# Towards Unbiased Multi-label Zero-Shot Learning with Pyramid and Semantic Attention

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.03483 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03483/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 49 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [CornerNet: Detecting Objects as Paired Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.01244/) (2018)
- [The Open Images Dataset V4: Unified image classification, object detection, and visual relationship detection at scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00982/) (2018)
- [Multi-Label Image Recognition with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03582/) (2019)
- [Bilinear Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07932/) (2018)
- [Zero-Shot Learning -- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04394/) (2017)
- [Zero-Shot Learning Through Cross-Modal Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.3666/) (2013)
- [CNN-RNN: A Unified Framework for Multi-label Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.04573/) (2016)
- [Label-Embedding for Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.08677/) (2015)
- [Learning a Deep Embedding Model for Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05088/) (2016)
- [Zero-Shot Learning by Convex Combination of Semantic Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5650/) (2013)
- [Semantic Autoencoder for Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.08345/) (2017)
- [Latent Embeddings for Zero-shot Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08895/) (2016)
- [Single-Shot Refinement Neural Network for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06897/) (2017)
- [Learning a Deep ConvNet for Multi-label Classification with Partial Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09720/) (2019)
- [Synthesized Classifiers for Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.00550/) (2016)
- [A Generative Adversarial Approach for Zero-Shot Learning from Noisy Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01381/) (2017)
- [Multi-label Image Recognition by Recurrently Discovering Attentional Regions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.02816/) (2017)
- [Attention-Driven Dynamic Graph Convolutional Network for Multi-Label Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02994/) (2020)
- [Cross-Modality Attention with Semantic Graph Embedding for Multi-Label Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07872/) (2019)
- [M2Det: A Single-Shot Object Detector based on Multi-Level Feature Pyramid Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.04533/) (2018)
- [Multi-Label Zero-Shot Learning with Structured Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06526/) (2017)
- [Large-scale Multi-label Learning with Missing Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1307.5101/) (2013)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Decomposed Soft Prompt Guided Fusion Enhancing for Compositional Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10681/) (2022)
- [SRCD: Semantic Reasoning with Compound Domains for Single-Domain Generalized Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01750/) (2023)
- [Fine-Grained Side Information Guided Dual-Prompts for Zero-Shot Skeleton Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07487/) (2024)
- [CNS-Net: Conservative Novelty Synthesizing Network for Malware Recognition in an Open-set Scenario](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01236/) (2023)
- [Fed-FSNet: Mitigating Non-I.I.D. Federated Learning via Fuzzy Synthesizing Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12044/) (2022)
- [Neuron: Learning Context-Aware Evolving Representations for Zero-Shot Skeleton Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11288/) (2024)
- [Fine-Grained Zero-Shot Learning: Advances, Challenges, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17766/) (2024)
- [Towards Fairer and More Efficient Federated Learning via Multidimensional Personalized Edge Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04464/) (2023)
- [MDENet: Multi-modal Dual-embedding Networks for Malware Open-set Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01245/) (2023)
- [ProCC: Progressive Cross-primitive Compatibility for Open-World Compositional Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12417/) (2022)
- [SFP: Spurious Feature-targeted Pruning for Out-of-Distribution Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11615/) (2023)
- [GBE-MLZSL: A Group Bi-Enhancement Framework for Multi-Label Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00923/) (2023)
- [Attribute-Aware Representation Rectification for Generalized Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14750/) (2023)
- [TsCA: On the Semantic Consistency Alignment via Conditional Transport for Compositional Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08703/) (2024)
- [On the Element-Wise Representation and Reasoning in Zero-Shot Image Recognition: A Systematic Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04879/) (2024)
- [ParsNets: A Parsimonious Orthogonal and Low-Rank Linear Networks for Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09709/) (2023)
- [Dual Expert Distillation Network for Generalized Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16348/) (2024)
- [HOPE: A Memory-Based and Composition-Aware Framework for Zero-Shot Learning with Hopfield Network and Soft Mixture of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14747/) (2023)
- [Epsilon: Exploring Comprehensive Visual-Semantic Projection for Multi-Label Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12253/) (2024)
- [Query-Based Knowledge Sharing for Open-Vocabulary Multi-Label Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01181/) (2024)
- [FedAPA: Server-side Gradient-Based Adaptive Personalized Aggregation for Federated Learning on Heterogeneous Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07456/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-label zero-shot learning extends conventional single-label zero-shot learning to a more realistic scenario that aims at recognizing multiple unseen labels of classes for each input sample. Existing works usually exploit attention mechanism to generate the correlation among different labels. However, most of them are usually biased on several major classes while neglect most of the minor classes with the same importance in input samples, and may thus result in overly diffused attention maps that cannot sufficiently cover minor classes. We argue that disregarding the connection between major and minor classes, i.e., correspond to the global and local information, respectively, is the cause of the problem. In this paper, we propose a novel framework of unbiased multi-label zero-shot learning, by considering various class-specific regions to calibrate the training process of the classifier. Specifically, Pyramid Feature Attention (PFA) is proposed to build the correlation between global and local information of samples to balance the presence of each class. Meanwhile, for the generated semantic representations of input samples, we propose Semantic Attention (SA) to strengthen the element-wise correlation among these vectors, which can encourage the coordinated representation of them. Extensive experiments on the large-scale multi-label zero-shot benchmarks NUS-WIDE and Open-Image demonstrate that the proposed method surpasses other representative methods by significant margins.