Catastrophic Failure of LLM Unlearning via Quantization

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Zhang, Zhiwei, Wang, Fali, Li, Xiaomin, Wu, Zongyu, Tang, Xianfeng, Liu, Hui, He, Qi, Yin, Wenpeng, Wang, Suhang
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Zhang, Zhiwei
Wang, Fali
Li, Xiaomin
Wu, Zongyu
Tang, Xianfeng
Liu, Hui
He, Qi
Yin, Wenpeng
Wang, Suhang
author_facet Zhang, Zhiwei
Wang, Fali
Li, Xiaomin
Wu, Zongyu
Tang, Xianfeng
Liu, Hui
He, Qi
Yin, Wenpeng
Wang, Suhang
contents Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable proficiency in generating text, benefiting from extensive training on vast textual corpora. However, LLMs may also acquire unwanted behaviors from the diverse and sensitive nature of their training data, which can include copyrighted and private content. Machine unlearning has been introduced as a viable solution to remove the influence of such problematic content without the need for costly and time-consuming retraining. This process aims to erase specific knowledge from LLMs while preserving as much model utility as possible. Despite the effectiveness of current unlearning methods, little attention has been given to whether existing unlearning methods for LLMs truly achieve forgetting or merely hide the knowledge, which current unlearning benchmarks fail to detect. This paper reveals that applying quantization to models that have undergone unlearning can restore the "forgotten" information. To thoroughly evaluate this phenomenon, we conduct comprehensive experiments using various quantization techniques across multiple precision levels. We find that for unlearning methods with utility constraints, the unlearned model retains an average of 21\% of the intended forgotten knowledge in full precision, which significantly increases to 83\% after 4-bit quantization. ... Our code is available at: \href{https://github.com/zzwjames/FailureLLMUnlearning}{https://github.com/zzwjames/FailureLLMUnlearning}.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_16454
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Catastrophic Failure of LLM Unlearning via Quantization
Zhang, Zhiwei
Wang, Fali
Li, Xiaomin
Wu, Zongyu
Tang, Xianfeng
Liu, Hui
He, Qi
Yin, Wenpeng
Wang, Suhang
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models (LLMs) have shown remarkable proficiency in generating text, benefiting from extensive training on vast textual corpora. However, LLMs may also acquire unwanted behaviors from the diverse and sensitive nature of their training data, which can include copyrighted and private content. Machine unlearning has been introduced as a viable solution to remove the influence of such problematic content without the need for costly and time-consuming retraining. This process aims to erase specific knowledge from LLMs while preserving as much model utility as possible. Despite the effectiveness of current unlearning methods, little attention has been given to whether existing unlearning methods for LLMs truly achieve forgetting or merely hide the knowledge, which current unlearning benchmarks fail to detect. This paper reveals that applying quantization to models that have undergone unlearning can restore the "forgotten" information. To thoroughly evaluate this phenomenon, we conduct comprehensive experiments using various quantization techniques across multiple precision levels. We find that for unlearning methods with utility constraints, the unlearned model retains an average of 21\% of the intended forgotten knowledge in full precision, which significantly increases to 83\% after 4-bit quantization. ... Our code is available at: \href{https://github.com/zzwjames/FailureLLMUnlearning}{https://github.com/zzwjames/FailureLLMUnlearning}.
title Catastrophic Failure of LLM Unlearning via Quantization
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16454