# A Foundational Multi-Modal Model for Few-Shot Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04746 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04746/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in MLLM training and visual instruction tuning, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 17 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Aug 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [MLLM training and visual instruction tuning](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/mllm-training-and-visual-instruction-tuning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05175/) (2017)
- [Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07682/) (2022)
- [Matching Networks for One Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04080/) (2016)
- [Conditional Prompt Learning for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05557/) (2022)
- [Learning to Compare: Relation Network for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06025/) (2017)
- [A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13549/) (2023)
- [MaPLe: Multi-modal Prompt Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03117/) (2022)
- [Using Self-Supervised Learning Can Improve Model Robustness and Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.12340/) (2019)
- [Large Language Model as Attributed Training Data Generator: A Tale of Diversity and Bias](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15895/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Few-shot Learning: Evolution, Applications, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06743/) (2022)
- [QuRating: Selecting High-Quality Data for Training Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09739/) (2024)
- [Increasing Diversity While Maintaining Accuracy: Text Data Generation with Large Language Models and Human Interventions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04140/) (2023)
- [Learning from Few Examples: A Summary of Approaches to Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04291/) (2022)
- [Physics Informed Constrained Learning of Dynamics from Static Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12675/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Few-shot learning (FSL) is a machine learning paradigm that aims to generalize models from a small number of labeled examples, typically fewer than 10 per class. FSL is particularly crucial in biomedical, environmental, materials, and mechanical sciences, where samples are limited and data collection is often prohibitively costly, time-consuming, or ethically constrained. In this study, we present an innovative approach to FSL by demonstrating that a Large Multi-Modal Model (LMMM), trained on a set of independent tasks spanning diverse domains, task types, and input modalities, can substantially improve the generalization of FSL models, outperforming models based on conventional meta-learning on tasks of the same type. To support this, we first constructed a Multi-Modal Model Few-shot Dataset (M3FD, over 10K+ few-shot samples), which includes 2D RGB images, 2D/3D medical scans, tabular and time-course datasets, from which we manually curated FSL tasks such as classification. We further introduced M3F (Multi-Modal Model for Few-shot learning framework), a novel Large Multi-Modal Model framework tailored for data-constrained scientific applications. M3F supports a wide range of scientific data types through a modular pipeline. By fine-tuning the model on M3FD, M3F improves model performance, making LMMM feasible for real-world FSL deployment. The source code is located at https://github.com/ptdang1001/M3F. To democratize access to complex FSL data and promote reproducibility for public usage, M3FD is paired with a flexible and user-friendly tool that enables efficient querying, task-specific sampling, and preprocessing. Together, our dataset and framework offer a unified, scalable solution that significantly lowers the barrier to applying LMMMs in data-scarce scientific domains.