Beyond Clustering: The New Methods that are Pushing the Future of Unsupervised Learning

If you ask any group of data science students about the types of machine learning algorithms, they will answer without hesitation: supervised and unsupervised. However, if we ask that same group to list different types of unsupervised learning, we are likely to get an answer like clustering but not much more. While supervised methods lead the current wave of innovation in areas such as deep learning, there is very little doubt that the future of artificial intelligence(AI) will transition towards more unsupervised forms of learning. In recent years, we have seen a lot of progress on several new forms of unsupervised learning methods that expand way beyond traditional clustering or principal component analysis(PCA) techniques. Today, I would like to explore some of the most prominent new schools of thought in the unsupervised space and their role in the future of AI.