DeepClean: Machine Unlearning on the Cheap by Resetting Privacy
  Sensitive Weights using the Fisher Diagonal
Jiaeli Shi Najah Ghalyan Kostis Gourgoulias John Buford Sean Moran
Machine learning models trained on sensitive or private data can
inadvertently memorize and leak that information. Machine unlearning seeks to
retroactively remove such details from model weights to protect privacy. We
contribute a lightweight unlearning algorithm that leverages the Fisher
Information Matrix (FIM) for selective forgetting. Prior work in this area
requires full retraining or large matrix inversions, which are computationally
expensive. Our key insight is that the diagonal elements of the FIM, which
measure the sensitivity of log-likelihood to changes in weights, contain
sufficient information for effective forgetting. Specifically, we compute the
FIM diagonal over two subsets -- the data to retain and forget -- for all
trainable weights. This diagonal representation approximates the complete FIM
while dramatically reducing computation. We then use it to selectively update
weights to maximize forgetting of the sensitive subset while minimizing impact
on the retained subset. Experiments show that our algorithm can successfully
forget any randomly selected subsets of training data across neural network
architectures. By leveraging the FIM diagonal, our approach provides an
interpretable, lightweight, and efficient solution for machine unlearning with
practical privacy benefits.