发现现有遗忘方法反而让大模型更脆弱,提出用随机噪声提升鲁棒性。
Improving LLM Unlearning Robustness via Random Perturbations
- 将遗忘过程视为后门攻击,揭示遗忘令牌会成为触发器。
- 引入随机噪声增强(RNA)有效提升遗忘后模型的鲁棒性。
- 方法轻量且通用,适用于各类遗忘与保留任务。
本文揭示当前大语言模型(LLM)遗忘方法本质上会降低模型鲁棒性,即使在保留查询中仅出现一个非对抗性遗忘令牌,也会导致模型行为异常。为理解根本原因,我们提出一种新理论框架,将遗忘过程重新定义为后门攻击与防御问题:遗忘过程无意中学习到将遗忘令牌(后门触发器)与目标表示(目标标签)对齐。因此,遗忘令牌在保留查询中激活时,会引发未学习模型的行为紊乱,如同成功的后门攻击。这表明,现有遗忘方法实际上污染了模型,使其对遗忘令牌更加敏感,并非真正擦除知识,而是将其隐藏。为缓解遗忘过程带来的漏洞,我们将保留过程重新视为后门防御,提出随机噪声增强(RNA),一种轻量级、与模型和方法无关的方法,具有理论保障,可显著提升遗忘后模型的鲁棒性。大量实验表明,RNA在保持遗忘与保留性能的同时,大幅提升模型稳健性。该后门攻击-防御框架为理解遗忘机制提供了新视角,有望指引未来研究方向。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Here, we show that current LLM unlearning methods inherently reduce models' robustness, causing them to misbehave even when a single non-adversarial forget-token is present in the retain-query. Toward understanding underlying causes, we propose a novel theoretical framework that reframes the unlearning process as a backdoor attack and defense problem: we formulate how the forgetting process inadvertently learns to align forget-tokens (backdoor triggers) with the target-representations (target labels). As a result, forget-tokens act as backdoor triggers that, when activated in retain-queries, cause disruptions in unlearned models' behaviors, similar to successful backdoor attacks. The sense that, LLM unlearning methods themselves poison the model, make it more vulnerable to forget-tokens, and hide rather than erase target knowledge, describes their true mechanism. To mitigate the vulnerability caused by the forgetting process, we reinterpret the retaining process as a backdoor defense and propose Random Noise Augmentation (RNA), a lightweight, model and method-agnostic approach with theoretical guarantees for improving the robustness of unlearned models. Extensive experiments demonstrate that RNA significantly improves the robustness of unlearned models while preserving forget and retain performances. This backdoor attack-defense framework offers insights into the mechanism of unlearning that can shed light on future research directions for improving unlearning robustness.
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