In this paper, we take initial steps towards correcting predictive errors of ViTs, particularly those arising from subpopulation shifts.

In this paper, we take initial steps towards correcting predictive errors of ViTs, particularly those arising from subpopulation shifts.

Model editing has become an increasingly popular method for efficiently updating knowledge within language models. Current approaches primarily focus on reliability, generalization, and locality, with many excelling across these criteria.

Large multi-modal models inevitably decay over time as facts update and previously learned information becomes outdated. Traditional approaches such as fine-tuning are often impractical for updating these models due to their size and complexity. Instead, direct knowledge editing within the models presents a more viable solution. Current model editing techniques, however, typically overlook the unique influence ranges of different facts, leading to compromised model performance in terms of both generality and locality. To address this issue, we introduce the concept of the generality-locality trade-off in multi-modal model editing. We develop a new model editing dataset named OKEDIT, specifically designed to effectively evaluate this trade-off. Building on this foundation, we propose \textbf{BalancEdit}, a novel method for balanced model editing that dynamically achieves an optimal balance between generality and locality. BalancEdit utilizes a unique mechanism that generates both positive and negative samples for each fact to accurately determine its influence scope and incorporates these insights into the model's latent space using a discrete, localized codebook of edits, without modifying the underlying model weights. To our knowledge, this is the first approach explicitly addressing the generality-locality trade-off in multi-modal model editing. Our comprehensive results confirm the effectiveness of BalancEdit, demonstrating minimal trade-offs while maintaining robust editing capabilities. Our code and dataset are available at https://github.com/donglgcn/BalancEdit/tree/MMOKVQA.

Model editing aims to correct errors and outdated knowledge in the Large language models (LLMs) with minimal cost. Prior research has proposed a variety of datasets to assess the effectiveness of these model editing methods. However, most existing datasets only require models to output short phrases or sentences, overlooks the widespread existence of document-level tasks in the real world, raising doubts about their practical usability. Aimed at addressing this limitation and promoting the application of model editing in real-world scenarios, we propose the task of document-level model editing. To tackle such challenges and enhance model capabilities in practical settings, we introduce \benchmarkname, a dataset focused on document-level model editing, characterized by document-level inputs and outputs, extrapolative, and multiple facts within a single edit. We propose a series of evaluation metrics and experiments. The results show that the difficulties in document-level model editing pose challenges for existing model editing methods.

As real-world knowledge evolves, the information embedded within large language models (LLMs) can become outdated, inadequate, or erroneous. Model editing has emerged as a prominent approach for updating LLMs' knowledge with minimal computational costs and parameter changes. This approach typically identifies and adjusts specific model parameters associated with newly acquired knowledge. However, existing methods often underestimate the adverse effects that parameter modifications can have on broadly distributed knowledge. More critically, post-edit LLMs frequently struggle with multi-hop reasoning and continuous knowledge updates. Although various studies have discussed these shortcomings, there is a lack of comprehensive evaluation. In this paper, we provide an evaluation of ten model editing methods along four dimensions: reliability, generalization, locality, and portability. Results confirm that all ten popular model editing methods show significant shortcomings across multiple dimensions, suggesting model editing is less promising. We then propose a straightforward method called Selective Contextual Reasoning (SCR), for knowledge updating. SCR does not modify model parameters but harnesses LLM's inherent contextual reasoning capabilities utilizing the updated knowledge pieces. Under SCR, an LLM first assesses whether an incoming query falls within the scope of an external knowledge base. If it does, the relevant external knowledge texts are contextualized to enhance reasoning; otherwise, the query is answered directly. We evaluate SCR against the ten model editing methods on two counterfactual datasets with three backbone LLMs. Empirical results confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of contextual reasoning for knowledge updating.

Large language models (LLMs) often retain outdated or incorrect information from pre-training, which undermines their reliability. While model editing methods have been developed to address such errors without full re-training, they frequently suffer from knowledge conflicts, where outdated information interferes with new knowledge. In this work, we propose Conflict-free Model Editing (CoME), a novel framework that enhances the accuracy of knowledge updates in LLMs by selectively removing outdated knowledge. CoME leverages unlearning to mitigate knowledge interference, allowing new information to be integrated without compromising relevant linguistic features. Through experiments on GPT-J and LLaMA-3 using Counterfact and ZsRE datasets, we demonstrate that CoME improves both editing accuracy and model reliability when applied to existing editing methods. Our results highlight that the targeted removal of outdated knowledge is crucial for enhancing model editing effectiveness and maintaining the model's generative performance.

Model editing has become an increasingly popular alternative for efficiently updating knowledge within language models. Current methods mainly focus on reliability, generalization, and locality, with many methods excelling across these criteria. Some recent works disclose the pitfalls of these editing methods such as knowledge distortion or conflict. However, the general abilities of post-edited language models remain unexplored. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive evaluation on various editing methods and different language models, and have following findings. (1) Existing editing methods lead to inevitable performance deterioration on general benchmarks, indicating that existing editing methods maintain the general abilities of the model within only a few dozen edits. When the number of edits is slightly large, the intrinsic knowledge structure of the model is disrupted or even completely damaged. (2) Instruction-tuned models are more robust to editing, showing less performance drop on general knowledge after editing. (3) Language model with large scale is more resistant to editing compared to small model. (4) The safety of the edited model, is significantly weakened, even for those safety-aligned models. Our findings indicate that current editing methods are only suitable for small-scale knowledge updates within language models, which motivates further research on more practical and reliable editing methods. The details of code and reproduction can be found in https://github.com/lqinfdim/EditingEvaluation.

Large language models (LLMs) often exhibit hallucinations due to incorrect or outdated knowledge. Hence, model editing methods have emerged to enable targeted knowledge updates. To achieve this, a prevailing paradigm is the locating-then-editing approach, which first locates influential parameters and then edits them by introducing a perturbation. While effective, current studies have demonstrated that this perturbation inevitably disrupt the originally preserved knowledge within LLMs, especially in sequential editing scenarios. To address this, we introduce AlphaEdit, a novel solution that projects perturbation onto the null space of the preserved knowledge before applying it to the parameters. We theoretically prove that this projection ensures the output of post-edited LLMs remains unchanged when queried about the preserved knowledge, thereby mitigating the issue of disruption. Extensive experiments on various LLMs, including LLaMA3, GPT2-XL, and GPT-J, show that AlphaEdit boosts the performance of most locating-then-editing methods by an average of 36.4% with a single line of additional code for projection solely. Our code is available at: https://github.com/jianghoucheng/AlphaEdit.