区分了模型删除数据的两种不同目标:删数据与删概念。
Is your algorithm unlearning or untraining?
- 提出'未训练'与'未学习'两类任务的本质区别
- 明确两类问题在目标和效果上的根本差异
- 帮助研究者选择合适方法并避免误判结果
随着模型规模和训练数据量的持续增长,如何在训练后删除特定数据点或行为成为热门研究方向,这一目标被称为‘机器未学习’。本文指出,术语‘未学习’被过度泛化,实际涵盖两种截然不同的问题,但学界尚未对此做出清晰区分。这导致算法适用场景模糊、评估指标不当、结果难以解释,并错失关键研究方向。为此,本文提出核心区分:“未训练”旨在消除特定数据对模型的影响;而 “未学习”则希望利用这些样本,更广泛地移除其所代表的整个分布(如某种概念或行为)。文章讨论两类问题的技术定义,并将已有研究归类于对应范畴。期望推动学术界对术语的明确定义,揭示被忽视的研究问题,为该领域发展奠定基础。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
As models are getting larger and are trained on increasing amounts of data, there has been an explosion of interest into how we can ``delete'' specific data points or behaviours from a trained model, after the fact. This goal has been referred to as ``machine unlearning''. In this note, we argue that the term ``unlearning'' has been overloaded, with different research efforts spanning two distinct problem formulations, but without that distinction having been observed or acknowledged in the literature. This causes various issues, including ambiguity around when an algorithm is expected to work, use of inappropriate metrics and baselines when comparing different algorithms to one another, difficulty in interpreting results, as well as missed opportunities for pursuing critical research directions. In this note, we address this issue by establishing a fundamental distinction between two notions that we identify as \unlearning and \untraining, illustrated in Figure 1. In short, \untraining aims to reverse the effect of having trained on a given forget set, i.e. to remove the influence that that specific forget set examples had on the model during training. On the other hand, the goal of \unlearning is not just to remove the influence of those given examples, but to use those examples for the purpose of more broadly removing the entire underlying distribution from which those examples were sampled (e.g. the concept or behaviour that those examples represent). We discuss technical definitions of these problems and map problem settings studied in the literature to each. We hope to initiate discussions on disambiguating technical definitions and identify a set of overlooked research questions, as we believe that this a key missing step for accelerating progress in the field of ``unlearning''.
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