Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jeong, Geunyeong, Sun, Juoh, Lee, Seonghee, Kim, Harksoo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10398
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914089449553920
author Jeong, Geunyeong
Sun, Juoh
Lee, Seonghee
Kim, Harksoo
author_facet Jeong, Geunyeong
Sun, Juoh
Lee, Seonghee
Kim, Harksoo
contents Large Language Models store extensive factual knowledge acquired during large-scale pre-training. However, this knowledge is inherently static, reflecting only the state of the world at the time of training. Knowledge editing has emerged as a promising solution for updating outdated or incorrect facts without full retraining. However, most existing locate-and-edit methods primarily focus on token-level likelihood optimization without addressing semantic coherence. Our analysis reveals that such edited knowledge is often encoded as isolated residual streams in the model's latent space, distinct from pre-existing knowledge and bypassing natural reasoning process. To address this, we propose \textsc{Steam}, a semantic-level knowledge editing framework that enhances integration of updated knowledge into the model's knowledge structure. \textsc{Steam} first identifies target representations as semantic anchors for the updated factual association, then guides the internal representation of the edited fact towards these anchors through an alignment loss during optimization. Experimental results demonstrate that \textsc{Steam} improves model's ability to reason with edited knowledge and enhances semantic coherence, underscoring the importance of latent-space alignment for reliable and coherent knowledge editing. The code is available at https://github.com/GY-Jeong/STEAM.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_10398
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle STEAM: A Semantic-Level Knowledge Editing Framework for Large Language Models
Jeong, Geunyeong
Sun, Juoh
Lee, Seonghee
Kim, Harksoo
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models store extensive factual knowledge acquired during large-scale pre-training. However, this knowledge is inherently static, reflecting only the state of the world at the time of training. Knowledge editing has emerged as a promising solution for updating outdated or incorrect facts without full retraining. However, most existing locate-and-edit methods primarily focus on token-level likelihood optimization without addressing semantic coherence. Our analysis reveals that such edited knowledge is often encoded as isolated residual streams in the model's latent space, distinct from pre-existing knowledge and bypassing natural reasoning process. To address this, we propose \textsc{Steam}, a semantic-level knowledge editing framework that enhances integration of updated knowledge into the model's knowledge structure. \textsc{Steam} first identifies target representations as semantic anchors for the updated factual association, then guides the internal representation of the edited fact towards these anchors through an alignment loss during optimization. Experimental results demonstrate that \textsc{Steam} improves model's ability to reason with edited knowledge and enhances semantic coherence, underscoring the importance of latent-space alignment for reliable and coherent knowledge editing. The code is available at https://github.com/GY-Jeong/STEAM.
title STEAM: A Semantic-Level Knowledge Editing Framework for Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10398