Representation Interventions Enable Lifelong Knowledge Memory Control in LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Liu, Xuyuan, Chen, Shengyu, Dong, Xinshuai, Liu, Yanchi, Zhao, Xujiang, Wang, Haoyu, Yan, Yujun, Chen, Haifeng, Chen, Zhengzhang
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Liu, Xuyuan
Chen, Shengyu
Dong, Xinshuai
Liu, Yanchi
Zhao, Xujiang
Wang, Haoyu
Yan, Yujun
Chen, Haifeng
Chen, Zhengzhang
author_facet Liu, Xuyuan
Chen, Shengyu
Dong, Xinshuai
Liu, Yanchi
Zhao, Xujiang
Wang, Haoyu
Yan, Yujun
Chen, Haifeng
Chen, Zhengzhang
contents Large language models (LLMs) often produce incorrect or outdated content after being employed. Efficient and accurate knowledge updates without costly retraining are a major challenge. This problem is particularly challenging in lifelong settings, where complex, unstructured knowledge must coexist without interference. We introduce RILKE (Representation Intervention for Lifelong KnowledgE Control), a robust and scalable method that treats knowledge control as interventions within the model's representation space. Leveraging representation-space expressiveness, we identify two key properties enabling RILKE to achieve fine-grained control over complex, unstructured knowledge while maintaining general utility with frozen base weights. During training, RILKE learns paraphrase-robust and edit-localized modules that limit each update to a low-dimensional subspace to minimize cross-edit interference. At inference, a query-adaptive router selects the appropriate module to guide the model's generation. Across LLaMA and Qwen models, RILKE scales effectively to large-scale benchmarks, demonstrating high edit success and strong paraphrase generalization while preserving general utility with modest memory overhead. These results show RILKE is an effective and scalable solution for lifelong knowledge control in LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_20892
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Representation Interventions Enable Lifelong Knowledge Memory Control in LLMs
Liu, Xuyuan
Chen, Shengyu
Dong, Xinshuai
Liu, Yanchi
Zhao, Xujiang
Wang, Haoyu
Yan, Yujun
Chen, Haifeng
Chen, Zhengzhang
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models (LLMs) often produce incorrect or outdated content after being employed. Efficient and accurate knowledge updates without costly retraining are a major challenge. This problem is particularly challenging in lifelong settings, where complex, unstructured knowledge must coexist without interference. We introduce RILKE (Representation Intervention for Lifelong KnowledgE Control), a robust and scalable method that treats knowledge control as interventions within the model's representation space. Leveraging representation-space expressiveness, we identify two key properties enabling RILKE to achieve fine-grained control over complex, unstructured knowledge while maintaining general utility with frozen base weights. During training, RILKE learns paraphrase-robust and edit-localized modules that limit each update to a low-dimensional subspace to minimize cross-edit interference. At inference, a query-adaptive router selects the appropriate module to guide the model's generation. Across LLaMA and Qwen models, RILKE scales effectively to large-scale benchmarks, demonstrating high edit success and strong paraphrase generalization while preserving general utility with modest memory overhead. These results show RILKE is an effective and scalable solution for lifelong knowledge control in LLMs.
title Representation Interventions Enable Lifelong Knowledge Memory Control in LLMs
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.20892