ConMem: Counterfactual Multi-Scenario Probing for Resolving LLM Memory Misalignment

Overview & Synopsis

Long-term memory is critical for autonomous Large Language Model (LLM) agents executing multi-session, long-horizon tasks. However, existing memories often inappropriately store, retain, or retrieve over-generalized, misattributed, or privacy-sensitive information, a problem we term memory misalignment. To study this problem, we construct \textbf{MemAlign}, a benchmark comprising 1,079 curated memory cases grounded in synthetic, validated multi-session conversational contexts covering diverse misalignment taxonomies. We then propose ConMem, an algorithm that reframes retention decisions as prospective counterfactual causal inference. \textbf{ConMem} synthesizes counterfactual interaction scenarios to prospectively audit downstream intervention effects across three aspects: relevant task execution, irrelevant invariance checks, and risk-sensitive boundary shifts. Experiments show that ConMem outperforms other methods, achieving 75.16\% accuracy, 64.15\% balanced accuracy, and a Macro-F1 of 65.31\%, effectively mitigating over-retention biases without sacrificing personalization utility.