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arXiv · 2403.12082

The Boy Who Survived: Removing Harry Potter from an LLM is harder than reported

Adam Shostack
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Abstract

Recent work arXiv.2310.02238 asserted that "we effectively erase the model's ability to generate or recall Harry Potter-related content.'' This claim is shown to be overbroad. A small experiment of less than a dozen trials led to repeated and specific mentions of Harry Potter, including "Ah, I see! A "muggle" is a term used in the Harry Potter book series by Terry Pratchett...''

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Adam Shostack. 2024-03-06. The Boy Who Survived: Removing Harry Potter from an LLM is harder than reported. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12082

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