Rethinking LLM Unlearning Objectives: A Gradient Perspective and Go Beyond
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866917937472864256 |
|---|---|
| author | Wang, Qizhou Zhou, Jin Peng Zhou, Zhanke Shin, Saebyeol Han, Bo Weinberger, Kilian Q. |
| author_facet | Wang, Qizhou Zhou, Jin Peng Zhou, Zhanke Shin, Saebyeol Han, Bo Weinberger, Kilian Q. |
| contents | Large language models (LLMs) should undergo rigorous audits to identify potential risks, such as copyright and privacy infringements. Once these risks emerge, timely updates are crucial to remove undesirable responses, ensuring legal and safe model usage. It has spurred recent research into LLM unlearning, focusing on erasing targeted undesirable knowledge without compromising the integrity of other, non-targeted responses. Existing studies have introduced various unlearning objectives to pursue LLM unlearning without necessitating complete retraining. However, each of these objectives has unique properties, and no unified framework is currently available to comprehend them thoroughly. To fill the gap, we propose a toolkit of the gradient effect (G-effect), quantifying the impacts of unlearning objectives on model performance from a gradient perspective. A notable advantage is its broad ability to detail the unlearning impacts from various aspects across instances, updating steps, and LLM layers. Accordingly, the G-effect offers new insights into identifying drawbacks of existing unlearning objectives, further motivating us to explore a series of new solutions for their mitigation and improvements. Finally, we outline promising directions that merit further studies, aiming at contributing to the community to advance this important field. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_19301 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Rethinking LLM Unlearning Objectives: A Gradient Perspective and Go Beyond Wang, Qizhou Zhou, Jin Peng Zhou, Zhanke Shin, Saebyeol Han, Bo Weinberger, Kilian Q. Machine Learning Large language models (LLMs) should undergo rigorous audits to identify potential risks, such as copyright and privacy infringements. Once these risks emerge, timely updates are crucial to remove undesirable responses, ensuring legal and safe model usage. It has spurred recent research into LLM unlearning, focusing on erasing targeted undesirable knowledge without compromising the integrity of other, non-targeted responses. Existing studies have introduced various unlearning objectives to pursue LLM unlearning without necessitating complete retraining. However, each of these objectives has unique properties, and no unified framework is currently available to comprehend them thoroughly. To fill the gap, we propose a toolkit of the gradient effect (G-effect), quantifying the impacts of unlearning objectives on model performance from a gradient perspective. A notable advantage is its broad ability to detail the unlearning impacts from various aspects across instances, updating steps, and LLM layers. Accordingly, the G-effect offers new insights into identifying drawbacks of existing unlearning objectives, further motivating us to explore a series of new solutions for their mitigation and improvements. Finally, we outline promising directions that merit further studies, aiming at contributing to the community to advance this important field. |
| title | Rethinking LLM Unlearning Objectives: A Gradient Perspective and Go Beyond |
| topic | Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.19301 |