现有大模型遗忘评估方法易被误导,无法检测语义相关知识残留。
The Erasure Illusion: Stress-Testing the Generalization of LLM Forgetting Evaluation
- 提出近似替代生成框架,自动构造语义相关但嵌入空间不同的测试数据
- 在三类模型、三组数据上发现7种主流评估指标普遍高估遗忘效果
- 揭示当前评估标准对模型隐性知识保留的检测能力严重不足
机器遗忘旨在消除训练模型中特定数据的影响,对遵守版权法规和保障AI安全至关重要。现有遗忘评估通常通过监测模型在特定遗忘数据集 $D_u$ 上性能下降来衡量成功。我们指出,对大语言模型(LLMs)而言,这一评估范式不足且可能产生误导。许多现实场景中的遗忘需求——如版权或安全问题——不仅针对 $D_u$ 中的原文内容,还涉及模型从中衍生出的广泛泛化行为。我们证明,即使模型在标准遗忘评估中表现‘已遗忘’,仍能保持对与 $D_u$ 语义相近内容的强大能力。这表明删除具体句子并不等于移除底层知识。为此,我们提出近似替代生成(PSG)框架,自动生成一个语义源自 $D_u$ 但嵌入空间足够不同的替代数据集 $ ilde{D}_u$。通过比较 $D_u$ 与 $ ilde{D}_u$ 上的遗忘指标得分,可对评估指标本身进行压力测试。我们在三个LLM家族(Llama-3-8B、Qwen2.5-7B、Zephyr-7B-$β$)、三组不同数据集及七种标准指标上进行广泛评估,发现普遍存在不一致现象。结果显示,当前指标常过度高估遗忘效果,未能检测到我们压力测试数据暴露的留存知识。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Machine unlearning aims to remove specific data influences from trained models, a capability essential for adhering to copyright laws and ensuring AI safety. Current unlearning metrics typically measure success by monitoring the model's performance degradation on the specific unlearning dataset ($D_u$). We argue that for Large Language Models (LLMs), this evaluation paradigm is insufficient and potentially misleading. Many real-world uses of unlearning--motivated by copyright or safety--implicitly target not only verbatim content in $D_u$, but also behaviors influenced by the broader generalizations the model derived from it. We demonstrate that LLMs can pass standard unlearning evaluation and appear to have "forgotten" the target knowledge, while simultaneously retaining strong capabilities on content that is semantically adjacent to $D_u$. This phenomenon indicates that erasing exact sentences does not necessarily equate to removing the underlying knowledge. To address this gap, we propose Proximal Surrogate Generation (PSG), an automated stress-testing framework that generates a surrogate dataset, $\tilde{D}_u$. This surrogate set is constructed to be semantically derived from $D_u$ yet sufficiently distinct in embedding space. By comparing unlearning metric scores between $D_u$ and $\tilde{D}_u$, we can stress-test the reliability of the metric itself. Our extensive evaluation across three LLM families (Llama-3-8B, Qwen2.5-7B, and Zephyr-7B-$β$), three distinct datasets, and seven standard metrics reveals widespread inconsistencies. We find that current metrics frequently overestimate unlearning success, failing to detect retained knowledge exposed by our stress-test datasets.
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