DOW-KE: Anchor-Free Multi-Layer Knowledge Editing via Direct End-to-End Weight Optimization
arXiv:2608.16932v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-layer locate-then-edit methods for knowledge editing first optimize target residual-stream activations (anchors) at selected layers, then realize them layer by layer as weight updates. This pipeline optimizes an intermediate representation but deploys multi-layer weight updates whose joint effect through the true forward pass is never itself optimized: regardless of how anchors are set or propagated, each update comes from a local solve, so propagation-induced attenuation and distortion go uncorrected, leaving a closure gap between anchor targets and realized edits. We propose DOW-KE, an anchor-free method built on a single principle: what is optimized must be exactly what is deployed. DOW-KE backpropagates the final editing objective through the complete model, jointly optimizing the updates of all edited layers so cross-layer propagation and coupling enter every gradient step. The same principle dictates where preservation resides: embedding the preservation projection in the update parameterization, inside the computation graph, makes every gradient act on the deployed update; post-hoc constraints would reopen the gap, and the constrained search keeps edits clear of protected knowledge. In large-scale sequential editing on two datasets and three models, DOW-KE achieves the highest overall Score and neighborhood Specificity in five of six model-dataset settings among the evaluated baselines.
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[Submitted on 5 Aug 2026]
Title:DOW-KE: Anchor-Free Multi-Layer Knowledge Editing via Direct End-to-End Weight Optimization
View a PDF of the paper titled DOW-KE: Anchor-Free Multi-Layer Knowledge Editing via Direct End-to-End Weight Optimization, by Ran Chen and 4 other authors
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Abstract:Multi-layer locate-then-edit methods for knowledge editing first optimize target residual-stream activations (anchors) at selected layers, then realize them layer by layer as weight updates. This pipeline optimizes an intermediate representation but deploys multi-layer weight updates whose joint effect through the true forward pass is never itself optimized: regardless of how anchors are set or propagated, each update comes from a local solve, so propagation-induced attenuation and distortion go uncorrected, leaving a closure gap between anchor targets and realized edits. We propose DOW-KE, an anchor-free method built on a single principle: what is optimized must be exactly what is deployed. DOW-KE backpropagates the final editing objective through the complete model, jointly optimizing the updates of all edited layers so cross-layer propagation and coupling enter every gradient step. The same principle dictates where preservation resides: embedding the preservation projection in the update parameterization, inside the computation graph, makes every gradient act on the deployed update; post-hoc constraints would reopen the gap, and the constrained search keeps edits clear of protected knowledge. In large-scale sequential editing on two datasets and three models, DOW-KE achieves the highest overall Score and neighborhood Specificity in five of six model-dataset settings among the evaluated baselines.
Subjects:
Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.16932 [cs.LG]
(or arXiv:2608.16932v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.16932
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
Submission history
From: Qianli Zhou [view email] [v1] Wed, 5 Aug 2026 09:56:07 UTC (660 KB)
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