Eight Methods to Evaluate Robust Unlearning in LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Lynch, Aengus, Guo, Phillip, Ewart, Aidan, Casper, Stephen, Hadfield-Menell, Dylan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866914692492951552
author Lynch, Aengus
Guo, Phillip
Ewart, Aidan
Casper, Stephen
Hadfield-Menell, Dylan
author_facet Lynch, Aengus
Guo, Phillip
Ewart, Aidan
Casper, Stephen
Hadfield-Menell, Dylan
contents Machine unlearning can be useful for removing harmful capabilities and memorized text from large language models (LLMs), but there are not yet standardized methods for rigorously evaluating it. In this paper, we first survey techniques and limitations of existing unlearning evaluations. Second, we apply a comprehensive set of tests for the robustness and competitiveness of unlearning in the "Who's Harry Potter" (WHP) model from Eldan and Russinovich (2023). While WHP's unlearning generalizes well when evaluated with the "Familiarity" metric from Eldan and Russinovich, we find i) higher-than-baseline amounts of knowledge can reliably be extracted, ii) WHP performs on par with the original model on Harry Potter Q&A tasks, iii) it represents latent knowledge comparably to the original model, and iv) there is collateral unlearning in related domains. Overall, our results highlight the importance of comprehensive unlearning evaluation that avoids ad-hoc metrics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_16835
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Eight Methods to Evaluate Robust Unlearning in LLMs
Lynch, Aengus
Guo, Phillip
Ewart, Aidan
Casper, Stephen
Hadfield-Menell, Dylan
Computation and Language
Machine unlearning can be useful for removing harmful capabilities and memorized text from large language models (LLMs), but there are not yet standardized methods for rigorously evaluating it. In this paper, we first survey techniques and limitations of existing unlearning evaluations. Second, we apply a comprehensive set of tests for the robustness and competitiveness of unlearning in the "Who's Harry Potter" (WHP) model from Eldan and Russinovich (2023). While WHP's unlearning generalizes well when evaluated with the "Familiarity" metric from Eldan and Russinovich, we find i) higher-than-baseline amounts of knowledge can reliably be extracted, ii) WHP performs on par with the original model on Harry Potter Q&A tasks, iii) it represents latent knowledge comparably to the original model, and iv) there is collateral unlearning in related domains. Overall, our results highlight the importance of comprehensive unlearning evaluation that avoids ad-hoc metrics.
title Eight Methods to Evaluate Robust Unlearning in LLMs
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16835