ASCL: Accelerating semi-supervised learning via contrastive learning

SSL (semi-supervised learning) is widely used in machine learning, which leverages labeled and unlabeled data to improve model performance. SSL aims to optimize class mutual information, but noisy pseudo-labels introduce false class information due to the scarcity of labels. Therefore, these algorithms often need significant training time to refine pseudo-labels for performance improvement iteratively. To tackle this challenge, we propose a novel plug-and-play method named Accelerating semi-supervised learning via contrastive learning (ASCL). This method combines contrastive learning with uncertainty-based selection for performance improvement and accelerates the convergence of SSL algorithms. Contrastive learning initially emphasizes the mutual information between samples as a means to decrease dependence on pseudo-labels. Subsequently, it gradually turns to maximizing the mutual information between classes, aligning with the objective of semi-supervised learning. Uncertainty-based selection provides a robust mechanism for acquiring pseudo-labels. The combination of the contrastive learning module and the uncertainty-based selection module forms a virtuous cycle to improve the performance of the proposed model. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ASCL outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of both convergence efficiency and performance. In the experimental scenario where only one label is assigned per class in the CIFAR-10 dataset, the application of ASCL to Pseudo-label, UDA (unsupervised data augmentation for consistency training), and Fixmatch benefits substantial improvements in classification accuracy. Specifically, the results demonstrate notable improvements in respect of 16.32%, 6.9%, and 24.43% when compared to the original outcomes. Moreover, the required training time is reduced by almost 50%.