Distance Is Not Enough: Forget-Retain Alignment Gap Predicts LLM Relearning Robustness

2026-08-26

AI Summary

研究解决了LLM重新学习被遗忘数据的问题，通过引入Forget-Retain Alignment Gap (FRAG)来更准确地预测模型的健壮性，并提出Forget-Retain Pruning (FRP)方法增强健壮性。

Abstract

Machine unlearning aims to make a model forget specific data, yet unlearned LLMs often fail to stay unlearned: brief fine-tuning can revive removed knowledge. Existing robustness predictors rely on global weight-space displacement, but distance alone can be misleading when random or destructive updates collapse performance. We argue that relearning robustness depends on update structure: robust unlearning should affect forget-critical weights while sparing retain-critical ones. We introduce the Forget-Retain Alignment Gap (FRAG), a training-free predictor that scores an update's forget-retain alignment without running a relearning attack, and separates selective from dense updates more reliably than global distance. Building on the forget-critical, retain-sparing principle, Forget-Retain Pruning (FRP) improves relearning robustness. Our results suggest that weight selectivity better explains robustness than distance alone. Code is available at https://github.com/Yi1-Chen/FRAG.

Problem

• Machine Unlearning
• Relearning Robustness
• Forget-Retain Alignment

Innovation

• Forget-Retain Alignment Gap
• relearning robustness
• Forget-Retain Pruning