# Deep Active Learning: A Reality Check

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.14800 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14800/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Mar 2024.

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

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02242/) (2016)
- [Virtual Adversarial Training: A Regularization Method for Supervised and Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03976/) (2017)
- [Deep Bayesian Active Learning with Image Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.02910/) (2017)
- [Exploring the Limits of Weakly Supervised Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.00932/) (2018)
- [FlexMatch: Boosting Semi-Supervised Learning with Curriculum Pseudo Labeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08263/) (2021)
- [BatchBALD: Efficient and Diverse Batch Acquisition for Deep Bayesian Active Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08158/) (2019)
- [Learning Loss for Active Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03677/) (2019)
- [A Metric Learning Reality Check](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08505/) (2020)
- [Variational Adversarial Active Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00370/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Learning with Ladder Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.02672/) (2015)
- [Learning Visual Features from Large Weakly Supervised Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.02251/) (2015)
- [Consistency-based Semi-supervised Active Learning: Towards Minimizing Labeling Cost](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07153/) (2019)
- [AdaMatch: A Unified Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning and Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04732/) (2021)
- [Active Learning for Deep Object Detection via Probabilistic Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16130/) (2021)
- [Multiple instance active learning for object detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02324/) (2021)
- [Active Learning for Deep Detection Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09168/) (2019)
- [Scalable Active Learning for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04699/) (2020)
- [Bayesian Generative Active Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.11643/) (2019)
- [Localization-Aware Active Learning for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.05124/) (2018)
- [Not All Labels Are Equal: Rationalizing The Labeling Costs for Training Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11921/) (2021)
- [Spatially regularized active diffusion learning for high-dimensional images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02155/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Active Learning Methods for Efficient Data Utilization and Model Performance Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16136/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We conduct a comprehensive evaluation of state-of-the-art deep active learning methods. Surprisingly, under general settings, no single-model method decisively outperforms entropy-based active learning, and some even fall short of random sampling. We delve into overlooked aspects like starting budget, budget step, and pretraining's impact, revealing their significance in achieving superior results. Additionally, we extend our evaluation to other tasks, exploring the active learning effectiveness in combination with semi-supervised learning, and object detection. Our experiments provide valuable insights and concrete recommendations for future active learning studies. By uncovering the limitations of current methods and understanding the impact of different experimental settings, we aim to inspire more efficient training of deep learning models in real-world scenarios with limited annotation budgets. This work contributes to advancing active learning's efficacy in deep learning and empowers researchers to make informed decisions when applying active learning to their tasks.