AI Glossary
Supervised learning
What is Supervised learning?
A type of machine learning where the model is trained on labelled examples (input-output pairs). Instruction tuning is a form of supervised learning. Contrasts with unsupervised learning (finding patterns in unlabelled data) and reinforcement learning (optimising through trial and reward).
Example in practice
A data team training a support ticket classifier on 10,000 labelled examples (ticket text + correct category) is using supervised learning — the model learns from human-assigned labels.