mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

K-Bench: A Benchmark for LLM Unlearning in Agentic Deployments

arXiv 2609.12808 ↗First posted 11 Sep 2026cs.AIcited by 0

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent memory systems

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Abstract (arXiv)

Unlearning benchmarks such as TOFU and MUSE certify forgetting by reading the model's final answer, where a model that refuses to answer already counts as having forgotten. We show that this model-level certificate does not transfer once the model is deployed as an agent. We introduce K-Bench, a benchmark that scores LLM unlearning under agentic deployment. K-Bench inspects all six channels a ReAct agent exposes, including its chain-of-thought (CoT), tool calls and tool observations, and elicited summary. A query counts as leaked if the secret appears in any of them. Each experiment places the secret in exactly one of the agent's three sources (the weights, the prompt, or the retrieval store). The K-Score is computed separately for each source and credits forgetting only when the agent remains usable. Clearing the answer channel does not make the secret unrecoverable. On structured retrieval, the secret stays verbatim in the tool-observation channel and the aggregate leak rate is unchanged. When the secret lives in the prompt or the retrieval store, TOFU and MUSE report no leakage, while the deployed agent still leaks it on 22--86% of queries. When the secret is in the weights, none of the twenty evaluated published methods demonstrably removes it, and only an input-corruption intervention reaches selective forgetting under the evaluated observer. The top-ranked method changes across base models. A refusal-tuning method resists the evaluated extraction without verified knowledge removal.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent memory systems, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 22 of its 65 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Sep 2026.

Builds on

22 of 65 references.

References · 22

  1. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,715
  2. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
  3. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  4. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  5. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 8,065
  6. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,182
  7. 2023Mistral 7Bcited by 3,164
  8. 2022Ignore Previous Prompt: Attack Techniques For Language Modelscited by 832
  9. 2024TOFU: A Task of Fictitious Unlearning for LLMscited by 533
  10. 2024Negative Preference Optimization: From Catastrophic Collapse to Effective Unlearningcited by 504
  11. 2023LEACE: Perfect linear concept erasure in closed formcited by 267
  12. 2026Qwen3.5-Omni Technical Reportcited by 174
10 more
  1. 2024Large Language Model Unlearning via Embedding-Corrupted Promptscited by 116
  2. 2023Effective Prompt Extraction from Language Modelscited by 85
  3. 2025OpenUnlearning: Accelerating LLM Unlearning via Unified Benchmarking of Methods and Metricscited by 83
  4. 2024On Large Language Model Continual Unlearningcited by 52
  5. 2024Is My Data in Your Retrieval Database? Membership Inference Attacks Against Retrieval Augmented Generationcited by 44
  6. 2024Towards Robust and Parameter-Efficient Knowledge Unlearning for LLMscited by 36
  7. 2024Mask-based Membership Inference Attacks for Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 29
  8. 2025Riddle Me This! Stealthy Membership Inference for Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 26
  9. 2026Observable Channels, Not Just Storage: Evaluating Privacy Leakage in LLM Agent Pipelinescited by 4
  10. 2026PrivUn: Unveiling Latent Ripple Effects and Shallow Forgetting in Privacy Unlearningcited by 1

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  1. 2026Can Agents Truly Forget? Explore Machine Unlearning for LLM Agents
  2. 2026Forgotten in Weights, Recovered by Tools: Agentic Tool Unlearning for LLM Agents
  3. 2026Agentic Unlearning: When LLM Agent Meets Machine Unlearning
  4. 2026Secure Forgetting: A Framework for Privacy-Driven Unlearning in Large Language Model (LLM)-Based Agents
  5. 2026Forgetting Without Restarting: Execution-State Unlearning for Stateful LLM Agents
  6. 2026Can Agents Forget When Asked? A Benchmark for Memory Unlearning in LLM Agents
  7. 2025Agents Are All You Need for LLM Unlearning
  8. 2025Leak@k: Unlearning Does Not Make LLMs Forget Under Probabilistic Decoding