An Information-Theoretic Framework for Robust Large Language Model Editing

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Qizhou, Wang, Chengyu, Zhang, Taolin, He, Xiaofeng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914207050498048
author Chen, Qizhou
Wang, Chengyu
Zhang, Taolin
He, Xiaofeng
author_facet Chen, Qizhou
Wang, Chengyu
Zhang, Taolin
He, Xiaofeng
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have become indispensable tools in science, technology, and society, enabling transformative advances across diverse fields. However, errors or outdated information within these models can undermine their accuracy and restrict their safe deployment. Developing efficient strategies for updating model knowledge without the expense and disruption of full retraining remains a critical challenge. Current model editing techniques frequently struggle to generalize corrections beyond narrow domains, leading to unintended consequences and limiting their practical impact. Here, we introduce a novel framework for editing LLMs, grounded in information bottleneck theory. This approach precisely compresses and isolates the essential information required for generalizable knowledge correction while minimizing disruption to unrelated model behaviors. Building upon this foundation, we present the Information Bottleneck Knowledge Editor (IBKE), which leverages compact latent representations to guide gradient-based updates, enabling robust and broadly applicable model editing. We validate IBKE's effectiveness across multiple LLM architectures and standard benchmark tasks, demonstrating state-of-the-art accuracy and improved generality and specificity of edits. These findings establish a theoretically principled and practical paradigm for open-domain knowledge editing, advancing the utility and trustworthiness of LLMs in real-world applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_16227
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An Information-Theoretic Framework for Robust Large Language Model Editing
Chen, Qizhou
Wang, Chengyu
Zhang, Taolin
He, Xiaofeng
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) have become indispensable tools in science, technology, and society, enabling transformative advances across diverse fields. However, errors or outdated information within these models can undermine their accuracy and restrict their safe deployment. Developing efficient strategies for updating model knowledge without the expense and disruption of full retraining remains a critical challenge. Current model editing techniques frequently struggle to generalize corrections beyond narrow domains, leading to unintended consequences and limiting their practical impact. Here, we introduce a novel framework for editing LLMs, grounded in information bottleneck theory. This approach precisely compresses and isolates the essential information required for generalizable knowledge correction while minimizing disruption to unrelated model behaviors. Building upon this foundation, we present the Information Bottleneck Knowledge Editor (IBKE), which leverages compact latent representations to guide gradient-based updates, enabling robust and broadly applicable model editing. We validate IBKE's effectiveness across multiple LLM architectures and standard benchmark tasks, demonstrating state-of-the-art accuracy and improved generality and specificity of edits. These findings establish a theoretically principled and practical paradigm for open-domain knowledge editing, advancing the utility and trustworthiness of LLMs in real-world applications.
title An Information-Theoretic Framework for Robust Large Language Model Editing
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16227