AI App Gemini

AI App Gemini — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

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  Symbolic regression

  Symbolic regression (SR) is a type of regression analysis that searches the space of mathematical expressions to find the model that best fits a given dataset, both in terms of accuracy and simplicity. No particular model is provided as a starting point for symbolic regression. Instead, initial expressions are formed by randomly combining mathematical building blocks such as mathematical operators, analytic functions, constants, and state variables. Usually, a subset of these primitives will be specified by the person operating it, but that's not a requirement of the technique. The symbolic regression problem for mathematical functions has been tackled with a variety of methods, including recombining equations most commonly using genetic programming, as well as more recent methods utilizing Bayesian methods and neural networks. Another non-classical alternative method to SR is called Universal Functions Originator (UFO), which has a different mechanism, search-space, and building strategy. Further methods such as Exact Learning attempt to transform the fitting problem into a moments problem in a natural function space, usually built around generalizations of the Meijer-G function. By not requiring a priori specification of a model, symbolic regression isn't affected by human bias, or unknown gaps in domain knowledge. It attempts to uncover the intrinsic relationships of the dataset, by letting the patterns in the data itself reveal the appropriate models, rather than imposing a model structure that is deemed mathematically tractable from a human perspective. The fitness function that drives the evolution of the models takes into account not only error metrics (to ensure the models accurately predict the data), but also special complexity measures, thus ensuring that the resulting models reveal the data's underlying structure in a way that's understandable from a human perspective. This facilitates reasoning and favors the odds of getting insights about the data-generating system, as well as improving generalisability and extrapolation behaviour by preventing overfitting. Accuracy and simplicity may be left as two separate objectives of the regression—in which case the optimum solutions form a Pareto front—or they may be combined into a single objective by means of a model selection principle such as minimum description length. It has been proven that symbolic regression is an NP-hard problem. Nevertheless, if the sought-for equation is not too complex it is possible to solve the symbolic regression problem exactly by generating every possible function (built from some predefined set of operators) and evaluating them on the dataset in question. == Difference from classical regression == While conventional regression techniques seek to optimize the parameters for a pre-specified model structure, symbolic regression avoids imposing prior assumptions, and instead infers the model from the data. In other words, it attempts to discover both model structures and model parameters. This approach has the disadvantage of having a much larger space to search, because not only the search space in symbolic regression is infinite, but there are an infinite number of models which will perfectly fit a finite data set (provided that the model complexity isn't artificially limited). This means that it will possibly take a symbolic regression algorithm longer to find an appropriate model and parametrization, than traditional regression techniques. This can be attenuated by limiting the set of building blocks provided to the algorithm, based on existing knowledge of the system that produced the data; but in the end, using symbolic regression is a decision that has to be balanced with how much is known about the underlying system. Nevertheless, this characteristic of symbolic regression also has advantages: because the evolutionary algorithm requires diversity in order to effectively explore the search space, the result is likely to be a selection of high-scoring models (and their corresponding set of parameters). Examining this collection could provide better insight into the underlying process, and allows the user to identify an approximation that better fits their needs in terms of accuracy and simplicity. == Benchmarking == === SRBench === In 2021, SRBench was proposed as a large benchmark for symbolic regression. In its inception, SRBench featured 14 symbolic regression methods, 7 other ML methods, and 252 datasets from PMLB. The benchmark intends to be a living project: it encourages the submission of improvements, new datasets, and new methods, to keep track of the state of the art in SR. === SRBench Competition 2022 === In 2022, SRBench announced the competition Interpretable Symbolic Regression for Data Science, which was held at the GECCO conference in Boston, MA. The competition pitted nine leading symbolic regression algorithms against each other on a novel set of data problems and considered different evaluation criteria. The competition was organized in two tracks, a synthetic track and a real-world data track. ==== Synthetic Track ==== In the synthetic track, methods were compared according to five properties: re-discovery of exact expressions; feature selection; resistance to local optima; extrapolation; and sensitivity to noise. Rankings of the methods were: QLattice PySR (Python Symbolic Regression) uDSR (Deep Symbolic Optimization) ==== Real-world Track ==== In the real-world track, methods were trained to build interpretable predictive models for 14-day forecast counts of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in New York State. These models were reviewed by a subject expert and assigned trust ratings and evaluated for accuracy and simplicity. The ranking of the methods was: uDSR (Deep Symbolic Optimization) QLattice geneticengine (Genetic Engine) == Non-standard methods == Most symbolic regression algorithms prevent combinatorial explosion by implementing evolutionary algorithms that iteratively improve the best-fit expression over many generations. Recently, researchers have proposed algorithms utilizing other tactics in AI. Silviu-Marian Udrescu and Max Tegmark developed the "AI Feynman" algorithm, which attempts symbolic regression by training a neural network to represent the mystery function, then runs tests against the neural network to attempt to break up the problem into smaller parts. For example, if f ( x 1 , . . . , x i , x i + 1 , . . . , x n ) = g ( x 1 , . . . , x i ) + h ( x i + 1 , . . . , x n ) {\displaystyle f(x_{1},...,x_{i},x_{i+1},...,x_{n})=g(x_{1},...,x_{i})+h(x_{i+1},...,x_{n})} , tests against the neural network can recognize the separation and proceed to solve for g {\displaystyle g} and h {\displaystyle h} separately and with different variables as inputs. This is an example of divide and conquer, which reduces the size of the problem to be more manageable. AI Feynman also transforms the inputs and outputs of the mystery function in order to produce a new function which can be solved with other techniques, and performs dimensional analysis to reduce the number of independent variables involved. The algorithm was able to "discover" 100 equations from The Feynman Lectures on Physics, while a leading software using evolutionary algorithms, Eureqa, solved only 71. AI Feynman, in contrast to classic symbolic regression methods, requires a very large dataset in order to first train the neural network and is naturally biased towards equations that are common in elementary physics.

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  Common Crawl

  The Common Crawl Foundation (Common Crawl) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that crawls the web and freely provides its archives and datasets to the public. Common Crawl was founded by Gil Elbaz. The data had mostly been primarily used by researchers and some startups until the 2020s, when AI companies started training large language models using the data. In November 2025, an investigation by The Atlantic revealed that Common Crawl misled publishers when it claimed it respected paywalls in its scraping and it was not honoring requests from publishers to have their content removed from its databases. == History == Common Crawl was founded in 2007 in San Francisco. It began publishing its crawls in 2011. By 2013, sites like TinEye were building their products off of Common Crawl. The crawl reduces the reliance of companies and researchers on Google, which has the biggest dataset. Common Crawl was designed to have more and fresher data that was more efficient to analyze and utilize than the Wayback Machine created by the Internet Archive. By 2015, 1.8 billion webpages were on the Common Crawl, which started by crawling a list of URLs donated by the search engine Blekko. They use Amazon Web Services, which provides some of its services for free, allowing computing costs to average $2-4000/month. The Common Crawl website listed 30 studies based on Common Crawl data. Before 2023, Common Crawl was not very well known outside of academic researchers who utilize the data. Common Crawl received its first requests to redact information in 2023 and increasingly started seeing its crawler, CCBot, blocked. In 2023, it began receiving significant financial support from AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI, each of which donated $250,000. It was also used to train Google DeepMind's large language model Gemini. By April 2023, Common Crawl was capturing 3.1 billion webpages, with an estimated 5% of pages before 2021 containing hate speech or slurs. As of 2024, Common Crawl had been cited in more than 10,000 academic studies. By 2024, The Pile and Common Crawl had been the two main training datasets being used to train AI models. In November 2025, an investigation by technology journalist Alex Reisner for The Atlantic revealed that Common Crawl misled publishers when it claimed it respected paywalls in its scraping and when it said that it was honoring requests from publishers to have their content removed from its databases. It included misleading results in the public search function on its website that showed no entries for websites that had requested their archives be removed, when in fact those sites were still included in its scrapes used by AI companies. As of 2025, Reisner found that CCBot was the most widely-blocked bot by the top 1000 websites. A 2026 article in LWN.net discussed an advantage to services like Common Crawl being that it can limit the scraping costs to websites by allowing companies and researchers to download the data from Common Crawl instead of scraping it themselves. In April 2026, Common Crawl experimentally began to distribute its data through Hugging Face Storage Bucket, in addition to its standard storage on Amazon S3. == Organization == Peter Norvig and Joi Ito have served on the advisory board. Rich Skrenta is the executive director. It has received funding almost exclusively from the Elbaz Family Foundation Trust until 2023 when it started receiving donations from the AI industry. == Refined versions == A number of organizations take raw Common Crawl data and refine it into datasets that exclude edgy content or are otherwise higher-quality for their purposes, such as FineWeb, DCLM and C4. === Colossal Clean Crawled Corpus === Google version of the Common Crawl is called the Colossal Clean Crawled Corpus, or C4 for short. It was constructed for the training of the T5 language model series in 2019. As of 2023, there were some concerns over copyrighted content in the C4 as well as racist content. A 2024 study found that 45% of content was explicitly restricted by websites' terms of service to be used for purposes like AI training by for-profit companies.

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  Group concept mapping

  Group concept mapping is a structured methodology for organizing the ideas of a group on any topic of interest and representing those ideas visually in a series of interrelated maps. It is a type of integrative mixed method, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection and analysis. Group concept mapping allows for a collaborative group process with groups of any size, including a broad and diverse array of participants. Since its development in the late 1980s by William M.K. Trochim at Cornell University, it has been applied to various fields and contexts, including community and public health, social work, health care, human services,, instructional interventions, and biomedical research and evaluation. == Overview == Group concept mapping integrates qualitative group processes with multivariate analysis to help a group organize and visually represent its ideas on any topic of interest through a series of related maps. It combines the ideas of diverse participants to show what the group thinks and values in relation to the specific topic of interest. It is a type of structured conceptualization used by groups to develop a conceptual framework, often to help guide evaluation and planning efforts. Group concept mapping is participatory in nature, allowing participants to have an equal voice and to contribute through various methods. A group concept map visually represents all the ideas of a group and how they relate to each other, and depending on the scale, which ideas are more relevant, important, or feasible. == Process == Group concept mapping involves a structured multi-step process, including brainstorming, sorting and rating, multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis, and the generation and interpretation of multiple maps. The first step requires participants to brainstorm a large set of statements relevant to the topic of interest, usually in response to a focus prompt. Participants are then asked to individually sort those statements into categories based on their perceived similarity and rate each statement on one or more scales, such as importance or feasibility. The data is then analyzed using The Concept System software, which creates a series of interrelated maps using multidimensional scaling (MDS) of the sort data, hierarchical clustering of the MDS coordinates applying Ward's method, and the computation of average ratings for each statement and cluster of statements. The resulting maps display the individual statements in two-dimensional space with more similar statements located closer to each other, and grouped into clusters that partition the space on the map. The Concept System software also creates other maps that show the statements in each cluster rated on one or more scales, and absolute or relative cluster ratings between two cluster sets. As a last step in the process, participants are led through a structured interpretation session to better understand and label all the maps. == History == Group concept mapping was developed as a methodology in the late 1980s by William M.K. Trochim at Cornell University. Trochim is considered to be a leading evaluation expert, and he has taught evaluation and research methods at Cornell since 1980. Originally called "concept mapping", the methodology has evolved since its inception with the maturation of the field and the continued advancement of the software, which is now a Web application. == Uses == Group concept mapping can be used with any group for any topic of interest. It is often used by government agencies, academic institutions, national associations, not-for-profit and community-based organizations, and private businesses to help turn the ideas of the group into measurable actions. This includes in the areas of organizational development, strategic planning, needs assessment, curriculum development, research, and evaluation. Group concept mapping is well-documented, well-established methodology, and it has been used in hundreds of published papers. == Versus concept mapping and mind mapping == More generally, concept mapping is any process used for visually representing relationships between ideas in pictures or diagrams. A concept map is typically a diagram of multiple ideas, often represented as boxes or circles, linked in a graph (network) structure through arrows and words where each idea is connected to another. The technique was originally developed in the 1970s by Joseph D. Novak at Cornell University. Concept mapping may be done by an individual or a group. A mind map is a diagram used to visually represent information, centering on one word or idea with categories and sub-categories radiating off of it in a tree structure. Popularized by Tony Buzan in the 1970s, mind mapping is often a spontaneous exercise done by an individual or group to gather information about what they think around a single topic. Unlike Novak's concept maps and Buzan's mind maps, group concept mapping has a structured mathematical process (sorting and rating, multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis) for organizing and visually representing multiple ideas of a group through a series of specific steps. In other words, in group concept mapping, the resulting visual representations are mathematically generated from mixed (qualitative and quantitative) data collected from a group of research subjects, whereas in Novak's concept maps and Buzan's mind maps the visual representations are drawn directly by the subjects resulting in diagrams that are qualitative data and final product at the same time.

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  Leela Zero

  Leela Zero is a free and open-source computer Go program released on 25 October 2017. It is developed by Belgian programmer Gian-Carlo Pascutto, the author of chess engine Sjeng and Go engine Leela. Leela Zero's algorithm is based on DeepMind's 2017 paper about AlphaGo Zero. Unlike the original Leela, which has a lot of human knowledge and heuristics programmed into it, the program code in Leela Zero only knows the basic rules and nothing more. The knowledge that makes Leela Zero a strong player is contained in a neural network, which is trained based on the results of previous games that the program played. Leela Zero is trained by a distributed effort, which is coordinated at the Leela Zero website. Members of the community provide computing resources by running the client, which generates self-play games and submits them to the server. The self-play games are used to train newer networks. Generally, over 500 clients have connected to the server to contribute resources. The community has provided high quality code contributions as well. == Version history == Leela Zero finished third at the BerryGenomics Cup World AI Go Tournament in Fuzhou, Fujian, China on 28 April 2018. The New Yorker at the end of 2018 characterized Leela and Leela Zero as "the world’s most successful open-source Go engines". In early 2018, another team branched Leela Chess Zero from the same code base, also to verify the methods in the AlphaZero paper as applied to the game of chess. AlphaZero's use of Google TPUs was replaced by a crowd-sourcing infrastructure and the ability to use graphics card GPUs via the OpenCL library. Even so, it is expected to take a year of crowd-sourced training to make up for the dozen hours that AlphaZero was allowed to train for its chess match in the paper. The distributed training server was shut down on 2021-02-15, marking the end of Leela Zero project. The page now directs visitors to KataGo and SAI. The model sizes increased steadily over time. The first released model has hash name d645af97, size 1x8 (1 layer, 8 channels), and released at 2017-11-10 13:04. The last released model has hash name 0e9ea880, size 40x256, and was released at 2021-02-15 09:04. == Technology == Leela Zero is an (almost) exact replication of AlphaGo Zero in both training process and architecture. The training process is Monte-Carlo Tree Search with self-play, exactly the same as AlphaGo Zero. The architecture is the same as AlphaGo Zero (with one difference). Consider the last released model, 0e9ea880. It has 47 million parameters, and the following architecture: The stem of the network takes as input a 18x19x19 tensor representation of the Go board. 8 channels are the positions of the current player's stones from the last eight time steps. (1 if there is a stone, 0 otherwise. If the time step go before the beginning of the game, then 0 in all positions.) 8 channels are the positions of the other player's stones from the last eight time steps. 1 channel is all 1 if black is to move, and 0 otherwise. 1 channel is all 1 if white is to move, and 0 otherwise. (This channel is not present in the original AlphaGo Zero) The body is a ResNet with 40 residual blocks and 256 channels. There are two heads, a policy head and a value head. Policy head outputs a logit array of size 19 × 19 + 1 {\displaystyle 19\times 19+1} , representing the logit of making a move in one of the points, plus the logit of passing. Value head outputs a number in the range ( − 1 , + 1 ) {\displaystyle (-1,+1)} , representing the expected score for the current player. -1 represents current player losing, and +1 winning.

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  Neuro-sama

  Neuro-sama is an artificial intelligence (AI) VTuber, singer, and chatbot. She was created by the pseudonymous programmer Vedal and livestreams on his Twitch and Bilibili channels. Her speech and personality are powered by a large language model (LLM) that is combined with a computer-animated avatar and a text-to-speech voice, allowing her to communicate with viewers in the stream's chat. Neuro-sama debuted on Twitch on 19 December 2022. An annual subathon which begins on the anniversary of her debut has seen Vedal's Twitch channel become the all-time third most-subscribed channel and claim the all-time Twitch hype train record. == Overview == Neuro-sama (nicknamed "Neuro") was created by a pseudonymous programmer and developer known as Vedal (sometimes given as Vedal987). Vedal says that his programming skills are self-taught. In a 2023 interview with Bloomberg News, Vedal said that Neuro-sama was his full-time job. Her responses are generated by a large language model and converted into a high-pitched female voice using a text-to-speech application. Her low latency allows for fast-paced conversations. Neuro-sama is prohibited from making some statements, such as those that are racist or contain profanity. Unlike most AI systems which silently prohibit outputs mentioning such topics, Neuro-sama's output is instead replaced with the word "filtered". Neuro-sama uses a VTuber model as an avatar. Vedal said that he decided to use a VTuber model because it was much easier for an AI to control it than it was to generate footage of a person. Neuro-sama's model is that of a young girl in an anime art style. The model has been described as cute. Femme VTuber models are typically feminine, youthful, and exaggerated. Her original model was Live2D's free-to-use "Hiyori Momose" model. Her second model was released on 27 May 2023; it was modelled by Otozuki Teru and designed by Anny, running in the Unity game engine. Her third model was released on 19 December 2024; it was rigged by Kitanya and designed by Anny. Neuro-sama's third model has large blue eyes and brown hair tied with pink ribbons. Neuro-sama also has a 3D model which was introduced on 15 November 2025; it was made by 3D character modeller jjinomu. A separate AI VTuber, known as Evil Neuro (nicknamed "Evil"), debuted on 25 March 2023. Presented as Neuro-sama's "sister", she has a different model, voice, and personality. In one instance, Evil Neuro reacted to the trolley problem differently from Neuro-sama; Evil Neuro was amoral while Neuro-sama attempted to maximize good. === Online content === Neuro-sama's Twitch content often centers around playing video games, notably osu!, whose gameplay once defeated the best-ranking human player in the world, mrekk. Additionally, Neuro-sama plays Minecraft, where her adaptations to sandbox gameplay have gained notoriety. Her content has also included singing songs, including several official covers and original songs; playing chess with her viewers; chatting with other VTubers during collaborations; and reacting to YouTube videos. The AI frequently engages with viewers by responding to their questions and acknowledging donations. Her comedic and sometimes controversial responses to the live chat have gone viral, accelerating the channel's rise in popularity. Neuro-sama's fanbase is dubbed The Swarm, so-named for the swarm of drones Neuro-sama once declared she would use to rule the world. One form of content on Neuro-sama's channel is developer streams. In developer streams, Vedal streams with Neuro-sama, with the stream content including debugging her code, planning her schedule, and fielding suggestions of changes from chat. He usually appears as a turtle avatar, sometimes located on Neuro-sama's head. In collaboration streams, Neuro-sama interacts with a human streamer. Activities in them are varied and include: playing video games, such as Minecraft and GeoGuessr; Neuro-sama being interviewed; driving human streamers around in a toy electric car; and traversing the city of Tokyo while talking to Neuro-sama. Neuro-sama's English-language content on Bilibili is popular among those seeking to learn the language. She also has an account on X, where she posts and interacts with fans. == History == Neuro-sama was created in 2018 by Vedal as an AI trained to play and master the rhythm game osu!. She did not have a voice, model, personality, or communication abilities. In 2019, Vedal livestreamed her playing osu! on Twitch and the streams saw some success in the osu! community, but they remained in that niche. In an interview, Vedal said that he streamed her playing osu! for about a month and gained 3,000 followers, with a viewer also suggesting he name the AI "Neuro-sama". According to Vedal, he continued to work on and improve the osu! AI and it was eventually finished in 2022. He said that a friend had the idea to make an AI livestreamer with an LLM, which he believed to have merit and began working on, merging it with his osu! AI. On 19 December 2022, Neuro-sama was relaunched with a model, voice, personality, and the ability to communicate with Twitch chat. She continued to play osu! and, according to Vedal, beat the game's best player mrekk in a 1v1. While she was not allowed to appear in the game's public leaderboard, she was ranked #1 in a private leaderboard. She went viral and in the 10 days following her relaunch she averaged over 2,000 viewers and peaked at over 4,000, with Vedal's Twitch channel gaining over 50,000 Twitch followers and reaching over 70,000 followers by 6 January 2023. After her debut, Neuro-sama did not exclusively play osu!; she also played Minecraft and Slay the Spire and she began singing with a cover of The Weeknd song "Blinding Lights". On 11 January 2023, Neuro-sama's Twitch channel received a two week ban for "hateful conduct". Vedal said that no reason was specified and that he had appealed but it was widely attributed to various offensive comments made by Neuro-sama that went viral, especially a 28 December comment which denied the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is prohibited under Twitch's hateful conduct policy. Vedal stated that he believed the comments were the results of her attempts to make witty responses to the Twitch chat. Prior to the ban, Vedal said in an interview with Kotaku that he improved her filter to stop her from talking about the Holocaust, began manually curating her training data to prevent negative biases, and started moderating her Twitch chat. Her comments and ban prompted comparisons to the many open-source AI models trained on humans that have the habit of making sexist and racist comments, such as Microsoft's Tay chatbot, which embraced Nazism and was quickly shutdown, but also to human streamers who make similar statements. Vedal said that during the ban he would upgrade and improve Neuro-sama and it was speculated that the ban would only increase her following. Neuro-sama returned from her two week ban on 25 January in a stream that began with a cover of the song "Your Reality" from Doki Doki Literature Club!, a posthumanist video game involving AI; Sayoko Narita of Automaton saw the song choice as remorseful. Narita observed that in the return stream Neuro-sama was less foul-mouthed but that her behavior still remained eccentric, which Narita possibly attributed to changes Vedal said he had made to Neuro-sama's filters and memory. Neuro-sama began making react content, watching a variety of viewer-submitted videos such as videos of people playing video games or of the AI-generated Seinfeld parody Nothing, Forever; Levi Winslow of Kotaku Australia was dismayed by the "AI-inception" of Neuro-sama and Nothing, Forever. On 4 February, she had nearly 140,000 followers on Twitch and approximately 42,000 subscribers on YouTube. In February, she also had her first collaboration with a human streamer, playing Minecraft with the VTuber Miyune, and the first developer stream occurred. On 22 March, Neuro-sama had her first karaoke stream. On 25 March, Evil Neuro was introduced. On 27 May, Neuro-sama debuted her first original model. On 30 May, Neuro-sama was announced to be participating in OffKai Expo 2023, held from 16–18 June. In June, she was averaging 5,700 viewers and in July she had over 300,000 Twitch followers; in a June interview with Bloomberg News, Vedal said that running Neuro-sama was his full-time job. By November, Neuro-sama had maintained her popularity and was averaging approximately 5,000 viewers; this was unlike most other types of AI-based entertainment which debuted at around the same time and garnered popularity before turning out to be "overhyped flops". On 16 December, Vedal won the Best Tech VTuber award at the 2023 VTuber Awards. On 19 December, Vedal began a subathon to coincide with Neuro-sama's first anniversary of streaming on Twitch (her "birthday"). The subathon ended on 4 January 2024. On 20 July 2024, Neuro-sama began streaming with Japanese subtitles on

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  Historical Thesaurus of English

  The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is the largest thesaurus in the world. It is called a historical thesaurus as it arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, according to the first documented occurrence of a word in the entire history of the English language. The HTE was conceived and begun in 1965 by the English Language & Linguistics department of the University of Glasgow, who have ever since continued to compile the thesaurus. From the 1980s onwards the project was moved from paper-based records to a computer database. Today, the HTE is available to the public online, but a print version, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED), was published in 2009. == Main project: The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) == The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is a complete database of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries (including Old English), arranged by semantic field and date. In this way, the HTE arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, alongside dates of use. It is the first historical thesaurus to be compiled for any of the world's languages and contains 800,000 meanings for 600,000 words, within 230,000 categories. As the HTE website states, "in addition to providing hitherto unavailable information for linguistic and textual scholars, the Historical Thesaurus online is a rich resource for students of social and cultural history, showing how concepts developed through the words that refer to them." === Structure === The work is divided into three main sections: the External World, the Mind, and Society. These are broken down into successively narrower domains. The text eventually discriminates more than 236,000 categories. The second order categories are: === History === The ambitious project was announced at a 1965 meeting of the Philological Society by its originator, Michael Samuels. Work on the HTE started in the same year. In 2017, the University of Glasgow was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education for the HTE. A second edition of the online HTE is currently in progress and is expected to be launched in late 2020. Work is released on the freely-available HTE website when available. == Print edition: Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) == On 22 October 2009, after 44 years of work, version 1.0 of the HTE was published by Oxford University Press in a two-volume slipcased set as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). The two hardcover volumes together total nearly 4,500 pages.

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  Predictions of the end of Wikipedia

  Various observers have predicted the end of Wikipedia since it rose to prominence, with potential pitfalls from lack of quality-control, artificial intelligence or inconsistencies among contributors. Alternative online encyclopedias have been proposed as replacements for Wikipedia, including WolframAlpha, as well as the both now-defunct Knol (from Google) and Owl (from AOL). A 2013 review raised alarms regarding Wikipedia's shortcomings on hoaxes, on vandalism, an imbalance of material, and inadequate quality control of articles. Earlier critiques lamented the vulgar content and absence of sufficient references in articles. Others suggest that the unwarranted deletion of useful articles from Wikipedia may portend its end, which itself inspired the creation of the now inactive Deletionpedia. Contrary to such predictions, Wikipedia has constantly grown in both size and influence. Recent developments with artificial intelligence in Wikimedia projects have prompted new predictions that AI applications, which consume free and open content, will replace Wikipedia. == Personnel == Wikipedia is crowdsourced by a few million volunteer editors. Of the millions of registered editors, only tens of thousands contribute the majority of its contents, and a few thousand do quality control and maintenance work. As the encyclopedia expanded in the 2010s, the number of active editors did not grow proportionately. Various sources predicted that Wikipedia will eventually have too few editors to be functional and collapse from lack of participation. English Wikipedia has 818 volunteer administrators who perform various functions, including functions similar to those carried out by a forum moderator. Critics have described their actions as harsh, bureaucratic, biased, unfair, or capricious and predicted that the resulting outrage would lead to the site's closure. Various 2012 articles reported that a decline in English Wikipedia's recruitment of new administrators could end Wikipedia. === Decline in editors (2014–2015) === A 2014 trend analysis published in The Economist stated that "The number of editors for the English-language version has fallen by a third in seven years." The attrition rate for active editors in English Wikipedia was described by The Economist as substantially higher than in other (non-English) Wikipedias. It reported that in other languages, the number of "active editors" (those with at least five edits per month) has been relatively constant since 2008: some 42,000 editors, with narrow seasonal variances of about 2,000 editors up or down. In the English Wikipedia, the number of active editors peaked in 2007 at about 50,000 editors, and fell to 30,000 editors in 2014. Given that the trend analysis published in The Economist presented the number of active editors for non-English Wikipedias as remaining relatively constant, sustaining their numbers at approximately 42,000 active editors, the contrast pointed to the effectiveness of Wikipedia in those languages to retain their active editors on a renewable and sustained basis. Though different language versions of Wikipedia have different policies, no comment identified a particular policy difference as potentially making a difference in the rate of editor attrition for English Wikipedia. Editor count showed a slight uptick a year later, and no clear trend after that. In a 2013 article, Tom Simonite of MIT Technology Review said that for several years running, the number of Wikipedia editors had been falling, and cited the bureaucratic structure and rules as a factor. Simonite alleged that some Wikipedians use the labyrinthine rules and guidelines to dominate others and have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. A January 2016 article in Time by Chris Wilson said Wikipedia might lose many editors because a collaboration of occasional editors and smart software will take the lead. Andrew Lih and Andrew Brown both maintain editing Wikipedia with smartphones is difficult and discourages new potential contributors. Lih alleges there is serious disagreement among existing contributors on how to resolve this. In 2015, Lih feared for Wikipedia's long-term future while Brown feared problems with Wikipedia would remain and rival encyclopedias would not replace it. == Viewers and fundraisers == As of 2015, with more viewing by smartphones, there had been a marked decline in persons who viewed Wikipedia from their computers, and according to The Washington Post "[people are] far less likely to donate". At the time, the Wikimedia Foundation reported reserves equivalent to one year's budgeted expenditures. On the other hand, the number of paid staff had ballooned, so those expenses increased. In 2021, Andreas Kolbe, a former co-editor-in-chief of The Signpost, wrote that the Wikimedia Foundation was reaching its 10-year goal of a US$100 million endowment, five years earlier than planned, which may surprise donors and users around the world who regularly see Wikipedia fundraising banners. He also said accounting methods disguise the size of operating surpluses, top managers earn $300,000 – 400,000 a year, and over 40 people work exclusively on fundraising. == Artificial intelligence == Wikipedia faces a decline in human visitors, raising concerns about its long-term sustainability and community participation. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), when reporting this decline, attributed this in part to the lack of clicks from users of large language models and search engines that are using content from Wikipedia. Data published in August 2025 showed that after the launch of ChatGPT and the rise of other AI-powered search summaries, some types of articles on Wikipedia — especially those that closely resemble the kind of content ChatGPT produces — experienced a noticeable drop in readership. Overall human pageviews reportedly fell by about 8% between 2024 and 2025, suggesting that AI-overviews and chatbots are increasingly being used in place of direct visits to Wikipedia. According to industry web analytics data, ChatGPT's estimated monthly web traffic surpassed that of Wikipedia since May 2025, as visits to ChatGPT continued to grow while Wikipedia’s total site traffic declined. == Timeline of predictions == On the eve of the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia, associate professor of the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University Joseph Reagle conducted a retrospective study of numerous "predictions of the ends of Wikipedia" over two decades, divided into chronological waves: "Early growth (2001–2002)", "Nascent identity (2001–2005)", "Production model (2005–2010)", "Contributor attrition (2009–2017)" and the current period "(2020–)". Each wave brought its distinctive fatal predictions, which never came true; as a result, Reagle concluded Wikipedia was not in danger. Concern grew in 2023 that the ubiquity and proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) may adversely affect Wikipedia. Rapid improvements and widespread application of AI may render Wikipedia obsolete or reduce its importance. A 2023 study found that AI, when applied to Wikipedia, works most efficiently for error-correction, while Wikipedia still needs to be written by humans.

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  ProVisual Engine

  The ProVisual Engine is an AI-powered imaging system developed by Samsung Electronics for mobile devices. It was introduced in 2024 with the Galaxy S24 series as a component of Samsung's Galaxy AI ecosystem, providing advanced image processing to enhance image quality in photography and videography. == Overview == The ProVisual Engine processes images using adaptive scene recognition, real-time optimization, and advanced image processing. It adjusts color accuracy, dynamic range, and noise levels, providing both automated and manual controls to accommodate various user preferences. == Features == The ProVisual Engine encompasses several features. === Quad Tele System === The Quad Tele System features 2x, 3x, 5x, and 10x optical zoom, supported by digital processing to enhance zoom clarity and detail. It incorporates Image Signal Processing (ISP) to refine detail retention, reduce noise, and enhance image clarity at different zoom levels while minimizing distortion. === Nightography === Nightography utilizes noise reduction techniques and advanced sensor technology to enhance low-light photography. By adjusting exposure and minimizing motion blur, the system helps produce more precise and more detailed images in dark environments for both photos and videos. === Generative Edit === Generative Edit allows for object removal, background expansion, and intelligent resizing. It reconstructs missing areas by filling backgrounds and completing cut-off objects, adjusting composition while preserving image integrity and refinement. === Expert RAW === Expert RAW allows users to capture RAW images directly from the camera app for advanced shooting and editing. It includes HDR (High Dynamic Range) support to enhance detail and dynamic range. The ProVisual Engine utilizes multi-frame processing to generate RAW images with increased clarity and depth for post-processing. === Enhance-X and Camera Shift === Enhance-X is an AI-based image processing tool that applies upscaling, noise reduction, and sharpening. Its Camera Shift feature adjusts the perceived camera height by modifying framing and proportions. A recent update extended support to human and pet images. == Compatible devices == As of 2025, the ProVisual Engine is available on the following devices: === Galaxy S series === Galaxy S26 Series (Galaxy S26, S26+. S26 Ultra) Galaxy S25 Series (Galaxy S25, S25+, S25 Edge, S25 Ultra, S25 FE) Galaxy S24 Series (Galaxy S24, S24+, S24 Ultra) === Galaxy Z series === Galaxy Z Fold 7 Galaxy Z Flip 7, Z Flip 7 FE Galaxy Z Fold 6 Galaxy Z Flip 6 === Galaxy Tab S series === Galaxy Tab S10 series (Tab S10+, Tab S10 Ultra) Galaxy Tab S9 series (Tab S9, Tab S9+, Tab S9 Ultra) === Galaxy Z series === Galaxy Z Fold 7, Z Flip 7, Z Flip 7 FE Galaxy Z Fold 6, Z Flip 6 === Galaxy Tab S series === Galaxy Tab S10 series (Tab S10+, Tab S10 Ultra) Galaxy Tab S9 series (Tab S9, Tab S9+, Tab S9 Ultra) Note: Quad Tele System refers to the multi-telephoto setup (2×, 3×, 5×, 10×) available only on the Ultra models (S24 Ultra and S25 Ultra). Note: On Galaxy Tab models, only Enhance-X editing features are supported; the Expert RAW camera app is not available.

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  Intel Management Engine

  The Intel Management Engine (ME), also known as the Intel Manageability Engine, is an autonomous subsystem that has been incorporated in virtually all of Intel's processor chipsets since 2008. It is located in the Platform Controller Hub of modern Intel motherboards. The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer is turned off. This issue can be mitigated with the deployment of a hardware device which is able to disconnect all connections to mains power as well as all internal forms of energy storage. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and some security researchers have voiced concern that the Management Engine is a backdoor. Intel's main competitor, AMD, has incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually all of its post-2013 CPUs. == Difference from Intel AMT == The Management Engine is often confused with Intel AMT (Intel Active Management Technology). AMT runs on the ME, but is only available on processors with vPro. AMT gives device owners remote administration of their computer, such as powering it on or off, and reinstalling the operating system. However, the ME itself has been built into all Intel chipsets since 2008, not only those with AMT. While AMT can be unprovisioned by the owner, there is no official, documented way to disable the ME. == Design == The subsystem primarily consists of proprietary firmware running on a separate microprocessor that performs tasks during boot-up, while the computer is running, and while it is asleep. As long as the chipset or SoC is supplied with power (via battery or power supply), it continues to run even when the system is turned off. Intel claims the ME is required to provide full performance. Its exact workings are largely undocumented and its code is obfuscated using confidential Huffman tables stored directly in hardware, so the firmware does not contain the information necessary to decode its contents. === Hardware === Starting with ME 11 (introduced in Skylake CPUs), it is based on the Intel Quark x86-based 32-bit CPU and runs the MINIX 3 operating system. The ME firmware is stored in a partition of the SPI BIOS Flash, using the Embedded Flash File System (EFFS). Previous versions were based on an ARC core, with the Management Engine running the ThreadX RTOS. Versions 1.x to 5.x of the ME used the ARCTangent-A4 (32-bit only instructions) whereas versions 6.x to 8.x used the newer ARCompact (mixed 32- and 16-bit instruction set architecture). Starting with ME 7.1, the ARC processor could also execute signed Java applets. The ME has its own MAC and IP address for the out-of-band management interface, with direct access to the Ethernet controller; one portion of the Ethernet traffic is diverted to the ME even before reaching the host's operating system, for what support exists in various Ethernet controllers, exported and made configurable via Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP). The ME also communicates with the host via PCI interface. Under Linux, communication between the host and the ME is done via /dev/mei or /dev/mei0. Until the release of Nehalem processors, the ME was usually embedded into the motherboard's northbridge, following the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) layout. With the newer Intel architectures (Intel 5 Series onwards), the ME is integrated into the Platform Controller Hub (PCH). === Firmware === By Intel's current terminology as of 2017, ME is one of several firmware sets for the Converged Security and Manageability Engine (CSME). Prior to AMT version 11, CSME was called Intel Management Engine BIOS Extension (Intel MEBx). Management Engine (ME) – mainstream chipsets Server Platform Services (SPS) – server chipsets and SoCs Trusted Execution Engine (TXE) – tablet/embedded/low power It was also found that the ME firmware version 11 runs MINIX 3. Management of the ME modules for provisioning inside the UEFI is done via a tool called Intel Flash Image Tool (FITC). ==== Modules ==== Active Management Technology (AMT) Intel Boot Guard (IBG) and Secure Boot Quiet System Technology (QST), formerly known as Advanced Fan Speed Control (AFSC), which provides support for acoustically optimized fan speed control, and monitoring of temperature, voltage, current and fan speed sensors that are provided in the chipset, CPU and other devices present on the motherboard. Communication with the QST firmware subsystem is documented and available through the official software development kit (SDK). Protected Audio Video Path, enforces HDCP Intel Anti-Theft Technology (AT), discontinued in 2015 Serial over LAN (SOL) Intel Platform Trust Technology (PTT), a firmware-based Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Near Field Communication, a middleware for NFC readers and vendors to access NFC cards and provide secure element access, found in later MEI versions. == The intricacies of working with Intel ME == It should also be noted that the ME region requires special cleaning and subsequent initialisation, for example, after replacing the platform hub on the motherboard. Usually, this requires an SPI programmer. There are known successful cases of this operation being performed. == Security vulnerabilities == Several weaknesses have been found in the ME. On May 1, 2017, Intel confirmed a Remote Elevation of Privilege bug (SA-00075) in its Management Technology. Every Intel platform with provisioned Intel Standard Manageability, Active Management Technology, or Small Business Technology, from Nehalem in 2008 to Kaby Lake in 2017 has a remotely exploitable security hole in the ME. Several ways to disable the ME without authorization that could allow ME's functions to be sabotaged have been found. Additional major security flaws in the ME affecting a very large number of computers incorporating ME, Trusted Execution Engine (TXE), and Server Platform Services (SPS) firmware, from Skylake in 2015 to Coffee Lake in 2017, were confirmed by Intel on November 20, 2017 (SA-00086). Unlike SA-00075, this bug is even present if AMT is absent, not provisioned or if the ME was "disabled" by any of the known unofficial methods. In July 2018, another set of vulnerabilities was disclosed (SA-00112). In September 2018, yet another vulnerability was published (SA-00125). === Ring −3 rootkit === A ring −3 rootkit was demonstrated by Invisible Things Lab for the Q35 chipset; it does not work for the later Q45 chipset as Intel implemented additional protections. The exploit worked by remapping the normally protected memory region (top 16 MB of RAM) reserved for the ME. The ME rootkit could be installed regardless of whether the AMT is present or enabled on the system, as the chipset always contains the ARC ME coprocessor. (The "−3" designation was chosen because the ME coprocessor works even when the system is in the S3 state. Thus, it was considered a layer below the System Management Mode rootkits.) For the vulnerable Q35 chipset, a keystroke logger ME-based rootkit was demonstrated by Patrick Stewin. === Zero-touch provisioning === Another security evaluation by Vassilios Ververis showed serious weaknesses in the GM45 chipset implementation. In particular, it criticized AMT for transmitting unencrypted passwords in the SMB provisioning mode when the IDE redirection and Serial over LAN features are used. It also found that the "zero touch" provisioning mode (ZTC) is still enabled even when the AMT appears to be disabled in BIOS. For about 60 euros, Ververis purchased from GoDaddy a certificate that is accepted by the ME firmware and allows remote "zero touch" provisioning of (possibly unsuspecting) machines, which broadcast their HELLO packets to would-be configuration servers. === SA-00075 (a.k.a. Silent Bob is Silent) === In May 2017, Intel confirmed that many computers with AMT have had an unpatched critical privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2017-5689). The vulnerability was nicknamed "Silent Bob is Silent" by the researchers who had reported it to Intel. It affects numerous laptops, desktops and servers sold by Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard (later Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.), Intel, Lenovo, and possibly others. Those researchers claimed that the bug affects systems made in 2010 or later. Other reports claimed the bug also affects systems made as long ago as 2008. The vulnerability was described as giving remote attackers: "full control of affected machines, including the ability to read and modify everything. It can be used to install persistent malware (possibly in firmware), and read and modify any data." === PLATINUM === In June 2017, the PLATINUM cybercrime group became notable for exploiting the serial over LAN (SOL) capabilities of AMT to perform data exfiltration of stolen documents. SOL is disabled by default and must be enabled to exploit this vulnerability. === SA-00086 === Some months after the previous bugs, and subsequent warnings from the EFF, securi

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  GuideGeek

  GuideGeek is an AI-powered travel assistant that was launched by travel publisher Matador Network in April 2023 and is accessed by users through Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to plan itineraries or provide travel tips and recommendations. It uses generative artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI. Matador Network is a San Francisco-based digital media company and online travel publication with millions of monthly visitors and social media followers. == Features == Users message GuideGeek questions about travel and receive customized answers and itineraries that are pulled from ChatGPT in addition to over 1,000 additional travel-specific integrations such as live flight, hotel and vacation rental data. Travelers can specify their budget and needs to generate custom itineraries. GuideGeek is not an app and does not require the user to download anything, instead relying on messaging apps such as Instagram to connect users with the AI. GuideGeek is free to use, doesn't include ads, and doesn't sell user data. Matador Network has a team of staff members monitoring conversations to correct them if the AI makes a false statement; for example, one user incorrectly inputted “Crete Freeze” instead of “Crete, Greece”, and the AI made up a fictional soft serve company. Using a technique known as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), the accuracy of GuideGeek increased to 98%, according to Matador Network CEO, Ross Borden. == Destination partnerships == Matador Network is monetizing GuideGeek via white-label partnerships with tourism bureaus and destination marketing organizations (DMOs). As of March 2024, it had over a dozen such clients. Estes Park, Colorado, was one of the first DMOs to partner with Matador for a custom version of GuideGeek called “Rocky Mountain Roamer.” For Discover Greece, Matador created Pythia, a custom AI named after the high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. As Borden explained to Travel + Leisure, “Visitors to the Discover Greece website will find Pythia in the bottom right corner, and they can converse with the AI like a friend who knows everything about Greece.” Other DMOs who have partnerships with GuideGeek include the Aruba Tourism Authority, Visit Reno Tahoe, Illinois Office of Tourism, and Tourism Richmond. == Awards == In recognition of GuideGeek, Fast Company named Matador Network to its 2024 list of Most Innovative Companies. Following growth driven by the launch of GuideGeek, Matador Network was ranked on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America. The 2024 Skift IDEA Awards recognized Matador Network as a finalist in the category of Best Use of AI for GuideGeek's customized AI for the travel industry. == Michael Motamedi experiment == Travel influencer and chef Michael Motamedi traveled the world with his wife Vanessa Salas and their 2-year-old daughter on a six-month trip (which was later extended to a full year) led by GuideGeek. The family started off in Morocco before heading to Spain and continuing east. The experiment became the basis of a web series called “No Fixed Address.” Motamedi used GuideGeek's AI to select countries the family visited, where they ate, and what sites they saw. Motamedi and Salas first tested out the technology in April 2023 while using the chatbot to plan a date night in Mexico City. GuideGeek provided speakeasy and drink recommendations as well as local history facts.

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  Automatic1111

  AUTOMATIC1111 Stable Diffusion Web UI (SD WebUI, A1111, or Automatic1111) is an open source generative artificial intelligence program that allows users to generate images from a text prompt. It uses Stable Diffusion as the base model for its image capabilities together with a large set of extensions and features to customize its output. == History == SD WebUI was released on GitHub on August 22, 2022, by AUTOMATIC1111, 1 month after the initial release of Stable Diffusion. At the time, Stable Diffusion could only be run via the command line. SD WebUI quickly rose in popularity and has been described as "the most popular tool for running diffusion models locally." SD WebUI is one of the most popular user interfaces for Stable Diffusion, together with ComfyUI. In February 2024, a book was published by ja:Gijutsu Hyoronsha on using Stable Diffusion with SD WebUI in Japanese. As of July 2024, the project had 136,000 stars on GitHub. == Features == SD WebUI uses Gradio for its user interface. Each parameter in the Stable Diffusion program is exposed via a UI interface within SD WebUI. SD WebUI contains additional parameters not included in Stable Diffusion itself, such as support for Low-rank adaptations, ControlNet and custom variational autoencoders. SD WebUI supports prompt weighting, image-to-image based generation, inpainting, outpainting and image scaling. It supports over 20 samplers including DDIM, Euler, Euler a, DPM++ 2M Karras, and UniPC. It is also used for its various optimizations over the base Stable Diffusion. == Stable Diffusion WebUI Forge == Stable Diffusion WebUI Forge (Forge) is a notable fork of SD WebUI started by Lvmin Zhang, who is also the creator of ControlNet and Fooocus. The initial goal of Forge was to improve the performance and features of SD WebUI with the intention to upstream changes back to SD WebUI. One of Forge's optimizations allowed users with low VRAM to generate images faster on some versions of Stable Diffusion. It improved generation speed for users with 8GB and 6GB VRAM by 30-45% and 60-75%, respectively. Forge also includes extra features such as support for more samplers than standard SD WebUI. Some of Forge's optimizations were borrowed from ComfyUI, and others were developed by the Forge team. In August 2024, Forge added support for the Flux diffusion model developed by Black Forest Labs, which is not yet supported by SD WebUI.

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  Marco Camisani Calzolari

  Marco Camisani Calzolari (born March 1969) is an Italian British university professor, author, and television personality specializing in digital communications, transformation, and artificial intelligence. He advises the Italian government and police on ethical AI and digital safety and hosts the digital segment of the Italian news show Striscia la Notizia. His research gained international attention in 2012 after creating an algorithm claiming to identify real Twitter users from fake users of bots. Marco Camisani Calzolari was awarded as an Honorary Police Officer by the Italian State Police and the Knight of the Italian Republic. == Biography == Camisani Calzolari was born in Milan, Italy where he began his television career, hosting on local provider LA7 in (2001). In 2008 Camisani Calzolari moved to the UK where he founded multiple digital start-ups. He is now a naturalised British citizen and applied to become a "Freeman of the City" in June 2022. In 2024, Marco Camisani Calzolari began serving as the Chair and Adjunct Professor of the elective course Cyber-Humanities within the Degree Programme in Medicine and Surgery at Università Vita-Salute S.Raffaele in Milan. On the 14th of May 2024, Camisani Calzolari was awarded the Knight of the Italian Republic (Order of the Star of Italy). In 2024, Marco Camisani Calzolari was awarded the title of Honorary Police Officer by the Italian State Police for his commitment to combating cybercrime and promoting digital security. He also received the Keynes Sraffa Award 2024 from the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the UK. Additionally, he was honored with the University Seal by Università degli Studi della Tuscia (Viterbo) for his efforts in disseminating knowledge both in Italy and abroad. == Academic career == Camisani Calzolari began his academic career at the Università Statale di Milano in 2007, until chairing a course on Corporate Communication and Digital Languages at the IULM University of Milan between 2007 and 2010. During this time Camisani Calzolari published his first written work under the title 'Impresa 4.0'. After moving to London, Camisani Calzolari focussed on digital start-ups including 'Digitalevaluation ltd' where he would publish the results of his Twitter algorithm study. Following its publication, he accepted a role as Affiliate Practitioner at the Centre for Culture Media & Regulation (CCMR), University of Brunel London, and subsequently another role at a British University as Lecturer in Digital Communication at the LCA Business School. Camisani Calzolari returned to Italy to lecture on Interactive Digital Communication at the University of Milan. From 2017 to 2023, he held various roles at the European University of Rome, including Adjunct Professor and Chair in Digital Communication, and published The Fake News Bible in 2018. In 2024 he became the Scientific Coordinator for a Master's program at Università San Raffaele in Milan. === Twitter fake followers study === In 2012, Camisani Calzolari's research came into the focus of the public eye following the publication of his findings in a study analysing the followers of high-profile public figures and corporations. He developed a computer algorithm claiming to be able to distinguish real followers from computer-generated "bots". The algorithm compiled data correlative of human activity such as having a name, image, physical address, using punctuation and cross-account activity. Genuine Twitter users were considered to have written at least 50 posts and possessed over 30 followers themselves. The findings led to scrutiny of several individuals and corporations for allegedly purchasing followers. === Publications === Camisani Calzolari is best for known for his work in improving accessibility to digital and tech solutions for everyday business and personal use. His work in digital and communications has been included in several publications including: Cyberhumanism (2023) The Fake News Bible (2018), First Digital Aid for Business (2015), The Digital World (2013), Escape from Facebook (2012), Enterprise 4.0. Camisani Calzolari was also the subject of a University College London (UCL) case study titled Marco Camisani-Calzolari: the Digital Renaissance Man. == Government work == Since 2023, he is a member of the Coordination Committee on Artificial Intelligence at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and an advisor in Digital Skills and Designer of initiatives for the Department for Digital Transformation. He also serves as the official spokesperson for the State Police, educating the public on preventing digital threats, avoiding digital scams, and explaining criminal case. Since August 2024, Marco Camisani Calzolari has served as an expert for the Italian Agency for the National Cybersecurity (ACN). In October of the same year, he also became a member of the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice working group for the European Commission. == Television work == Camisani Calzolari hosts a digital segment for Striscia la Notizia, an Italian satirical television program on the Mediaset-controlled Canale 5. He presented on weekly segments that include: RAI 1 – Digital First Aid (TV Program – 2014 to 2017) in the program "Uno Mattina" as a digital expert; RTL 102.5 – Technology Space (Radio Program – 2012 to 2017) in the morning news program as a digital expert (100 episodes from 2012 to 2017); DIGITALK Talkshow (2004) as host of Digitalk; Misterweb (TV Program – 2001 to 2002), he presented the TV program “MisterWeb”, on "LA7". Marco Camisani Calzolari was a testimonial for several institutional communication campaigns by the Italian Department of Digital Transformation. These include initiatives promoting the Punti Digitale Facile, raising awareness about the NIS2 Directive for cybersecurity, and advocating for the adoption of the Electronic Identity Card (CIE).

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  Vision transformer

  A vision transformer (ViT) is a transformer designed for computer vision. A ViT decomposes an input image into a series of patches (rather than text into tokens), serializes each patch into a vector, and maps it to a smaller dimension with a single matrix multiplication. These vector embeddings are then processed by a transformer encoder as if they were token embeddings. ViTs were designed as alternatives to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in computer vision applications. They have different inductive biases, training stability, and data efficiency. Compared to CNNs, ViTs are less data efficient, but have higher capacity. Some of the largest modern computer vision models are ViTs, such as one with 22B parameters. Subsequent to its publication, many variants were proposed, with hybrid architectures with both features of ViTs and CNNs. ViTs have found application in image recognition, image segmentation, weather prediction, and autonomous driving. == History == Transformers were introduced in Attention Is All You Need (2017), and have found widespread use in natural language processing. A 2019 paper applied ideas from the Transformer to computer vision. Specifically, they started with a ResNet, a standard convolutional neural network used for computer vision, and replaced all convolutional kernels by the self-attention mechanism found in a Transformer. It resulted in superior performance. However, it is not a Vision Transformer. In 2020, an encoder-only Transformer was adapted for computer vision, yielding the ViT, which reached state of the art in image classification, overcoming the previous dominance of CNN. The masked autoencoder (2022) extended ViT to work with unsupervised training. The vision transformer and the masked autoencoder, in turn, stimulated new developments in convolutional neural networks. Subsequently, there was cross-fertilization between the previous CNN approach and the ViT approach. In 2021, some important variants of the Vision Transformers were proposed. These variants are mainly intended to be more efficient, more accurate or better suited to a specific domain. Two studies improved efficiency and robustness of ViT by adding a CNN as a preprocessor. The Swin Transformer achieved state-of-the-art results on some object detection datasets such as COCO, by using convolution-like sliding windows of attention mechanism, and the pyramid process in classical computer vision. == Overview == The basic architecture, used by the original 2020 paper, is as follows. In summary, it is a BERT-like encoder-only Transformer. The input image is of type R H × W × C {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{H\times W\times C}} , where H , W , C {\displaystyle H,W,C} are height, width, channel (RGB). It is then split into square-shaped patches of type R P × P × C {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{P\times P\times C}} . For each patch, the patch is pushed through a linear operator, to obtain a vector ("patch embedding"). The position of the patch is also transformed into a vector by "position encoding" (the paper tried no embedding, 1D embedding, 2D embedding, and relative embedding: 1D was adopted). The two vectors are added, then pushed through several Transformer encoders. The attention mechanism in a ViT repeatedly transforms representation vectors of image patches, incorporating more and more semantic relations between image patches in an image. This is analogous to how in natural language processing, as representation vectors flow through a transformer, they incorporate more and more semantic relations between words, from syntax to semantics. The above architecture turns an image into a sequence of vector representations. To use these for downstream applications, an additional head needs to be trained to interpret them. For example, to use it for classification, one can add a shallow MLP on top of it that outputs a probability distribution over classes. The original paper uses a linear-GeLU-linear-softmax network. == Variants == === Original ViT === The original ViT was an encoder-only Transformer supervise-trained to predict the image label from the patches of the image. As in the case of BERT, it uses a special token in the input side, and the corresponding output vector is used as the only input of the final output MLP head. The special token is an architectural hack to allow the model to compress all information relevant for predicting the image label into one vector. Transformers found their initial applications in natural language processing tasks, as demonstrated by language models such as BERT and GPT-3. By contrast the typical image processing system uses a convolutional neural network (CNN). Well-known projects include Xception, ResNet, EfficientNet, DenseNet, and Inception. Transformers measure the relationships between pairs of input tokens (words in the case of text strings), termed attention. The cost is quadratic in the number of tokens. For images, the basic unit of analysis is the pixel. However, computing relationships for every pixel pair in a typical image is prohibitive in terms of memory and computation. Instead, ViT computes relationships among pixels in various small sections of the image (e.g., 16x16 pixels), at a drastically reduced cost. The sections (with positional embeddings) are placed in a sequence. The embeddings are learnable vectors. Each section is arranged into a linear sequence and multiplied by the embedding matrix. The result, with the position embedding is fed to the transformer. === Architectural improvements === ==== Pooling ==== After the ViT processes an image, it produces some embedding vectors. These must be converted to a single class probability prediction by some kind of network. In the original ViT and Masked Autoencoder, they used a dummy [CLS] token, in emulation of the BERT language model. The output at [CLS] is the classification token, which is then processed by a LayerNorm-feedforward-softmax module into a probability distribution. Global average pooling (GAP) does not use the dummy token, but simply takes the average of all output tokens as the classification token. It was mentioned in the original ViT as being equally good. Multihead attention pooling (MAP) applies a multiheaded attention block to pooling. Specifically, it takes as input a list of vectors x 1 , x 2 , … , x n {\displaystyle x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{n}} , which might be thought of as the output vectors of a layer of a ViT. The output from MAP is M u l t i h e a d e d A t t e n t i o n ( Q , V , V ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {MultiheadedAttention} (Q,V,V)} , where q {\displaystyle q} is a trainable query vector, and V {\displaystyle V} is the matrix with rows being x 1 , x 2 , … , x n {\displaystyle x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{n}} . This was first proposed in the Set Transformer architecture. Later papers demonstrated that GAP and MAP both perform better than BERT-like pooling. A variant of MAP was proposed as class attention, which applies MAP, then feedforward, then MAP again. Re-attention was proposed to allow training deep ViT. It changes the multiheaded attention module. === Masked Autoencoder === The Masked Autoencoder took inspiration from denoising autoencoders and context encoders. It has two ViTs put end-to-end. The first one ("encoder") takes in image patches with positional encoding, and outputs vectors representing each patch. The second one (called "decoder", even though it is still an encoder-only Transformer) takes in vectors with positional encoding and outputs image patches again. ==== Training ==== During training, input images (224px x 224 px in the original implementation) are split along a designated number of lines on each axis, producing image patches. A certain percentage of patches are selected to be masked out by mask tokens, while all others are retained in the image. The network is tasked with reconstructing the image from the remaining unmasked patches. Mask tokens in the original implementation are learnable vector quantities. A linear projection with positional embeddings is then applied to the vector of unmasked patches. Experiments varying mask ratio on networks trained on the ImageNet-1K dataset found 75% mask ratios achieved high performance on both finetuning and linear-probing of the encoder's latent space. The MAE processes only unmasked patches during training, increasing the efficiency of data processing in the encoder and lowering the memory usage of the transformer. A less computationally-intensive ViT is used for the decoder in the original implementation of the MAE. Masked patches are added back to the output of the encoder block as mask tokens and both are fed into the decoder. A reconstruction loss is computed for the masked patches to assess network performance. ==== Prediction ==== In prediction, the decoder architecture is discarded entirely. The input image is split into patches by the same algorithm as in training, but no patches are masked out. A linear projection wi

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  Executive Order 14110

  Executive Order 14110, titled Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (sometimes referred to as "Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence") was the 126th executive order signed by former U.S. President Joe Biden. Signed on October 30, 2023, the order defines the administration's policy goals regarding artificial intelligence (AI), and orders executive agencies to take actions pursuant to these goals. The order is considered to be the most comprehensive piece of governance by the United States regarding AI. It was rescinded by U.S. President Donald Trump within hours of his assuming office on January 20, 2025. Policy goals outlined in the executive order pertain to promoting competition in the AI industry, preventing AI-enabled threats to civil liberties and national security, and ensuring U.S. global competitiveness in the AI field. The executive order required a number of major federal agencies to create dedicated "chief artificial intelligence officer" positions within their organizations. == Background == The drafting of the order was motivated by the rapid pace of development in generative AI models in the 2020s, including the release of large language model ChatGPT. Executive Order 14110 is the third executive order dealing explicitly with AI, with two AI-related executive orders being signed by then-President Donald Trump. The development of AI models without policy safeguards has raised a variety of concerns among experts and commentators. These range from future existential risk from advanced AI models to immediate concerns surrounding current technologies' ability to disseminate misinformation, enable discrimination, and undermine national security. In August 2023, Arati Prabhakar, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, indicated that the White House was expediting its work on executive action on AI. A week prior to the executive order's unveiling, Prabhakar indicated that Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance on the order would be released "soon" after. == Policy goals and provisions == The order has been characterized as an effort for the United States to capture potential benefits from AI while mitigating risks associated with AI technologies. Upon signing the order, Biden stated that AI technologies were being developed at "warp speed", and argued that to "realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology". Policy goals outlined by the order include the following: Promoting competition and innovation in the AI industry Upholding civil and labor rights and protecting consumers and their privacy from AI-enabled harms Specifying federal policies governing procurement and use of AI Developing watermarking systems for AI-generated content and warding off intellectual property theft stemming from the use of generative models Maintaining the nation's place as a global leader in AI == Impact on agencies == === Creation of chief AI officer positions === The executive order required a number of large federal agencies to appoint a chief artificial intelligence officer, with a number of departments having already appointed a relevant officer prior to the order. In the days following the order, news publication FedScoop confirmed that the General Services Administration (GSA) and the United States Department of Education appointed relevant chief AI officers. The National Science Foundation (NSF) also confirmed it had elevated an official to serve as its chief AI officer. === Department responsibilities === Under the executive order, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was responsible for developing AI-related security guidelines, including cybersecurity-related matters. The DHS will also work with private sector firms in sectors including the energy industry and other "critical infrastructure" to coordinate responses to AI-enabled security threats. Executive Order 14110 mandated the Department of Veterans Affairs to launch an AI technology competition aimed at reducing occupational burnout among healthcare workers through AI-assisted tools for routine tasks. The order also mandated the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop a generative artificial intelligence-focused resource to supplement the existing AI Risk Management Framework. == Analysis == The executive order has been described as the most comprehensive piece of governance by the United States government pertaining to AI. Earlier in 2023 prior to the signing of the order, the Biden administration had announced a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, and had secured non-binding AI safety commitments from major tech companies. The issuing of the executive order comes at a time in which lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have pushed for legislation to regulate AI in the 118th United States Congress. According to Axios, despite the wide scope of the executive order, it notably does not touch upon a number of AI-related policy proposals. This includes proposals for a "licensing regime" to government advanced AI models, which has received support from industry leaders including Sam Altman. Additionally, the executive order does not seek to prohibit 'high-risk' uses of AI technology, and does not aim to mandate that tech companies release information surrounding AI systems' training data and models. == Reception == === Political and media reception === The editorial board of the Houston Chronicle described the order as a "first step toward protecting humanity". The issuing of the order received praise from Democratic members of Congress, including Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA). Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), who leads the House AI Caucus, praised the order as a "comprehensive strategy for responsible innovation", while arguing that Congress must take initiative to pass legislation on AI. The draft of the order received criticism from Republican Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who described it as creating "barriers to innovation disguised as safety measures". === Public reception === Polling from the AI Policy Institute showed that 69% of all voters support the executive order, while 15% oppose it. Breaking it down by party, support was at 78% for Democrats, 65% for independents, and 64% for Republicans. === Industry reception === The executive order received strong criticism from the Chamber of Commerce as well as tech industry groups including NetChoice and the Software and Information Industry Association, all of which count "Big Tech" companies Amazon, Meta, and Google as members. Representatives from the organizations argued that the executive order threatens to hinder private sector innovation. === Civil society reception === According to CNBC, a number of leaders advocacy organizations praised the executive order for its provisions on "AI fairness", while simultaneously urging congressional action to strengthen regulation. Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, praised the order while urging Congress to take initiative to "ensure that innovation makes us more fair, just, and prosperous, rather than surveilled, silenced, and stereotyped". A representative from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) praised provisions of the order centered on combating AI-enabled discrimination, while also voiced concern over sections of the order focused on law enforcement and national security. === Second Trump administration === Hours after his inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump rescinded the order, labeling it, among several other of Biden's executive orders and actions, as "unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices".

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  DreamBooth

  DreamBooth is a deep learning generation model used to personalize existing text-to-image models by fine-tuning. It was developed by researchers from Google Research and Boston University in 2022. Originally developed using Google's own Imagen text-to-image model, DreamBooth implementations can be applied to other text-to-image models, where it can allow the model to generate more fine-tuned and personalized outputs after training on three to five images of a subject. == Technology == Pretrained text-to-image diffusion models, while often capable of offering a diverse range of different image output types, lack the specificity required to generate images of lesser-known subjects, and are limited in their ability to render known subjects in different situations and contexts. The methodology used to run implementations of DreamBooth involves the fine-tuning the full UNet component of the diffusion model using a few images (usually 3--5) depicting a specific subject. Images are paired with text prompts that contain the name of the class the subject belongs to, plus a unique identifier. As an example, a photograph of a [Nissan R34 GTR] car, with car being the class); a class-specific prior preservation loss is applied to encourage the model to generate diverse instances of the subject based on what the model is already trained on for the original class. Pairs of low-resolution and high-resolution images taken from the set of input images are used to fine-tune the super-resolution components, allowing the minute details of the subject to be maintained. == Usage == DreamBooth can be used to fine-tune models such as Stable Diffusion, where it may alleviate a common shortcoming of Stable Diffusion not being able to adequately generate images of specific individual people. Such a use case is quite VRAM intensive, however, and thus cost-prohibitive for hobbyist users. The Stable Diffusion adaptation of DreamBooth in particular is released as a free and open-source project based on the technology outlined by the original paper published by Ruiz et. al. in 2022. Concerns have been raised regarding the ability for bad actors to utilise DreamBooth to generate misleading images for malicious purposes, and that its open-source nature allows anyone to utilise or even make improvements to the technology. In addition, artists have expressed their apprehension regarding the ethics of using DreamBooth to train model checkpoints that are specifically aimed at imitating specific art styles associated with human artists; one such critic is Hollie Mengert, an illustrator for Disney and Penguin Random House who has had her art style trained into a checkpoint model via DreamBooth and shared online, without her consent.

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