work, we push for the development and evaluation of model editing methods keeping scalability in mind.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_07453
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Model Editing at Scale leads to Gradual and Catastrophic Forgetting
Gupta, Akshat
Rao, Anurag
Anumanchipalli, Gopala
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Editing knowledge in large language models is an attractive capability to have which allows us to correct incorrectly learnt facts during pre-training, as well as update the model with an ever-growing list of new facts. While existing model editing techniques have shown promise, they are usually evaluated using metrics for reliability, specificity and generalization over one or few edits. We argue that for model editing to have practical utility, we must be able to make multiple edits to the same model. With this in mind, we evaluate the current model editing methods at scale, focusing on two state of the art methods: ROME and MEMIT. We find that as the model is edited sequentially with multiple facts, it continually forgets previously edited facts and the ability to perform downstream tasks. This forgetting happens in two phases -- an initial gradual but progressive forgetting phase followed by abrupt or catastrophic forgetting phase. Both gradual and catastrophic forgetting limit the usefulness of model editing methods at scale -- the former making model editing less effective as multiple edits are made to the model while the latter caps the scalability of such model editing methods. Our analysis also highlights other key limitations of ROME and MEMIT at scale. With our work, we push for the development and evaluation of model editing methods keeping scalability in mind.
title Model Editing at Scale leads to Gradual and Catastrophic Forgetting
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07453