arXiv AI

Can Fine-Tuning Erase Your Edits? On the Fragile Coexistence of Knowledge Editing and Adaptation

arXiv:2511. 05852v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Knowledge editing (KE) offers a lightweight alternative to retraining for updating large language models (LLMs).

arXiv AI
Sep 4

When Models Edit Too Much: On the Fidelity of Minimal Code Edits

The paper investigates the problem of over‑editing by large language models when repairing code, showing that even state‑of‑the‑art models like GPT‑5.5 frequently rewrite more code than necessary. Using a benchmark of 400 BigCodeBench problems with controlled AST corruptions, the authors quantify excess edits and demonstrate that a simple preservation instruction can reduce unnecessary changes and improve pass rates. They further explore training strategies, finding that reinforcement learning yields the best balance between edit fidelity and performance retention, highlighting edit fidelity as a distinct, measurable dimension of code‑repair quality.

By Tongyao Zhu, Wei Hern Lim, Min-Yen Kan
arXiv AI
Sep 25

The Tokens Remember: When Tokenization Bypasses Knowledge Editing and Unlearning

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.

By Manit Baser, Aditya Nawal, Dinil Mon Divakaran, Mohan Gurusamy
arXiv AI
Sep 17

Suppressed, Not Erased: A Representational Trace of Edited Facts Survives Even Weight-Free Knowledge Editing

The paper investigates whether knowledge editing truly erases original facts from language models. Using a linear trace probe, the authors find that after editing a fact in GPT‑2‑XL, the original object remains highly decodable from hidden states across three different editing methods, even when the model behaves correctly on edited prompts. This suggests that editing suppresses rather than removes the original association in representational space.

By Priyansh Srivastava, Romit Chatterjee
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Sep 3

When Models Edit Too Much: On the Fidelity of Minimal Code Edits

The paper investigates the problem of over‑editing by large language models (LLMs) when repairing code, showing that even state‑of‑the‑art models like GPT‑5.5 often rewrite more code than necessary. Using a benchmark of 400 BigCodeBench problems with controlled AST‑level corruptions, the authors quantify over‑editing and demonstrate that a simple preservation instruction can significantly reduce excess edits and cognitive complexity while improving Pass@1. They further explore post‑training strategies, finding that reinforcement learning yields the best balance between edit fidelity and performance retention, thereby establishing edit fidelity as a distinct, measurable dimension of code‑repair quality.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 15

Inference-Time Machine Unlearning via Gated Activation Redirection

arXiv:2605. 12765v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large Language Models memorize vast amounts of training data, raising concerns regarding privacy, copyright infringement, and safety.

By Vin\'icius Conte Turani, Ot\'avio Parraga, Jo\~ao Vitor Boer Abitante, Kristen K. Arguello, Joana Pasquali, Ramiro N. Barros, Flavio du Pin Calmon, Christian Mattjie, Rodrigo C. Barros, Lucas S. Kupssinsk\"u
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Sequential knowledge editing breaks a model's ability to tell good evidence from bad, without costing it accuracy

The paper investigates how sequential knowledge editing can degrade a language model’s ability to discern reliable evidence from unreliable evidence without affecting overall accuracy. Using a conservatively tuned LoRA on Qwen2.5‑7B‑Instruct, the authors show that after 1,000 edits the model’s arbitration score for untouched facts drops by 36%, leading to higher error rates on its most confident decisions, while MMLU accuracy remains unchanged. The study also finds that in some model‑method combinations, sequential edits can reduce MMLU to chance levels even though edit success and locality remain perfect.

By Atul Anand
arXiv AI
Aug 13

Hybrid-Policy Self-Editing for Composable Unstructured Knowledge Editing

arXiv:2608. 11660v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) achieve remarkable performance across natural language tasks, yet they are trained on static corpora and their knowledge quickly becomes outdated in a fast-changing world.

By Tianci Liu, Zihan Dong, Tianchun Li, Yi-Chung Chen, Qiming Cao, Xingchen Wang, Shiyang Wang, Zichen Miao, Linjun Zhang, Haoyu Wang, Jing Gao
arXiv AI
Aug 26

When Can One Neuron Fix Repetition Loops in LLMs?

The paper investigates whether targeted edits to a few internal components of Gemma 4 instruction‑tuned models can reduce persistent repetition loops that occur during long factual enumeration prompts. By combining per‑layer ablation with per‑neuron attribution, the authors identify specific neurons whose weight edits dramatically lower loop frequency—one sign‑inverted neuron suffices for Gemma 4 E2B. Across all four Gemma variants, loop occurrences drop from 46/384 to 12/384 on held‑out prompts, while general‑purpose benchmarks show no significant regressions. The study also demonstrates that similar sparse edits can mitigate repetition in other families such as Qwen3.5 and LFM2.5, though the effect varies.

By Aristotelis Lazaridis, Aman Sharma, Dylan Bates, Brian King, Vincent Lu, Jack FitzGerald