arXiv:2608.26655cs.LG2026-08

差分隐私让模型合并变难,新方法通过几何感知提升合并效果。

When Privacy Hurts Mergeability: Geometry-Aware Model Merging under Differential Privacy

论文配图:When Privacy Hurts Mergeability: Geometry-Aware Model Merging under Differential Privacy
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 基于梯度平坦度与初始化对齐的合并框架
  • 在多隐私预算下提升私有模型合并性能
  • 适合关注隐私保护模型融合的研究者

模型合并可在不访问原始数据的前提下,将独立微调的任务模型融合为单一多任务模型,适用于数据无法集中场景。然而,释放的任务模型仍可能泄露微调数据。差分隐私(DP)可限制此类泄露,但其对模型合并的影响尚不明确。本文研究了差分隐私下的模型合并几何特性,识别出两个阻碍因素:局部尖锐性(使损失对参数偏移敏感)和参考漂移(任务模型偏离共享预训练初始化,加剧跨任务干扰)。为此提出DP-Merging框架:使用兼容DP的尖锐感知目标引导各任务模型进入更平坦的损失区域,并引入基于参考的对齐正则项保持模型靠近预训练初始化。理论推导表明,降低局部曲率与参考漂移可缩小合并带来的损失增长上限。在视觉与语言任务上,多个隐私预算下的实验显示,DP-Merging显著提升私有合并模型性能,同时维持底层DP微调的隐私保障。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Model merging promises to construct a single multi-task model from independently fine-tuned task models without accessing the original task data. This makes it attractive when task data cannot be centralized, but released task models may still leak private fine-tuning data. Differential privacy (DP) provides a principled mechanism for limiting such leakage, yet its effect on model merging remains poorly understood. In this paper, we study the geometry of differentially private model merging and identify two geometric obstacles that make private task models difficult to merge: \emph{local sharpness}, which makes task losses sensitive to the parameter displacement induced by merging, and \emph{reference drift}, which measures the displacement of private task models from the shared pretrained initialization and amplifies cross-task interference. Based on these observations, we propose \textbf{DP-Merging}, a geometry-aware framework that improves the mergeability of differentially private task models. DP-Merging uses a DP-compatible sharpness-aware objective to guide each private task model toward flatter loss regions, and a reference-based alignment regularizer to keep task models close to the shared pretrained initialization. We derive a merge-gap upper bound showing that reducing local curvature and reference drift tightens the bound on the loss increase induced by merging. Experiments on vision and language tasks across multiple privacy budgets show that DP-Merging consistently improves private merged-model performance while preserving the privacy guarantees of the underlying DP fine-tuning procedures.

模型合并差分隐私几何感知隐私保护

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