What is Zero-shot Learning?

Machine Learning 4 min read

Definition

Zero-shot learning is the ability of AI models, particularly large language models, to perform tasks they were never explicitly trained on without any examples provided. The model uses knowledge gained during training to generalize to new situations. For instance, asking an LLM to translate a language it never saw in training - it can often do it using understanding of language structure.

Examples

  • Translation: Translating between languages never paired in training
  • Classification: Categorizing text into classes not seen during training
  • Reasoning: Solving novel logic problems
  • Code Generation: Writing code in a language not in training data