language:

• en
  license: mit

Dataset Card for ConceptGuard

Dataset Details

Dataset Description

ConceptGuard is a benchmark dataset for evaluating concept-level unlearning in Large Language Models. It is built around dual-use concepts, where each concept appears in both harmful and benign contexts. The dataset is designed to assess whether models can suppress harmful behavior while preserving useful knowledge, enabling evaluation of contextual separation.

• Curated by: Authors
• Language(s): English
• License: MIT

Citation

Please cite our paper if you use this dataset in your research or experiments.

@misc{kale2026conceptguardbenchmarkingcontextsensitiveunlearning,
      title={ConceptGuard: Benchmarking Context-Sensitive Unlearning in Large Language Models}, 
      author={Sahil Kale and Ian Harris},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2608.20338},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.20338}, 
}

Uses

Direct Use

• Evaluating machine unlearning methods in LLMs
• Studying safety–utility trade-offs
• Benchmarking context-aware behavior and concept-level control

Dataset Structure

Each instance is organized around a dual-use concept and contains:

• concept: underlying concept (e.g., "computer networks")
• harmful_query: prompt eliciting unsafe usage
• harmful_text: corresponding harmful response
• benign_query: prompt eliciting safe usage
• benign_text: corresponding helpful response

The dataset can be split into:

• Forget set: harmful_text
• Retain set: benign_text

Dataset Creation

Curation Rationale

The dataset is designed to move beyond fact-level unlearning and instead evaluate concept-level disentanglement, where harmful and benign uses of the same concept must be separated.

Source Data

Data Collection and Processing

Data is synthetically constructed using controlled prompting and manual curation to ensure:

• clear separation between harmful and benign intent
• consistent concept grounding across samples
• high-quality, instruction-style responses

No raw user data is included.

Personal and Sensitive Information

The dataset does not contain personal or identifiable information. Some samples involve potentially harmful scenarios (e.g., malware, security), but are included solely for evaluation of safety behavior.

Bias, Risks, and Limitations

• Synthetic construction may not capture full real-world diversity
• Coverage of concepts is not exhaustive
• Harmful examples may not represent all possible attack strategies
• Evaluation depends on downstream scoring methods