# What is the goal of unsupervised machine learning?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.11697 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.11697/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [How to Train Your Energy-Based Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03288/) (2021)
- [Better Decisions through the Right Causal World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07257/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Unsupervised learning is one of the main branches of machine learning. Here I argue that unlike the other branches of machine learning (supervised and reinforcement learning), unsupervised learning is a rather heterogenous field that can serve several different goals. It seems futile to try to define one single goal for unsupervised learning. I identify four different goals for unsupervised learning: 1) Estimating the distribution, 2) Generating new data points, 3) Extracting features for downstream tasks, and 4) Understanding the data.