{"entity":{"id":"zero-shot","kind":"term","name":"Zero-shot prediction","aka":["zero-shot","zero-shot prediction","zero-shot learning","zero-shot classification","zero-shot embedding quality","cluster purity"],"tldr":"Zero-shot prediction applies a model to a task or class it was never trained on, with no task-specific labels at all.","summary":"Zero-shot learning is the setting in which a model must predict classes it did not see in training (Wikipedia). For biology foundation models the zero-shot checks are whether embeddings cluster by tissue or subtype without labels (cluster purity, from cluster analysis) and whether a sequence model scores pathogenic variants above benign ones without being told which is which. A refuted zero-shot claim is still informative: it says the pretraining did not capture that biology.","asOf":"2026-09-24","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-shot_learning","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia: cluster analysis","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis"},{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-shot_learning"}],"tags":["cansim-terms"],"related":["cancer-ai-vocabulary"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["transfer-learning","embedding","variant-effect-prediction"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["Listed in the CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme; CanSim page path /terms/zero-shot."],"provenance":{"editedBy":"OnCo CanSim terms wave (Wikipedia summaries, standards and project pages, GDC and FDA pages, Europe PMC)","editedOn":"2026-09-24","note":"CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme"},"category":"Methods and models"},"route":"/terms/zero-shot/","neighbours":{"term":[{"id":"autoregressive-modelling","kind":"term","name":"Autoregressive (next-token) modelling","route":"/terms/autoregressive-modelling/"},{"id":"cancer-ai-vocabulary","kind":"term","name":"Cancer AI vocabulary (CanSim terms map)","route":"/terms/cancer-ai-vocabulary/"},{"id":"embedding","kind":"term","name":"Embedding (learned representation)","route":"/terms/embedding/"},{"id":"genomic-and-protein-language-models","kind":"term","name":"Genomic and protein language models: Evo 2, Enformer, ESM","route":"/terms/genomic-and-protein-language-models/"},{"id":"transfer-learning","kind":"term","name":"Transfer learning and the low-label regime","route":"/terms/transfer-learning/"},{"id":"variant-effect-prediction","kind":"term","name":"Variant effect prediction","route":"/terms/variant-effect-prediction/"}]}}