arXiv Computation and Language

Not Every Change Is Necessary: Recoverable Drift in Large Language Model Unlearning

The paper introduces Propose-Then-Project Unlearning (PTP-U), a method for large language model unlearning that first weakens target knowledge associations and then projects non-target outputs back to the original distribution to recover capabilities. PTP-U aims to satisfy forgetting constraints while preserving fluent generation and performance on non-target tasks. Experiments on three benchmarks show PTP-U achieves a strong forgetting‑retention trade‑off, with 81.22%–91.03% forgetting and an average of 94.20% non‑target utility.

arXiv AI
Sep 11

Forgetting Only What Matters: Layer-Selective Unlearning toward Robust LLMs

The paper introduces Forgetting Only What Matters via Unlearning Layers (FOM-UL), a layer‑selective unlearning framework for large language models. FOM-UL uses a forget‑to‑retain significance score to identify transformer layers that strongly influence the forget set while being insensitive to the retain set, allowing targeted updates that preserve most of the model. Experiments on TOFU, KnowUnDo, and MUSE-style benchmarks show that FOM-UL reduces residual memorization and maintains utility better than several baselines, even after 8‑bit and 4‑bit post‑training quantization, and it also limits recovery of forgotten content in adversarial prompt tests.

By Ravi Ranjan, Olivera Kotevska, Agoritsa Polyzou
arXiv AI
Aug 25

Unlearning Is Not Just Erasing: Temporal Decoupling via Generation Inequality

The paper introduces ADU, a fine‑grained training framework that unlearns sensitive information from large language models by decoupling contextual attention pathways instead of erasing tokens. ADU exploits the distinction between local and global attention heads to identify and suppress attention paths that retrieve persistent sensitive anchors, while preserving local‑attention structure and overall language modeling performance. Evaluation on the TOFU and WMDP benchmarks shows ADU achieves superior forget quality (0.93 on TOFU) and retains 92.9% of model utility compared to 81.9% for existing baselines, with fewer side effects in benign contexts.

By Xunlei Chen, Qirui Ye, Yuang Li, Yi Gong, Zhaokun Wang, Wenyi Li, Shiyao Guo, Jinyu Guo
arXiv AI
Aug 11

Beyond Static Models: An Evolving Framework for Continual Learning in Large Language Models across Training Stages

arXiv:2603. 12658v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Continual learning (CL) has emerged as a pivotal paradigm to enable large language models (LLMs) to dynamically adapt to evolving knowledge and sequential tasks while mitigating catastrophic forgetting, a critical limitation of the static pre-training paradigm inherent to modern LLMs.

By Hongyang Chen, Zhongwu Sun, Hongfei Ye, Kunchi Li, Xuemin Lin
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 25

CALIBURN: Self-Calibrated LLM Unlearning Alignment

CALIBURN is a new approach to large language model (LLM) unlearning that measures a model’s confidence in undesirable knowledge and uses this measure to fine‑tune unlearning gradient updates. By doing so, it offers more precise control over what is forgotten while better preserving the model’s overall utility. Experiments on benchmarks such as MUSE and WMDP show that CALIBURN outperforms existing methods in balancing knowledge removal with utility retention.

By Zhengbang Yang, Yisheng Zhong, Junyuan Hong, Zhuangdi Zhu