arXiv AI By Anna Mazhar, Sainyam Galhotra

CAF\'E: Causal Black-Box Testing of Machine Unlearning

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arXiv:2509. 16525v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Machine learning models are increasingly deployed as software components that must evolve as requirements change.

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arXiv Machine Learning
3d ago

Do unlearning algorithms learn the right features?

arXiv:2611.06681v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Machine unlearning is commonly evaluated with standard post-deletion metrics that compare an unlearned model to one retrained on the remaining data. Su...

By Polina Dolgova, Amartya Sanyal, Sebastian U. Stich
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 16

Not All Change Is Damage: Update-Matched Unlearning for Large Language Models

The paper introduces Update‑Matched Unlearning (UMU), a method that applies the same simulated relearning update to both a defended model and an undefended reference to better preserve plasticity while resisting relearning of deleted knowledge. Experiments on Llama and Qwen models with TOFU and FaithUn datasets show that UMU reduces harmful and benign relearning by 30.4 and 9.9 points on average and increases new‑task accuracy by 3.5 points, supporting the reference‑timing hypothesis. The study demonstrates that robust unlearning should selectively prevent recovery of deleted knowledge without suppressing the model’s ability to learn new tasks.

By Jie Li, Youming Tao, Bowei He, Meng Ding
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 23

PreUnlearn: Auditing Collateral Knowledge Damage Before Large Language Model Unlearning

The paper investigates how machine unlearning for large language models (LLMs) can unintentionally erase related knowledge, even in distant domains. By analyzing the propagation of unlearning effects before any model updates, the authors discover a consistent decay pattern where collateral damage is strongest near the targeted forget set and diminishes with semantic distance but never fully disappears at domain boundaries. They propose a pre-unlearning prediction task—forget-set auditing—to identify potential collateral damage early, finding that interaction features between the forget set and evaluation set are the most predictive signals. This approach offers an early warning system for risky unlearning runs and guides the design of more reliable unlearning procedures.

By Bo Su, Ankit Shah, Thai Le
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 3

When a Data Artifact Isn't a Shortcut: Causal Auditing of Synthetic RLVR Corpora

The paper audits whether synthetic distractors in RLVR corpora act as shortcuts for learning policies. A classifier using only surface statistics barely outperforms chance, and manual inspection reveals that code distractors are almost identical to correct answers. Experiments with a paraphrase‑matched control show no exploitation advantage for the unmodified data, indicating that the detectable artifact was not used by the policy.

By Esther Xin