No Bad Questions About ML
Definition of Zero-shot learning (ZSL)
What is zero-shot learning?
Zero-shot learning (ZSL) is a machine learning paradigm that enables pre-trained models to classify objects outside of their learning parameters. ZSL reduces the amount of data needed during training for models to correctly categorize the information they receive, as they can independently determine an object’s class.
Developing AI models that can classify objects quickly and accurately requires a large amount of time and data during a model’s training. ZSL eliminates the need to collect data about every possible object a machine learning model may encounter and instead allows the model to use pre-existing knowledge to determine an unknown object’s class.
How does zero-shot learning work?
Zero-shot learning involves classes that a model is aware of, classes a model needs to generalize about, as well as auxiliary information to assist the model in classifying unknown objects. This is based on how humans observe new objects, such as an unknown animal, and use pre-existing knowledge to classify them.
If someone has never seen a lion and comes to the zoo and sees this animal, they will begin to infer what it could be based on their pre-existing knowledge of other animals. They do know what a cat and dog are, as well as other common animals, such as various birds and fish. The process looks like this:
- Environment. No water and it moves on land. It’s not a fish.
- No wings. The lion is not a bird.
- Fur. It could be a kind of cat or dog.
Based on observations of their cat at home, this person begins to notice how similar the lion and cat are. In conclusion, they decide that a lion is similar to a cat, just bigger and more dangerous.
ZSL works in a similar way. A machine learning model is fed data with parameters, for example, to distinguish between cats and dogs. When it encounters a bird, ZSL enables the model to compare this new object with its pre-existing data sets on cats and dogs. Does it have fur? No. Does it walk on four legs? No. While it may not be able to classify the object specifically as a bird, it will not identify it as a dog or a cat.
To do this, a zero-shot learning component interacts with two modules:
- Semantic embedding module uses information from documents, knowledge graphs, and/or image descriptions to analyze the object.
- Visual embedding module captures the visual properties of the object.
The zero-shot component then receives data from these modules to determine the relationship between their results. Returning to the cat, dog, and bird example, the zero-shot component will notice that the semantic and visual modules have both determined that the bird is not, in fact, a dog or a cat and will classify the unknown object according to its parameters for such conditions.
How does a zero-shot classifier work in a real-world application?
A zero-shot classifier has positive applications in different scenarios, for example, in object recognition for autonomous vehicles to perform the classification of unknown entities in real time. A zero-shot classifier can also be used to produce more accurate results in an image search and in classifying actions in images and video.
The main purpose and benefit of ZSL is to increase the accuracy of machine learning models when performing their functions. Whether this is an image search or autonomous vehicle operation, ZSL helps models operate more safely and efficiently while reducing the amount of time required for training.
Key Takeaways
- Zero-shot learning (ZSL) is a machine learning paradigm that enables pre-trained models to classify objects outside of their learning parameters.
- ZSL reduces the amount of time and other resources required to train machine learning models.
- The principles of ZSL are based on how humans identify previously unknown objects.
- ZSL can be applied to machine learning models to enhance image searching and captioning, as well as object detection.
