China

Machine unlearning aims to selectively remove targeted knowledge from Large Language Models (LLMs), ensuring they forget specified content while retaining essential information. Existing unlearning metrics assess whether a model correctly answers retain queries and rejects forget queries, but they fail to capture real-world scenarios where forget queries rarely appear in isolation. In fact, forget and retain queries often coexist within the same prompt, making mixed-query evaluation crucial. We introduce SEPS, an evaluation framework that explicitly measures a model’s ability to both forget and retain information within a single prompt. Through extensive experiments across three benchmarks, we identify two key failure modes in existing unlearning methods: (1) untargeted unlearning indiscriminately erases both forget and retain content once a forget query appears, and (2) targeted unlearning overfits to single-query scenarios, leading to catastrophic failures when handling multiple queries. To address these issues, we propose Mixed Prompt (MP) unlearning, a strategy that integrates both forget and retain queries into a unified training objective. Our approach significantly improves unlearning effectiveness, demonstrating robustness even in complex settings with up to eight mixed forget and retain queries in a single prompt.

EMNLP 2025

SEPS: A Separability Measure for Robust Unlearning in LLMs

mp training

seps

unlearning

## Welcome!
"I am excited to welcome you to this year’s edition of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing! Importantly, it marks the 30th edition of EMNLP. With over 8,000 submissions, more than 3,000 accepted papers, and thousands of attendees, we have come a long way from that first
workshop, which had 14 accepted papers. As the field looks ahead, Suzhou is the fitting location for celebrating this milestone: rooted in a long literary tradition, yet modern and forward-looking, and home to a large share of the NLP community."<br>

*Message from the General Chair, Dirk Hovy*





<br>

Celebrate 30 Years of EMNLP! 
EMNLP 2025 will be held in Suzhou, China from November 5th to November 9th, 2025.

poster

Sequence labeling remains a significant challenge in low-resource, domain-specific scenarios, particularly for character-dense languages. Existing methods primarily focus on enhancing model comprehension and improving data diversity to boost performance. However, these approaches still struggle with inadequate model applicability and semantic distribution biases in domain-specific contexts. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel framework that combines an LLM-based knowledge enhancement workflow with a span-based Knowledge Fusion for Rich and Efficient Extraction (KnowFREE) model. Our workflow employs explanation prompts to generate precise contextual interpretations of target entities, effectively mitigating semantic biases and enriching the model's contextual understanding. The KnowFREE model further integrates extension label features, enabling efficient nested entity extraction without relying on external knowledge during inference. Experiments on multiple domain-specific sequence labeling datasets demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance, effectively addressing the challenges posed by low-resource settings.

Improving Low-Resource Sequence Labeling with Knowledge Fusion and Contextual Label Explanations

Despite the impressive performance of large language models (LLMs) in general domains, they often underperform in specialized domains. Existing approaches typically rely on data synthesis methods and yield promising results by using unlabeled data to capture domain-specific features. However, these methods either incur high computational costs or suffer from performance limitations, while also demonstrating insufficient generalization across different tasks. To address these challenges, we propose textbfAQuilt, a framework for constructing instruction-tuning data for any specialized domains from corresponding unlabeled data, including textbfAnswer, textbfQuestion, textbfUnlabeled data, textbfInspection, textbfLogic, and textbfTask type. By incorporating logic and inspection, we encourage reasoning processes and self-inspection to enhance model performance. Moreover, customizable task instructions enable high-quality data generation for any task. As a result, we construct a dataset of 703K examples to train a powerful data synthesis model. Experiments show that AQuilt is comparable to DeepSeek-V3 while utilizing just 17% of the production cost. Further analysis demonstrates that our generated data exhibits higher relevance to downstream tasks. Codes are available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/AQuilt-4C3B.

AQuilt: Weaving Logic and Self-Inspection into Low-Cost, High-Relevance Data Synthesis for Specialist LLMs

In-Context derived Vector (ICV) methods extract task-relevant representations from large language models (LLMs) and reinject them during inference, achieving comparable performance to few-shot In-Context Learning (ICL) without repeated demonstration processing. However, existing ICV methods remain sensitive to ICL-specific factors, often use coarse or semantically fragmented representations as the source of the vector, and rely on heuristic-based injection positions, limiting their applicability. To address these issues, we propose Dynamic Vector (DyVec), which incorporates an Exhaustive Query Rotation (EQR) strategy to extract robust semantically aggregated latent representations by mitigating variance introduced by ICL. It then applies Dynamic Latent Segmentation and Injection to adaptively partition representations based on task complexity and leverages REINFORCE-based optimization to learn optimal injection positions for each segment. Experiments results show that DyVec outperforms few-shot ICL, LoRA, and prior ICV baselines. Further analysis highlights the effectiveness of dynamically segmenting and injecting semantically aggregated latent representations. DyVec provides a lightweight and data-efficient solution for inference-time task adaptation.

Beyond Demonstrations: Dynamic Vector Construction from Latent Representations

In this work, we propose FoRA-UA, a novel method that, using only 1--5% of the standard LoRA's parameters, achieves state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of tasks. Specifically, we explore scenarios with extremely limited parameter budgets and derive two key insights: (1) fix-sized sparse frequency representations approximate small matrices more accurately; and (2) with a fixed number of trainable parameters, introducing a smaller intermediate representation to approximate larger matrices results in lower construction error. These findings form the foundation of our FoRA-UA method. By inserting a small intermediate parameter set, we achieve greater model compression without sacrificing performance. We evaluate FoRA-UA across diverse tasks, including natural language understanding (NLU), natural language generation (NLG), instruction tuning, and image classification, demonstrating strong generalisation and robustness under extreme compression.

Tiny Budgets, Big Gains: Parameter Placement Strategy in Parameter Super-Efficient Fine-Tuning

While large language models (LLMs) demonstrate remarkable capabilities across a wide range of tasks, they remain vulnerable to generating outputs that are potentially harmful. Red teaming, which involves crafting adversarial inputs to expose vulnerabilities, is a widely adopted approach for evaluating the robustness of these models. Prior studies have indicated that LLMs are susceptible to vulnerabilities exposed through multi-turn interactions as opposed to single-turn scenarios. Nevertheless, existing methods for multi-turn attacks mainly utilize a predefined dialogue pattern, limiting their effectiveness in realistic situations. Effective attacks require adaptive dialogue strategies that respond dynamically to the initial user prompt and the evolving context of the conversation. To address these limitations, we propose DAMON, a novel multi-turn jailbreak attack method. DAMON leverages Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to systematically explore multi-turn conversational spaces, efficiently identifying sub-instruction sequences that induce harmful responses. We evaluate DAMON's efficacy across five LLMs and three datasets. Our experimental results show that DAMON can effectively induce undesired behaviors.

DAMON: A Dialogue-Aware MCTS Framework for Jailbreaking Large Language Models

As demonstrated by the proprietary Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT and Claude series, LLMs have the potential to achieve remarkable proficiency across a wide range of domains, including law, medicine, finance, science, code, etc., all within a single model. These capabilities are further augmented during the Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) phase. Despite their potential, existing work mainly focuses on domain-specific enhancements during fine-tuning, the challenge of which lies in catastrophic forgetting of knowledge across other domains. In this study, we introduce **VersaTune**, a novel data composition framework designed for enhancing LLMs' overall multi-domain capabilities during training. We begin with detecting the distribution of domain-specific knowledge within the base model, followed by the training data composition that aligns with the model's existing knowledge distribution. During the subsequent training process, domain weights are dynamically adjusted based on their learnable potential and forgetting degree. Experimental results indicate that VersaTune is effective in multi-domain fostering, with an improvement of 29.77% in the overall multi-ability performances compared to uniform domain weights. Furthermore, we find that Qwen-2.5-32B + VersaTune even surpasses frontier models, including GPT-4o, Claude3.5-Sonnet and DeepSeek-V3 by 0.86%, 4.76% and 4.60%. Additionally, in scenarios where flexible expansion of a specific domain is required, VersaTune reduces the performance degradation in other domains by 38.77%, while preserving the training efficacy of the target domain.

VersaTune: An Efficient Data Composition Framework for Training Multi-Capability LLMs

Recent works have revealed the great potential of speculative decoding in accelerating the autoregressive generation process of large language models. The success of these methods relies on the alignment between draft candidates and the sampled outputs of the target model. Existing methods mainly achieve draft-target alignment with training-based methods, e.g., EAGLE, Medusa, involving considerable training costs. In this paper, we present a training-free alignment-augmented speculative decoding algorithm. We propose alignment sampling, which leverages output distribution obtained in the prefilling phase to provide more aligned draft candidates. To further benefit from high-quality but non-aligned draft candidates, we also introduce a simple yet effective flexible verification strategy. Through an adaptive probability threshold, our approach can improve generation accuracy while further improving inference efficiency. Experiments on 8 datasets (including question answering, summarization and code completion tasks) show that our approach increases the average generation score by 3.3 points for the LLaMA3 model. Our method achieves a mean acceptance length up to 2.39 and speed up generation by 2.23×.

Alignment-Augmented Speculative Decoding with Alignment Sampling and Conditional Verification

Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) Large Language Models (LLM) fundamentally rely on high-quality training data. While data selection and data synthesis are two common strategies to improve data quality, existing approaches often face limitations in static dataset curation that fail to adapt to evolving model capabilities. In this paper, we introduce **Middo**, a self-evolving **M**odel-**i**nformed **d**ynamic **d**ata **o**ptimization framework that uses model-aware data selection and context-preserving data refinement. Unlike conventional one-off filtering/synthesis methods, our framework establishes a closed-loop optimization system: (1) A self-referential diagnostic module proactively identifies suboptimal samples through tri-axial model signals - *loss patterns (complexity)*, *embedding cluster dynamics (diversity)*, and *self-alignment scores (quality)*; (2) An adaptive optimization engine then transforms suboptimal samples into pedagogically valuable training points while preserving semantic integrity; (3) This optimization process continuously evolves with model capability through dynamic learning principles. Experiments on multiple benchmarks demonstrate that our \method consistently enhances the quality of seed data and boosts LLM's performance with improving accuracy by 7.15% on average while maintaining the original dataset scale. This work establishes a new paradigm for sustainable LLM training through dynamic human-AI co-evolution of data and models.

Middo: Model-Informed Dynamic Data Optimization for Enhanced LLM Fine-Tuning via Closed-Loop Learning

The widespread deployment of large language models (LLMs) has intensified concerns around intellectual property (IP) protection, as model theft and unauthorized redistribution become increasingly feasible. To address this, model fingerprinting aims to embed verifiable ownership traces into LLMs. However, existing methods face inherent trade-offs between stealthness, robustness, and generalizability—being either detectable via distributional shifts, vulnerable to adversarial modifications, or easily invalidated once the fingerprint is revealed. In this work, we introduce CTCC, a novel rule-driven fingerprinting framework that encodes contextual correlations across multiple dialogue turns—such as counterfactual—rather than relying on token-level or single-turn triggers. CTCC enables fingerprint verification under black-box access while mitigating false positives and fingerprint leakage, supporting continuous construction under a shared semantic rule even if partial triggers are exposed. Extensive experiments across multiple LLM architectures demonstrate that CTCC consistently achieves stronger stealth and robustness than prior work. Our findings position CTCC as a reliable and practical solution for ownership verification in real-world LLM deployment scenarios.

CTCC: A Robust and Stealthy Fingerprinting Framework for Large Language Models via Cross-Turn Contextual Correlation Backdoor

The proliferation of large language models (LLMs) has intensified concerns over model theft and license violations, necessitating robust and stealthy ownership verification. Existing fingerprinting methods either require impractical white-box access or introduce detectable statistical anomalies. We propose EverTracer, a novel gray-box fingerprinting framework that ensures stealthy and robust model provenance tracing. EverTracer is the first to repurpose Membership Inference Attacks (MIAs) for defensive use, embedding ownership signals via memorization instead of artificial trigger-output overfitting. It consists of Fingerprint Injection, which fine-tunes the model on any natural language data without detectable artifacts, and Verification, which leverages calibrated probability variation signal to distinguish fingerprinted models. This approach remains robust against adaptive adversaries, including input level modification, and model-level modifications. Extensive experiments across architectures demonstrate EverTracer’s state-of-the-art effectiveness, stealthness, and resilience, establishing it as a practical solution for securing LLM intellectual property.

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