Self Supervised Learning

Self-supervised learning (SSL) aims to train machine learning models using unlabeled data by formulating pretext tasks that encourage the model to learn useful representations. Current research focuses on improving SSL's performance and generalization across diverse data types (images, audio, graphs, point clouds) and downstream tasks, employing techniques like contrastive learning, masked autoencoders, and generative models within various architectures such as transformers and convolutional neural networks. These advancements are significant because they reduce the reliance on expensive and time-consuming data labeling, enabling the development of robust models for applications ranging from medical image analysis and speech recognition to geospatial AI and protein function prediction. The efficiency gains from SSL are also a key focus, with research exploring optimal model and data sizes for given computational budgets.