Avoiding Knowledge Edit Skipping in Multi-hop Question Answering with Guided Decomposition

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Yi, Zhu, Xiangrong, Liu, Xiangyu, Wei, Wei, Hu, Wei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Yi
Zhu, Xiangrong
Liu, Xiangyu
Wei, Wei
Hu, Wei
author_facet Liu, Yi
Zhu, Xiangrong
Liu, Xiangyu
Wei, Wei
Hu, Wei
contents In a rapidly evolving world where information updates swiftly, knowledge in large language models (LLMs) becomes outdated quickly. Retraining LLMs is not a cost-effective option, making knowledge editing (KE) without modifying parameters particularly necessary. We find that although existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based KE methods excel at editing simple knowledge, they struggle with KE in multi-hop question answering due to the issue of "edit skipping", which refers to skipping the relevant edited fact in inference. In addition to the diversity of natural language expressions of knowledge, edit skipping also arises from the mismatch between the granularity of LLMs in problem-solving and the facts in the edited memory. To address this issue, we propose a novel Iterative Retrieval-Augmented Knowledge Editing method with guided decomposition (IRAKE) through the guidance from single edited facts and entire edited cases. Experimental results demonstrate that IRAKE mitigates the failure of editing caused by edit skipping and outperforms state-of-the-art methods for KE in multi-hop question answering.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_07555
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Avoiding Knowledge Edit Skipping in Multi-hop Question Answering with Guided Decomposition
Liu, Yi
Zhu, Xiangrong
Liu, Xiangyu
Wei, Wei
Hu, Wei
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
In a rapidly evolving world where information updates swiftly, knowledge in large language models (LLMs) becomes outdated quickly. Retraining LLMs is not a cost-effective option, making knowledge editing (KE) without modifying parameters particularly necessary. We find that although existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based KE methods excel at editing simple knowledge, they struggle with KE in multi-hop question answering due to the issue of "edit skipping", which refers to skipping the relevant edited fact in inference. In addition to the diversity of natural language expressions of knowledge, edit skipping also arises from the mismatch between the granularity of LLMs in problem-solving and the facts in the edited memory. To address this issue, we propose a novel Iterative Retrieval-Augmented Knowledge Editing method with guided decomposition (IRAKE) through the guidance from single edited facts and entire edited cases. Experimental results demonstrate that IRAKE mitigates the failure of editing caused by edit skipping and outperforms state-of-the-art methods for KE in multi-hop question answering.
title Avoiding Knowledge Edit Skipping in Multi-hop Question Answering with Guided Decomposition
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07555