通过选择性删除特定表示,实现难以恢复的深度遗忘。
RepSelect: Robust LLM Unlearning via Representation Selectivity

- 在每次遗忘更新前压缩权重梯度主成分,隔离需遗忘内容的表示。
- 相比基线方法,遗忘后重学回答概率下降4-40倍,且通用能力基本不变。
- 对少量示例提示和自适应攻击均保持鲁棒,适合高安全场景使用。
当大型语言模型权重可访问或可通过API进行微调时,仅抑制有害知识或倾向是不够的:必须深入删除,以防止攻击者恢复。现有遗忘方法在此标准下显得浅层——通过微调或少量上下文示例即可复现行为,且常损害模型通用能力。我们识别出根本原因:现有方法修改了与保留集共享、位于微调攻击者可恢复子空间中的表示,导致遗忘既易被逆转又具破坏性。为此,我们提出RepSelect(表示选择性),通过在每次遗忘更新前折叠权重梯度的前几大主成分,将遗忘集特有表示隔离,从而在保留通用能力的同时限制微调可恢复的内容。在涵盖知识(生物危害、网络威胁、真实人物事实)与倾向(辱骂、阿谀)的五个遗忘数据集上,以及覆盖密集模型和专家混合架构的三个模型家族中,RepSelect相较五种主流基线(GradDiff、NPO、SimNPO、RMU、UNDIAL)实现了4-40倍的后重学回答概率下降。其对少样本提示也近乎完全鲁棒,并能抵御针对其机制设计的自适应攻击。结果表明,遗忘必须对编辑哪些表示具有选择性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
When LLM weights are open or fine-tuning is available through an API, suppressing hazardous knowledge and tendencies is not enough: removal has to be deep enough that an adversary cannot restore it. Existing unlearning is shallow by this standard: fine-tuning or a handful of in-context examples brings the behaviour back, and it often degrades general capabilities in the process. We identify a root cause: existing methods edit representations shared with the retain set and lying in the subspace that a fine-tuning attacker recovers, making unlearning simultaneously easy to undo and disruptive. Leveraging this, we propose RepSelect (Representation Selectivity), which isolates forget-set-specific representations by collapsing the top principal components of the weight gradients before each unlearning update, preserving general capabilities while limiting what fine-tuning can recover. Across five unlearning datasets spanning both knowledge (biohazard, cyber, facts about real individuals) and tendencies (abusive, sycophantic), and three model families covering dense and Mixture-of-Experts architectures, RepSelect yields a 4-40x larger drop in post-relearning answer probability than five widely used baselines (GradDiff, NPO, SimNPO, RMU, UNDIAL). It is also near-perfectly robust to few-shot prompting and holds under an adaptive attack designed to exploit its mechanism. Our results show that unlearning needs to be selective about which representations it edits.
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