Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Wang, Qizhou, Zhou, Jin Peng, Zhou, Zhanke, Shin, Saebyeol, Han, Bo, Weinberger, Kilian Q.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.19301
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_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