EVEDIT: Event-based Knowledge Editing for Deterministic Knowledge Propagation

ACL ARR 2024 June Submission1091 Authors

14 Jun 2024 (modified: 08 Aug 2024)ACL ARR 2024 June SubmissionEveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY 4.0
Abstract: The dynamic nature of real-world information necessitates knowledge editing (KE) in large language models (LLMs). The edited knowledge should propagate and facilitate the deduction of new information based on existing model knowledge. We term the existing related knowledge in LLM serving as the origination of knowledge propagation as ''deduction anchors''. However, current KE approaches, which only operate on (subject, relation, object) triple. We both theoretically and empirically observe that this simplified setting often leads to uncertainty when determining the deduction anchors, causing low confidence in their answers. To mitigate this issue, we propose a novel task of event-based knowledge editing that pairs facts with event descriptions. This task manifests not only a closer simulation of real-world editing scenarios but also a more logically sound setting, implicitly defining the deduction anchor and enabling LLMs to propagate knowledge confidently. We curate a new benchmark dataset Evedit derived from the CounterFact dataset and validate its superiority in improving model confidence. Moreover, while we observe that the event-based setting is significantly challenging for existing approaches, we propose a novel approach Self-Edit that showcases stronger performance, achieving 55.6% consistency improvement while maintaining the naturalness of generation.
Paper Type: Long
Research Area: Interpretability and Analysis of Models for NLP
Research Area Keywords: Interpretability and Analysis of Models for NLP
Contribution Types: Model analysis & interpretability, NLP engineering experiment, Data resources, Theory
Languages Studied: English
Submission Number: 1091
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