On the importance of multiple training seeds for evaluating machine unlearning

Machine unlearning aims to remove the influence of certain data points from a trained model without costly retraining. Most practical unlearning algorithms are only approximate and their performance can only be assessed empirically. Common practice is to run unlearning algorithms multiple times independently (i.e., using multiple unlearning seeds) starting from the same trained model (i.e., using only a single training seed ). In image-classification experiments, this practice can give non-representative results as unlearning performance can be sensitive to the choice of training seed. This is particularly relevant for deterministic unlearning methods which always produce the same result when started from the same trained model. Further experiments on federated learning-to-rank, and large language models confirm that this issue extends beyond image classification. We also explain why increasing the number of unlearning seeds cannot generally compensate for the lack of multiple training seeds. Finally, we give guidance on how to select the number of training and unlearning seeds.

Jamie Lanyon, Axel Finke, Petros Andreou, Georgina Cosma · 2025