10 papers
Position: Zeroth-Order Optimization in Deep Learning Is Underexplored, Not Underpowered
Sijia Liu, Yicheng Lang, Soumyadeep Pal +6
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization, learning from finite differences of function evaluations without backpropagation, has recently regained attention in deep learning due to its memory…
Downgrade to Upgrade: Optimizer Simplification Enhances Robustness in LLM Unlearning
Yicheng Lang, Yihua Zhang, Chongyu Fan +3
Large language model (LLM) unlearning aims to surgically remove the influence of undesired data or knowledge from an existing model while preserving its utility on unrelated tasks.…
Subspace Control: Turning Constrained Model Steering into Controllable Spectral Optimization
Yancheng Huang, Changsheng Wang, Chongyu Fan +7
Foundation models, such as large language models (LLMs), are powerful but often require customization before deployment to satisfy practical constraints such as safety, privacy, an…
Powering Up Zeroth-Order Training via Subspace Gradient Orthogonalization
Yicheng Lang, Changsheng Wang, Yihua Zhang +4
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization provides a gradient-free alternative to first-order (FO) methods by estimating gradients via finite differences of function evaluations, and has rece…
Breaking Memorization Barriers in LLM Code Fine-Tuning via Information Bottleneck for Improved Generalization
Changsheng Wang, Xin Chen, Sijia Liu +1
Adapting pretrained large language models (LLMs) to code domains via supervised fine-tuning (FT) has been commonly used for code generation. However, we identify a previously under…
LLM Unlearning on Noisy Forget Sets: A Study of Incomplete, Rewritten, and Watermarked Data
Changsheng Wang, Yihua Zhang, Dennis Wei +3
Large language models (LLMs) exhibit remarkable generative capabilities but raise ethical and security concerns by memorizing sensitive data, reinforcing biases, and producing harm…