arXiv AI By Chenhan Zhang, Ali Braytee, Madhushi Bandara, Xin Hao, Paul J. Kennedy, Massimo Piccardi, Raymond Owen

CUNO: Curriculum and Preference Optimization for Stable Graph Unlearning under Mass Deletion

Read the original on arXiv AI →

CUNO is a curriculum‑based graph unlearning framework that progressively removes a designated set of training samples, ordering them by estimated unlearning difficulty across multiple stages. It also introduces a distribution‑level negative preference optimization objective at each stage to steer the model away from its original behavior on the current forget subset while preserving performance on retained data. Experiments show that CUNO mitigates catastrophic unlearning, retaining 74% of original utility at 20% deletion and more than half at 50% deletion, outperforming existing methods.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

arXiv AI
Jun 3

PURGE: Projected Unlearning via Retain-Guided Erasure

arXiv:2606. 03808v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We propose PURGE, a machine unlearning algorithm built on a simple but an under-exploited observation: continual learning (CL) and machine unlearning (MU) which are fundamentally dual problems.

By Vedant Jawandhia, Daksh Ahuja, Ghufran Alam Siddiqui, Prashant Trivedi, Yash Sinha, Pratik Narang
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 28

Graph-Guided Selective Unlearning for Language Models: Controlling Support Routes Beyond Forget Seeds

The paper introduces GRAPHSU, a graph‑guided selective unlearning method for language models that expands deletion beyond explicitly identified forget seeds. By constructing a weighted support‑route graph and propagating deletion pressure, GRAPHSU applies graded forgetting to high‑risk neighboring examples. Experiments on the TOFU and PISTOL benchmarks with GPT‑2 Medium and Llama‑3.2‑3B‑Instruct show that GRAPHSU achieves the lowest utility‑feasible soft leakage, reducing leakage by up to 49.5 percentage points compared to a seed‑only baseline.

By Waqas Khan, Tabinda Sarwar, Jingyue Cong, Xun Yi, Estrid He
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 3

GONE: Structural Knowledge Unlearning via Neighborhood-Expanded Distribution Shaping

The paper introduces GONE, a benchmark for evaluating knowledge unlearning in large language models using structured knowledge graphs, and presents Neighborhood-Expanded Distribution Shaping (NEDS), a framework that leverages graph connectivity to separate forgotten facts from their semantic neighborhood. GONE disentangles direct fact removal, reasoning-based leakage, and catastrophic forgetting, while NEDS achieves high unlearning efficacy and locality on LLaMA-3-8B and Mistral-7B. The dataset is publicly available on Hugging Face.

By Chahana Dahal, Ashutosh Balasubramaniam, Zuobin Xiong