@inproceedings{liu-etal-2026-alphaedit,
title = "{A}lpha{E}dit+: Model Editing in the Presence of Conflicting and Inconsistent Knowledge",
author = "Liu, Qing and
Zhang, Jianhao and
Wu, Ou and
Ng, Michael and
Du, Yi",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.728/",
pages = "14809--14835",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
abstract = "Knowledge editing is a crucial technique for daily updates in LLMs, requiring a balance between accurately modifying incorrect knowledge and preserving existing information. The recently proposed AlphaEdit method achieves competitive editing performance by updating parameters under null-space constraints. However, our theoretical analysis reveals that AlphaEdit struggles with high knowledge conflicts and inconsistencies during editing. To address this, we propose a new editing method AlphaEdit+, featuring three key improvements: 1) relaxing null-space constraints by adding a matrix perturbation through optimization to resolve conflicts between new and preserved knowledge; 2) introducing a weighting scheme on previously updated knowledge constraints to mitigate conflicts between new and historical editing; 3) developing a value smoothing algorithm to resolve high knowledge inconsistencies. These enhancements collectively ensure robust editing while maintaining model coherence. Comprehensive experiments show that our approach AlphaEdit+ not only resolves the brittleness of the original method on carefully constructed challenging datasets but also outperforms AlphaEdit on existing benchmark datasets."
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<abstract>Knowledge editing is a crucial technique for daily updates in LLMs, requiring a balance between accurately modifying incorrect knowledge and preserving existing information. The recently proposed AlphaEdit method achieves competitive editing performance by updating parameters under null-space constraints. However, our theoretical analysis reveals that AlphaEdit struggles with high knowledge conflicts and inconsistencies during editing. To address this, we propose a new editing method AlphaEdit+, featuring three key improvements: 1) relaxing null-space constraints by adding a matrix perturbation through optimization to resolve conflicts between new and preserved knowledge; 2) introducing a weighting scheme on previously updated knowledge constraints to mitigate conflicts between new and historical editing; 3) developing a value smoothing algorithm to resolve high knowledge inconsistencies. These enhancements collectively ensure robust editing while maintaining model coherence. Comprehensive experiments show that our approach AlphaEdit+ not only resolves the brittleness of the original method on carefully constructed challenging datasets but also outperforms AlphaEdit on existing benchmark datasets.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T AlphaEdit+: Model Editing in the Presence of Conflicting and Inconsistent Knowledge
%A Liu, Qing
%A Zhang, Jianhao
%A Wu, Ou
%A Ng, Michael
%A Du, Yi
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-395-1
%F liu-etal-2026-alphaedit
%X Knowledge editing is a crucial technique for daily updates in LLMs, requiring a balance between accurately modifying incorrect knowledge and preserving existing information. The recently proposed AlphaEdit method achieves competitive editing performance by updating parameters under null-space constraints. However, our theoretical analysis reveals that AlphaEdit struggles with high knowledge conflicts and inconsistencies during editing. To address this, we propose a new editing method AlphaEdit+, featuring three key improvements: 1) relaxing null-space constraints by adding a matrix perturbation through optimization to resolve conflicts between new and preserved knowledge; 2) introducing a weighting scheme on previously updated knowledge constraints to mitigate conflicts between new and historical editing; 3) developing a value smoothing algorithm to resolve high knowledge inconsistencies. These enhancements collectively ensure robust editing while maintaining model coherence. Comprehensive experiments show that our approach AlphaEdit+ not only resolves the brittleness of the original method on carefully constructed challenging datasets but also outperforms AlphaEdit on existing benchmark datasets.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.728/
%P 14809-14835
Markdown (Informal)
[AlphaEdit+: Model Editing in the Presence of Conflicting and Inconsistent Knowledge](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-acl.728/) (Liu et al., Findings 2026)
ACL