Bröker, Franziska;
Holt, Lori L;
Roads, Brett D;
Dayan, Peter;
Love, Bradley C;
(2024)
Demystifying unsupervised learning: how it helps and hurts.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.005.
Preview |
Text
BrokerEtAl_2024_Demystifying_Unsupervised_Learning_AcceptedVersion.pdf - Accepted Version Download (812kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Humans and machines rarely have access to explicit external feedback or supervision, yet manage to learn. Most modern machine learning systems succeed because they benefit from unsupervised data. Humans are also expected to benefit and yet, mysteriously, empirical results are mixed. Does unsupervised learning help humans or not? Here, we argue that the mixed results are not conflicting answers to this question, but reflect that humans self-reinforce their predictions in the absence of supervision, which can help or hurt depending on whether predictions and task align. We use this framework to synthesize empirical results across various domains to clarify when unsupervised learning will help or hurt. This provides new insights into the fundamentals of learning with implications for instruction and lifelong learning.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Demystifying unsupervised learning: how it helps and hurts |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.005 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.09.005 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | mental representation, representation-to-task alignment, self-reinforcement, semi-supervised learning, unsupervised learning |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198888 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
