BARRIER (Bounded Activation Regions for Robust Information Erasure) is a method for machine unlearning that confines parameter updates to a controlled activation space, allowing stronger erasure of targeted concepts while limiting collateral damage to other representations. By employing interval arithmetic, it derives a closed‑form bound on worst‑case representation changes in protected regions, which serves as a knowledge‑preservation objective. The approach is architecture‑agnostic, compatible with existing erasure objectives, and empirically shows competitive performance in both classification and generative tasks, with enhanced robustness against adversarial recovery attacks.
arXiv:2605. 12765v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large Language Models memorize vast amounts of training data, raising concerns regarding privacy, copyright infringement, and safety.
arXiv:2606. 23276v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Knowledge Editing (KE) has emerged as a frontier for updating specific facts in LLMs without costly retraining, but its reliability and underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.
The paper investigates how tokenization can undermine post‑release guarantees that sensitive knowledge has been edited or unlearned from open‑weight large language models. By showing that alternative valid tokenizations can bypass localized modifications, the authors introduce Toketive, a reference‑free attack that detects modified knowledge and reconstructs pre‑edit responses using only the released model. Experiments on five LLMs, six datasets, and six editing techniques reveal that 38.6% of alternative tokenizations recover suppressed information, with Toketive achieving high detection and reconstruction accuracy.
The paper introduces Dynamic Semantic Steering (DSS), a training‑free, inference‑time defense for robust concept erasure in text‑to‑image diffusion models. DSS models local semantic neighborhoods geometrically, automatically identifies benign semantic anchors, and applies context‑aware, constrained feature correction using cross‑attention signals. Experiments show DSS achieves an average erasure rate of 91.0%, outperforming prior defenses while reducing semantic drift and preserving generation fidelity.
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.
arXiv:2606. 18309v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM) unlearning aims to remove undesirable knowledge or behaviors while preserving retained capabilities.
arXiv:2511. 05865v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Recent advancements in large-scale generative models have enabled the creation of high-quality images and videos, but have also raised significant safety concerns regarding the generation of unsafe content.
Large Language Models (LLMs) can memorize and reproduce sensitive, copyrighted, or otherwise undesirable training content, creating privacy, safety, and regulatory concerns. Machine unlearning offers...
arXiv:2609.05966v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Existing unlearning approaches typically rely on post hoc weight adaptation or distillation, leading to duplicated memory costs, degraded generalizatio...
arXiv:2608.21606v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Machine unlearning aims to remove the influence of targeted training data from a model while preserving its remaining capabilities, but evaluating whet...
The paper introduces FDCU, a dual‑constrained subspace projection framework designed to improve machine unlearning for large language models. FDCU limits parameter updates with a dual‑masking rule that preserves general knowledge via Fisher Information while preventing the activation of spurious suppressors through the Principle of Minimal Functional Intervention. Experiments show that FDCU achieves state‑of‑the‑art robustness against retraining attacks while maintaining near‑lossless general utility, thereby ensuring durable safety for LLMs.
arXiv:2510. 10982v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Recent AI regulations increasingly emphasize the need for mechanisms that preserve the utility of data for AI innovation while preventing misuse, particularly by enforcing purpose limitation in downstream AI applications.