Faster Machine Unlearning via Natural Gradient Descent

ABSTRACT We address the challenge of efficiently and reliably deleting data from machine learning models trained using Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM), a process known as machine unlearning. To avoid retraining models from scratch, we propose a novel algorithm leveraging Natural Gradient Descent (NGD). Our theoretical framework ensures strong privacy guarantees for convex models, while a practical Min/Max optimization algorithm is developed for non-convex models. Comprehensive evaluations show significant improvements in privacy, computational efficiency, and generalization compared to state-of-the-art methods, advancing both the theoretical and practical aspects of machine unlearning.

Contributors: Omri Lev