AI Art Modifier

AI Art Modifier — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

Language identification

In natural language processing, language identification or language guessing is the problem of determining which natural language a given content is in. Computational approaches to this problem view it as a special case of text categorization, solved with various statistical methods. == Overview == === Logical approach === A common non-statistical intuitive approach (though highly uncertain) is to look for common letter combinations, or distinctive diacritics or punctuation. === Statistical approach === There are several statistical approaches to language identification. An older statistical method by Grefenstette was based on the frequency of short n-grams, which are often function morphemes. For example, "ing" is more common in English than in French, while the sequence "que" is more common in French. Given a new page found on the Web, one counts the number of occurrences of each such short sequence and picks the language whose frequency table it matches the most. One technique is to compare the compressibility of the text to the compressibility of texts in a set of known languages. This approach is known as mutual information based distance measure. The same technique can also be used to empirically construct family trees of languages which closely correspond to the trees constructed using historical methods. Mutual information based distance measure is essentially equivalent to more conventional model-based methods and is not generally considered to be either novel or better than simpler techniques. Another technique, as described by Cavnar and Trenkle (1994) and Dunning (1994) is to create a language n-gram model from a "training text" for each of the languages. These models can be based on characters (Cavnar and Trenkle) or encoded bytes (Dunning); in the latter, language identification and character encoding detection are integrated. Then, for any piece of text needing to be identified, a similar model is made, and that model is compared to each stored language model. The most likely language is the one with the model that is most similar to the model from the text needing to be identified. This approach can be problematic when the input text is in a language for which there is no model. In that case, the method may return another, "most similar" language as its result. Also problematic for any approach are pieces of input text that are composed of several languages, as is common on the Web. As of 2025, a commonly used baseline method is via the fastText library, which has comparable classification accuracy as deep learning techniques, but much faster. == Identifying similar languages == One of the great bottlenecks of language identification systems is to distinguish between closely related languages. Similar languages like Bulgarian and Macedonian or Indonesian and Malay present significant lexical and structural overlap, making it challenging for systems to discriminate between them. In 2014 the DSL shared task has been organized providing a dataset (Tan et al., 2014) containing 13 different languages (and language varieties) in six language groups: Group A (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian), Group B (Indonesian, Malaysian), Group C (Czech, Slovak), Group D (Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese), Group E (Peninsular Spanish, Argentine Spanish), Group F (American English, British English). The best system reached performance of over 95% results (Goutte et al., 2014). Results of the DSL shared task are described in Zampieri et al. 2014. == Software == Apache OpenNLP includes char n-gram based statistical detector and comes with a model that can distinguish 103 languages Apache Tika contains a language detector for 18 languages
Read more →
Ayanna Howard

Ayanna MacCalla Howard (born January 24, 1972) is an American roboticist, entrepreneur, and educator currently serving as the dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. Assuming this role in March 2021, Howard became the first woman to lead the Ohio State College of Engineering. Howard previously served as the chair of the School of Interactive Computing in the Georgia Tech College of Computing, the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Endowed Chair in Bioengineering in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the director of the Human-Automation Systems (Humans) Lab. == Early life and education == As a little girl, Howard was interested in aliens and robots. Her favorite TV show was The Bionic Woman. Howard received her B.S. in engineering from Brown University in 1993 and her M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1994 and 1999, respectively. Her thesis, Recursive Learning for Deformable Object Manipulation, was advised by George A. Bekey. In addition, Howard's Doctoral thesis was triggered by the AIDS epidemic with focus on sorting hospital waste by using robots. Howard has also received an MBA from Claremont Graduate University. == Career == Howard's early interest in artificial intelligence led her to pursue a senior position at Seattle-based Axcelis Inc, where she helped develop Evolver, the first commercial genetic algorithm, and Brainsheet, a neural network developed in partnership with Microsoft. From 1993 to 2005, she worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, holding multiple roles such as senior robotics researcher and deputy manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist. In 2005, she joined Georgia Tech as an associate professor and founder of the Human-Automation Systems (Humans) lab. She has also served as the associate director of research for Georgia Tech's Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and as chair of the multidisciplinary robotics Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech. In 2017, she became the chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. In 2008, Howard received worldwide attention for her SnoMote robots, designed to study the impact of global warming on the Antarctic ice shelves. In 2013, she founded Zyrobotics, which has released their first suite of therapy and educational products for children with special needs. Howard has authored 250 publications in reputable journals and conferences, including serving as co-editor/co-author of more than a dozen books and book chapters. She has also received four patents and given over 140 invited talks and keynotes. She is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Among her many honors, Howard received the Computer Research Association's A. Nico Habermann Award and the Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award. In a 2020 interview on Marketplace, Howard outlined how companion robots could alleviate the effects of social distancing caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. On November 30, 2020, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Howard would become the next dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University on March 1, pending approval by the board of trustees. On March 1, 2021, she assumed this role, becoming the first woman to hold the position. In 2021, Howard received the Athena Lecturer Award from Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for her Contributions to Robotics, AI and Broadening Participation in Computing. In June 2022, Howard was elected a trustee of Brown University. == Research == Howard's research interests include human-robot interaction, assistive/rehabilitation robotics, science-driven/field robotics, and perception, learning, and reasoning. Howard's research and published works span across various topics in robotics and AI, including intelligent learning, virtual reality for rehabilitation and robotics in the role of pediatric therapy. Her research is highlighted by her focus on technology development for intelligent agents that must interact with and in a human-centered world. Her work, which addresses issues of human-robot interaction, learning, and autonomous control, has resulted in more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. == Honors and awards == Howard's numerous accomplishments have been documented in more than a dozen featured articles. In 2003, she was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. She was featured in Time magazine's "Rise of the Machines" article in 2004. She was also featured in a USA Today Science & Space article. Some of Howard's notable awards include: Lew Allen Award for Excellence (formerly the Director's Research Achievement Award of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) for significant technical contributions, 2001 MIT Technology Review Top 100 Young Innovators of the Year, 2003 NAE Gilbreth Lectureship, 2010 A. Richard Newton Educator ABIE Award, Anita Borg Institute, 2014 Computer Research Association's A. Nico Habermann Award, 2016 Brown Engineering Alumni Medal (BEAM), 2016 AAAS-Lemelson Invention Ambassador, 2016-2017 Atlanta magazine's Women Making a Mark, 2017 Walker's Legacy #WLPower25 Atlanta Award, 2017 Forbes America's Top 50 Women In Tech, 2018 ACM Athena Lecturer Award, 2021 2021 class of Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. IEEE Fellow, 2021, "for contributions to human-robot interaction systems" 2023 AAAI/EAAI Patrick Henry Winston Outstanding Educator Award
Read more →
Deborah Raji

Inioluwa Deborah Raji (born 1995/1996) is a Nigerian-Canadian computer scientist and socio-tech leader who works on algorithmic bias, AI accountability, and algorithmic auditing. A current Mozilla fellow, she has been recognized by MIT Technology Review and Forbes as one of the world's top young innovators. Raji started her work with racial bias in technology during her internship with Clarifai when she recognized that people of color were more often tagged for NSFW compared to white people. Raji has previously worked with Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and the Algorithmic Justice League on researching gender and racial bias in facial recognition technology. Her work on racial bias in facial recognition has forced companies to ultimately change their practices. She has also worked with Google’s Ethical AI team and been a research fellow at the Partnership on AI and AI Now Institute at New York University working on how to operationalize ethical considerations in machine learning engineering practice. She was working on a computer vision model that would help clients flag inappropriate images as NSFW. == Early life and education == Raji was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and moved to Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, when she was four years old. Eventually her family moved to Ottawa. She attended Colonel By Secondary School and completed the International Baccalaureate programme. She studied Engineering Science at the University of Toronto, graduating in 2019. In 2015, she founded Project Include, a nonprofit providing increased student access to engineering education, mentorship, and resources in low income and immigrant communities in the Greater Toronto Area. She started a Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in Aug 2021. == Career and research == Raji worked with Joy Buolamwini at the MIT Media Lab and Algorithmic Justice League, where she audited commercial facial recognition technologies from Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Face++, and Kairos. They found that these technologies were significantly less accurate for darker-skinned women than for white men. With support from other top AI researchers and increased public pressure and campaigning, their work led IBM and Amazon to agree to support facial recognition regulation and later halt the sale of their product to police for at least a year. Raji also interned at machine learning startup Clarifai, where she worked on a computer vision model for flagging images. She participated in a research mentorship program at Google and worked with their Ethical AI team on creating model cards, a documentation framework for more transparent machine learning model reporting. She also co-led the development of internal auditing practices at Google. Her contributions at Google were separately presented and published at the AAAI conference and ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. In 2019, Raji was a summer research fellow at The Partnership on AI working on setting industry machine learning transparency standards and benchmarking norms. Raji was a Tech Fellow at the AI Now Institute worked on algorithmic and AI auditing. Currently, she is a fellow at the Mozilla Foundation researching algorithmic auditing and evaluation. Raji's work on bias in facial recognition systems has been highlighted in the 2020 documentary Coded Bias directed by Shalini Kantayya. She also took part in the 2026 documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist directed by Daniel Roher. == Awards == 2019 Venture Beat AI Innovations Award in category AI for Good (received with Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru) 2020 MIT Technology Review 35 Under 35 Innovator Award 2020 EFF Pioneer Award (received with Buolamwini and Gebru) 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 Award in Enterprise Technology 2021 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics Hall of Fame Honoree 2023 Time magazine 100 Most Influential People in AI
Read more →
AI Paraphrasing Tools Reviews: What Actually Works in 2026

Comparing the best AI paraphrasing tool? An AI paraphrasing tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI paraphrasing tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.
Read more →
Macromedia FreeHand

Macromedia FreeHand (formerly Aldus FreeHand) is a discontinued computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeHand was similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Xara Designer Pro. Because of FreeHand's dedicated page layout and text control features, it also compares to Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress. Professions using FreeHand include graphic design, illustration, cartography, fashion and textile design, product design, architects, scientific research, and multimedia production. FreeHand was created by Altsys Corporation in 1988 and licensed to Aldus Corporation, which released versions 1 through 4. In 1994, Aldus merged with Adobe Systems and because of the overlapping market with Adobe Illustrator, FreeHand was returned to Altsys by order of the Federal Trade Commission. Altsys was later bought by Macromedia, which released FreeHand versions 5 through 11 (FreeHand MX). In 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia and its product line which included FreeHand MX, under whose ownership it presently resides. Since 2003, FreeHand development has been discontinued; in the Adobe Systems catalog, FreeHand has been replaced by Adobe Illustrator. FreeHand MX continues to run under Windows 11 and under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) within Rosetta, a PowerPC code emulator, and requires a registration patch supplied by Adobe. FreeHand 10 runs without problems on Mac OS X Snow Leopard with Rosetta enabled, and does not require a registration patch. Later versions of macOS can use a Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server virtual machine to emulate the required PowerPC support. == History == === Altsys and Aldus FreeHand === In 1984, James R. Von Ehr founded Altsys Corporation to develop graphics applications for personal computers. Based in Plano, Texas, the company initially produced font editing and conversion software; Fontastic Plus, Metamorphosis, and the Art Importer. Their premier PostScript font-design package, Fontographer, was released in 1986 and was the first such program on the market. With the PostScript background having been established by Fontographer, Altsys also developed FreeHand (originally called Masterpiece) as a Macintosh Postscript-based illustration program that used Bézier curves for drawing and was similar to Adobe Illustrator. FreeHand was announced as "... a Macintosh graphics program described as having all the features of Adobe's Illustrator plus drawing tools such as those in Mac Paint and Mac Draft and special effects similar to those in Cricket Draw." Seattle's Aldus Corporation acquired a licensing agreement with Altsys Corporation to release FreeHand along with their flagship product, Pagemaker, and Aldus FreeHand 1.0 was released in 1988. FreeHand's product name used intercaps; the F and H were capitalized. The partnership between the two companies continued with Altsys developing FreeHand and with Aldus controlling marketing and sales. After 1988, a competitive exchange between Aldus FreeHand and Adobe Illustrator ensued on the Macintosh platform with each software advancing new tools, achieving better speed, and matching significant features. Windows PC development also allowed Illustrator 2 (aka, Illustrator 88 on the Mac) and FreeHand 3 to release Windows versions to the graphics market. FreeHand 1.0 sold for $495 in 1988. It included the standard drawing tools and features as other draw programs including special effects in fills and screens, text manipulation tools, and full support for CMYK color printing. It was also possible to create and insert PostScript routines anywhere within the program. FreeHand performed in preview mode instead of keyline mode but performance was slower. FreeHand 2.0 sold for $495 in 1989. Besides improving on the features of FreeHand 1.0, FreeHand 2 added faster operation, Pantone colors, stroked text, flexible fill patterns and automatically import graphic assets from other programs. It added accurate control over a color monitor screen display, limited only by its resolution. FreeHand 3.0 sold for $595 in 1991. New features included resizable color, style, and layer panels including an Attributes menu. Also tighter precision of both the existing tools and aligning of objects. FH3 created compound Paths. Text could be converted to paths, applied to an ellipse, or made vertical. Carried over from version 1.0, FreeHand 3 suffered by having text entered into a dialog box instead of directly to the page. In October 1991, a 3.1 upgrade made FreeHand work with System 7 but additionally, it supported pressure-sensitive drawing which offered varying line widths with a users stroke. It improved element manipulation and added more import/export options. FreeHand 4.0 sold for $595 in 1994. Altsys ported FreeHand 3.0 to the NeXT system creating a new program named Virtuoso. Virtuoso continued its development at Altsys and version 2.0 of Virtuoso was feature-equivalent to FreeHand 4 (with the addition of NeXT-specific features such as Services and Display PostScript) and file compatible, with Virtuoso 2 able to open FreeHand 4 files and vice versa. A prominent feature of this version was the ability to type directly into the page and wrap inside or outside any shape. It also included drag-and-drop color imaging, a larger pasteboard, and a user interface that featured floating, rollup panels. The colors palette included a color mixer for adding new colors to the swatch list. Speed increases were made. In the same year of FreeHand 4 release, Adobe Systems announced merger plans with Aldus Corporation for $525 million. Fear about the end of competition between these two leading applications was reported in the media and expressed by customers (Illustrator versus FreeHand and Adobe Photoshop versus Aldus PhotoStyler.) Because of this overlapping of the market, Altsys stepped in by suing Aldus, saying that the merger deal was "a prima facie violation of a non-compete clause within the FreeHand licensing agreement." Altsys CEO Jim Von Ehr explained, "No one loves FreeHand more than we do. We will do whatever it takes to see it survive." The Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint against Adobe Systems on October 18, 1994, ordering a divestiture of FreeHand to "remedy the lessening of competition resulting from the acquisition as alleged in the Commission's complaint," and further, the FTC ordering, "That for a period of ten (10) years from the date on which this order becomes final, respondents shall not, without the prior approval of the Commission, directly or indirectly, through subsidiaries, partnerships, or otherwise .. Acquire any Professional Illustration Software or acquire or enter into any exclusive license to Professional Illustration Software;" (referring to FreeHand.) FreeHand was returned to Altsys with all licensing and marketing rights as well as Aldus FreeHand's customer list. === Macromedia Freehand === By late 1994, Altsys still retained all rights to FreeHand. Despite brief plans to keep it in-house to sell it along with Fontographer and Virtuoso, Altsys reached an agreement with the multimedia software company, Macromedia, to be acquired. This mutual agreement provided FreeHand and Fontographer a new home with ample resources for marketing, sales, and competition against the newly merged Adobe-Aldus company. Altsys would remain in Richardson, Texas, but would be renamed as the Digital Arts Group of Macromedia and was responsible for the continued development of FreeHand. Macromedia received FreeHand's 200,000 customers and expanded its traditional product line of multimedia graphics software to illustration and design graphics software. CEO James Von Ehr became a Macromedia vice-president until 1997 when he left to start another venture. FreeHand 5.0 sold for $595 in 1995. This version featured a more customizable and expanded workspace, multiple views, stronger design and editing tools, a report generator, spell check, paragraph styles, multicolor gradient fills up to 64 colors, speed improvements, and it accepted Illustrator plugins. In September 1995, a 5.5 upgrade added Photoshop plug-in support, PDF import capabilities, the Extract feature, inline graphics to text, improved auto-expanding text containers, the Crop feature, and the Create PICT Image feature. A FreeHand 5.5 upgrade was part of the FreeHand Graphics Studio (a suite that included Fontographer, Macromedia xRes image editing application, and Extreme 3D animation and modeling application). FreeHand 6.0 in 1996. This version only existed in beta. Some Freehand 7 prerelease versions were released under the Freehand 6 tag. FreeHand 7.0 sold for $399 in 1996, or $449 as part of the FreeHand Graphics Studio (see above.) Features included a redesigned user interface that allowed recombining Inspectors, Panel Tabs, Dockable Panels, Smart Cursors,
Read more →
Selmer Bringsjord

Selmer Bringsjord (born November 24, 1958) is a professor of computer science and cognitive science and a former chair of the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He also holds an appointment in the Lally School of Management & Technology and teaches artificial Intelligence (AI), formal logic, human and machine reasoning, and philosophy of AI. == Biography == Bringsjord's education includes a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Brown University, where he studied under Roderick Chisholm. He conducts research in AI as the director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning (RAIR) Laboratory. He specializes in the logico-mathematical and philosophical foundations of AI and cognitive science, and in collaboratively building AI systems on the basis of computational logic. Bringsjord believes that "the human mind will forever be superior to AI", and that "much of what many humans do for a living will be better done by indefatigable machines who require not a cent in pay". Bringsjord has stated that the "ultimate growth industry will be building smarter and smarter such machines on the one hand, and philosophizing about whether they are truly conscious and free on the other". Bringsjord has an argument for P = NP using digital physics. Other research includes developing a new computational-logic framework allowing the formalization of deliberative multi-agent "mindreading" as applied to the realm of nuclear strategy, with the goal of creating a model and simulation to enable reliable prediction. He has published an opinion piece advocating for counter-terrorism security ensured by pervasive, all-seeing sensors; automated reasoners; and autonomous, lethal robots. Bringsjord received a National Science Foundation award to research Social Robotics and the Covey Award for the advancement of philosophy of computing awarded by the International Association for Computing And Philosophy, among several others prizes. == Books authored == with Yang, Y. Mental Metalogic: A New, Unifying Theory of Human and Machine Reasoning (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum).(2007) with Zenzen, M. Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation, and More (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer). (2003) ISBN 978-1402010958 with Ferrucci, D. Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity: Inside the Mind of Brutus, A Storytelling Machine (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum).(2000) Abortion: A Dialogue (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett).(1997) What Robots Can and Can’t Be (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer).(1992) Soft Wars (New York, NY: Penguin USA). A novel.(1991)
Read more →
How to Choose an AI Bug Finder

Comparing the best AI bug finder? An AI bug finder is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI bug finder slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Below we compare features, pricing, and real output so you can choose with confidence.
Read more →
AI Photo Editors Reviews: What Actually Works in 2026

Curious about the best AI photo editor? An AI photo editor is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI photo editor slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.
Read more →
Principle of rationality

The principle of rationality (or rationality principle) was coined by Karl R. Popper in his Harvard Lecture of 1963, and published in his book Myth of Framework. It is related to what he called the 'logic of the situation' in an Economica article of 1944/1945, published later in his book The Poverty of Historicism. According to Popper's rationality principle, agents act in the most adequate way according to the objective situation. It is an idealized conception of human behavior which he used to drive his model of situational analysis. Cognitive scientist Allen Newell elaborated on the principle in his account of knowledge level modeling. == Popper == Popper called for social science to be grounded in what he called situational analysis or situational logic. This requires building models of social situations which include individual actors and their relationship to social institutions, e.g. markets, legal codes, bureaucracies, etc. These models attribute certain aims and information to the actors. This forms the 'logic of the situation', the result of reconstructing meticulously all circumstances of an historical event. The 'principle of rationality' is the assumption that people are instrumental in trying to reach their goals, and this is what drives the model. Popper believed that this model could be continuously refined to approach the objective truth. Popper called his principle of rationality nearly empty (a technical term meaning without empirical content) and strictly speaking false, but nonetheless tremendously useful. These remarks earned him a lot of criticism because seemingly he had swerved from his famous Logic of Scientific Discovery. Among the many philosophers having discussed Popper's principle of rationality from the 1960s up to now are Noretta Koertge, R. Nadeau, Viktor J. Vanberg, Hans Albert, E. Matzner, Ian C. Jarvie, Mark A. Notturno, John Wettersten, Ian C. Böhm. == Newell == In the context of knowledge-based systems, Newell (in 1982) proposed the following principle of rationality: "If an agent has knowledge that one of its actions will lead to one of its goals, then the agent will select that action." This principle is employed by agents at the knowledge level to move closer to a desired goal. An important philosophical difference between Newell and Popper is that Newell argued that the knowledge level is real in the sense that it exists in nature and is not made up. This allowed Newell to treat the rationality principle as a way of understanding nature and avoid the problems Popper ran into by treating knowledge as non physical and therefore non empirical.
Read more →
Cognitive computer

A cognitive computer is a computer that hardwires artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms into an integrated circuit that closely reproduces the behavior of the human brain. It generally adopts a neuromorphic engineering approach. Synonyms include neuromorphic chip and cognitive chip. In 2023, IBM's proof-of-concept NorthPole chip (optimized for 2-, 4- and 8-bit precision) achieved remarkable performance in image recognition. In 2013, IBM developed Watson, a cognitive computer that uses neural networks and deep learning techniques. The following year, it developed the 2014 TrueNorth microchip architecture which is designed to be closer in structure to the human brain than the von Neumann architecture used in conventional computers. In 2017, Intel also announced its version of a cognitive chip in "Loihi, which it intended to be available to university and research labs in 2018. Intel (most notably with its Pohoiki Beach and Springs systems), Qualcomm, and others are improving neuromorphic processors steadily. == IBM TrueNorth chip == TrueNorth was a neuromorphic CMOS integrated circuit produced by IBM in 2014. It is a manycore processor network on a chip design, with 4096 cores, each one having 256 programmable simulated neurons for a total of just over a million neurons. In turn, each neuron has 256 programmable "synapses" that convey the signals between them. Hence, the total number of programmable synapses is just over 268 million (228). Its basic transistor count is 5.4 billion. In 2023 Zhejiang University and Alibaba developed Darwin a neuromorphic chip The darwin3 chip was designed around 2023 so it is fairly modern compared to IBM's TrueNorth or Intel's LoihI. === Details === Memory, computation, and communication are handled in each of the 4096 neurosynaptic cores, TrueNorth circumvents the von Neumann-architecture bottleneck and is very energy-efficient, with IBM claiming a power consumption of 70 milliwatts and a power density that is 1/10,000th of conventional microprocessors. The SyNAPSE chip operates at lower temperatures and power because it only draws power necessary for computation. Skyrmions have been proposed as models of the synapse on a chip. The neurons are emulated using a Linear-Leak Integrate-and-Fire (LLIF) model, a simplification of the leaky integrate-and-fire model. According to IBM, it does not have a clock, operates on unary numbers, and computes by counting to a maximum of 19 bits. The cores are event-driven by using both synchronous and asynchronous logic, and are interconnected through an asynchronous packet-switched mesh network on chip (NOC). IBM developed a new network to program and use TrueNorth. It included a simulator, a new programming language, an integrated programming environment, and libraries. This lack of backward compatibility with any previous technology (e.g., C++ compilers) poses serious vendor lock-in risks and other adverse consequences that may prevent it from commercialization in the future. === Research === In 2018, a cluster of TrueNorth network-linked to a master computer was used in stereo vision research that attempted to extract the depth of rapidly moving objects in a scene. == IBM NorthPole chip == In 2023, IBM released its NorthPole chip, which is a proof-of-concept for dramatically improving performance by intertwining compute with memory on-chip, thus eliminating the Von Neumann bottleneck. It blends approaches from IBM's 2014 TrueNorth system with modern hardware designs to achieve speeds about 4,000 times faster than TrueNorth. It can run ResNet-50 or Yolo-v4 image recognition tasks about 22 times faster, with 25 times less energy and 5 times less space, when compared to GPUs which use the same 12-nm node process that it was fabricated with. It includes 224 MB of RAM and 256 processor cores and can perform 2,048 operations per core per cycle at 8-bit precision, and 8,192 operations at 2-bit precision. It runs at between 25 and 425 MHz. This is an inferencing chip, but it cannot yet handle GPT-4 because of memory and accuracy limitations == Intel Loihi chip == === Pohoiki Springs === Pohoiki Springs is a system that incorporates Intel's self-learning neuromorphic chip, named Loihi, introduced in 2017, perhaps named after the Hawaiian seamount Lōʻihi. Intel claims Loihi is about 1000 times more energy efficient than general-purpose computing systems used to train neural networks. In theory, Loihi supports both machine learning training and inference on the same silicon independently of a cloud connection, and more efficiently than convolutional neural networks or deep learning neural networks. Intel points to a system for monitoring a person's heartbeat, taking readings after events such as exercise or eating, and using the chip to normalize the data and work out the ‘normal’ heartbeat. It can then spot abnormalities and deal with new events or conditions. The first iteration of the chip was made using Intel's 14 nm fabrication process and houses 128 clusters of 1,024 artificial neurons each for a total of 131,072 simulated neurons. This offers around 130 million synapses, far less than the human brain's 800 trillion synapses, and behind IBM's TrueNorth. Loihi is available for research purposes among more than 40 academic research groups as a USB form factor. In October 2019, researchers from Rutgers University published a research paper to demonstrate the energy efficiency of Intel's Loihi in solving simultaneous localization and mapping. In March 2020, Intel and Cornell University published a research paper to demonstrate the ability of Intel's Loihi to recognize different hazardous materials, which could eventually aid to "diagnose diseases, detect weapons and explosives, find narcotics, and spot signs of smoke and carbon monoxide". === Pohoiki Beach === Intel's Loihi 2, named Pohoiki Beach, was released in September 2021 with 64 cores. It boasts faster speeds, higher-bandwidth inter-chip communications for enhanced scalability, increased capacity per chip, a more compact size due to process scaling, and improved programmability. === Hala Point === Hala Point packages 1,152 Loihi 2 processors produced on Intel 3 process node in a six-rack-unit chassis. The system supports up to 1.15 billion neurons and 128 billion synapses distributed over 140,544 neuromorphic processing cores, consuming 2,600 watts of power. It includes over 2,300 embedded x86 processors for ancillary computations. Intel claimed in 2024 that Hala Point was the world’s largest neuromorphic system. It uses Loihi 2 chips. It is claimed to offer 10x more neuron capacity and up to 12x higher performance. The Darwin3 chip exceeds these specs. Hala Point provides up to 20 quadrillion operations per second, (20 petaops), with efficiency exceeding 15 trillion (8-bit) operations s−1 W−1 on conventional deep neural networks. Hala Point integrates processing, memory and communication channels in a massively parallelized fabric, providing 16 PB s−1 of memory bandwidth, 3.5 PB s−1 of inter-core communication bandwidth, and 5 TB s−1 of inter-chip bandwidth. The system can process its 1.15 billion neurons 20 times faster than a human brain. Its neuron capacity is roughly equivalent to that of an owl brain or the cortex of a capuchin monkey. Loihi-based systems can perform inference and optimization using 100 times less energy at speeds as much as 50 times faster than CPU/GPU architectures. Intel claims that Hala Point can create LLMs. Much further research is needed == SpiNNaker == SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network Architecture) is a massively parallel, manycore supercomputer architecture designed by the Advanced Processor Technologies Research Group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester. == Criticism == Critics argue that a room-sized computer – as in the case of IBM's Watson – is not a viable alternative to a three-pound human brain. Some also cite the difficulty for a single system to bring so many elements together, such as the disparate sources of information as well as computing resources. In 2021, The New York Times released Steve Lohr's article "What Ever Happened to IBM’s Watson?". He wrote about some costly failures of IBM Watson. One of them, a cancer-related project called the Oncology Expert Advisor, was abandoned in 2016 as a costly failure. During the collaboration, Watson could not use patient data. Watson struggled to decipher doctors’ notes and patient histories. The development of LLMs has placed a new emphasis on cognitive computers, because the Transformer technology that underpins LLMs demands huge energy for GPUs and PCs. Cognitive computers use significantly less energy, but the details of STDPs and neuron models cannot yet match the accuracy of backprop, and so ANN to SNN weight translations such as QAT and PQT or progressive quantization are becoming popular, with their own limitations.
Read more →
Hideto Tomabechi

Hideto Tomabechi (苫米地英人, Tomabechi Hideto; born 1959) is a Japanese cognitive scientist who is an adjunct fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and has had an executive role in several companies. == Early life and education == He grew up in Minato-ku, Tokyo. He graduated from Komaba Toho High School and then joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his first degree from Sophia University, then joined Mitsubishi Real Estate. Tomabechi was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University and became member of Yale University Artificial Intelligence Research Center and Yale Cognitive Science Program. Hideto Tomabechi's research topic was: Cognition Models for Language Expressions and Computational Methods (Tomabechi Algorithm). Hideto Tomabechi received his Ph.D. in the field of computational linguistics from Carnegie Mellon University. His 1993 Ph.D. Thesis was entitled "Efficient Unification for Natural Language". == Career timeline == 1992-1998: Director, Justsystem Scientific Institute. 1998: CEO of Cognitive Research Laboratories Inc. 2007: Adjunct Fellow at the Cyber Security & Privacy Research Institute (CyLab) at Carnegie Mellon University. 2020: Visiting professor at Nano & Life Research Center, Waseda University. 2020: Chairman, Resilience Japan, LLC. 2022: Chairman of Japan Society for Foreign Policy. == Brain research == In 1993, Hideto Tomabechi became director of the Development Department. Later, Tomabechi became director of the JustSystems Basic Research Institute Tomabechi researched the basic functions of the human brain and mind. The purpose of brain and consciousness research were to develop the human machine interface. The main areas of research were altered states of consciousness, hypnosis, homeostasis, brain functions, and functions of the human mind in cyberspace. Dr. Tomabechi founded the Bechi Unit, the world's first virtual currency at JustSystems, based on Tomabech Algorithms. == Brainwashing == Tomabechi was the scientist who deprogrammed the leaders of the religious cult responsible for the terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. The cult (Aum Shinrikyo) brainwashed its people and they carried out the attacks in an influenced state of consciousness.
Read more →
How to Choose an AI Customer-support Bot

Comparing the best AI customer-support bot? An AI customer-support bot is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI customer-support bot slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.
Read more →
Situated approach (artificial intelligence)

In artificial intelligence research, the situated approach builds agents that are designed to behave effectively successfully in their environment. This requires designing AI "from the bottom-up" by focussing on the basic perceptual and motor skills required to survive. The situated approach gives a much lower priority to abstract reasoning or problem-solving skills. The approach was originally proposed as an alternative to traditional approaches (that is, approaches popular before 1985 or so). After several decades, classical AI technologies started to face intractable issues (e.g. combinatorial explosion) when confronted with real-world modeling problems. All approaches to address these issues focus on modeling intelligences situated in an environment. They have become known as the situated approach to AI. == Emergence of a concept == === From traditional AI to Nouvelle AI === During the late 1980s, the approach now known as Nouvelle AI (Nouvelle means new in French) was pioneered at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Rodney Brooks. As opposed to classical or traditional artificial intelligence, Nouvelle AI purposely avoided the traditional goal of modeling human-level performance, but rather tries to create systems with intelligence at the level of insects, closer to real-world robots. But eventually, at least at MIT new AI did lead to an attempt for humanoid AI in the Cog Project. === From Nouvelle AI to behavior-based and situated AI === The conceptual shift introduced by nouvelle AI flourished in the robotics area, given way to behavior-based robotics (BBR), a methodology for developing AI based on a modular decomposition of intelligence. It was made famous by Rodney Brooks: his subsumption architecture was one of the earliest attempts to describe a mechanism for developing BBAI. It is extremely popular in robotics and to a lesser extent to implement intelligent virtual agents because it allows the successful creation of real-time dynamic systems that can run in complex environments. For example, it underlies the intelligence of the Sony Aibo and many RoboCup robot teams. Realizing that in fact all these approaches were aiming at building not an abstract intelligence, but rather an intelligence situated in a given environment, they have come to be known as the situated approach. In fact, this approach stems out from early insights of Alan Turing, describing the need to build machines equipped with sense organs to learn directly from the real-world instead of focusing on abstract activities, such as playing chess. == Definitions == Classically, a software entity is defined as a simulated element, able to act on itself and on its environment, and which has an internal representation of itself and of the outside world. An entity can communicate with other entities, and its behavior is the consequence of its perceptions, its representations, and its interactions with the other entities. === AI loop === Simulating entities in a virtual environment requires simulating the entire process that goes from a perception of the environment, or more generally from a stimulus, to an action on the environment. This process is called the AI loop and technology used to simulate it can be subdivided in two categories. Sensorimotor or low-level AI deals with either the perception problem (what is perceived?) or the animation problem (how are actions executed?). Decisional or high-level AI deals with the action selection problem (what is the most appropriate action in response to a given perception, i.e. what is the most appropriate behavior?). === Traditional or symbolic AI === There are two main approaches in decisional AI. The vast majority of the technologies available on the market, such as planning algorithms, finite-state machines (FSA), or expert systems, are based on the traditional or symbolic AI approach. Its main characteristics are: It is top-down: it subdivides, in a recursive manner, a given problem into a series of sub-problems that are supposedly easier to solve. It is knowledge-based: it relies on a symbolic description of the world, such as a set of rules. However, the limits of traditional AI, which goal is to build systems that mimic human intelligence, are well-known: inevitably, a combinatorial explosion of the number of rules occurs due to the complexity of the environment. In fact, it is impossible to predict all the situations that will be encountered by an autonomous entity. === Situated or behavioral AI === In order to address these issues, another approach to decisional AI, also known as situated or behavioral AI, has been proposed. It does not attempt to model systems that produce deductive reasoning processes, but rather systems that behave realistically in their environment. The main characteristics of this approach are the following: It is bottom-up: it relies on elementary behaviors, which can be combined to implement more complex behaviors. It is behavior-based: it does not rely on a symbolic description of the environment, but rather on a model of the interactions of the entities with their environment. The goal of situated AI is to model entities that are autonomous in their environment. This is achieved thanks to both the intrinsic robustness of the control architecture, and its adaptation capabilities to unforeseen situations. === Situated agents === In artificial intelligence and cognitive science, the term situated refers to an agent which is embedded in an environment. The term situated is commonly used to refer to robots, but some researchers argue that software agents can also be situated if: they exist in a dynamic (rapidly changing) environment, which they can manipulate or change through their actions, and which they can sense or perceive. Examples might include web-based agents, which can alter data or trigger processes (such as purchases) over the Internet, or virtual-reality bots which inhabit and change virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Being situated is generally considered to be part of being embodied, but it is useful to consider each perspective individually. The situated perspective emphasizes that intelligent behavior derives from the environment and the agent's interactions with it. The nature of these interactions are defined by an agent's embodiment. == Implementation principles == === Modular decomposition === The most important attribute of a system driven by situated AI is that the intelligence is controlled by a set of independent semi-autonomous modules. In the original systems, each module was actually a separate device or was at least conceived of as running on its own processing thread. Generally, though, the modules are just abstractions. In this respect, situated AI may be seen as a software engineering approach to AI, perhaps akin to object oriented design. Situated AI is often associated with reactive planning, but the two are not synonymous. Brooks advocated an extreme version of cognitive minimalism which required initially that the behavior modules were finite-state machines and thus contained no conventional memory or learning. This is associated with reactive AI because reactive AI requires reacting to the current state of the world, not to an agent's memory or preconception of that world. However, learning is obviously key to realistic strong AI, so this constraint has been relaxed, though not entirely abandoned. === Action selection mechanism === The situated AI community has presented several solutions to modeling decision-making processes, also known as action selection mechanisms. The first attempt to solve this problem goes back to subsumption architectures, which were in fact more an implementation technique than an algorithm. However, this attempt paved the way to several others, in particular the free-flow hierarchies and activation networks. A comparison of the structure and performances of these two mechanisms demonstrated the advantage of using free-flow hierarchies in solving the action selection problem. However, motor schemas and process description languages are two other approaches that have been used with success for autonomous robots. == Notes and references == Arsenio, Artur M. (2004) Towards an embodied and situated AI, In: Proceedings of the International FLAIRS conference, 2004. (online) The Artificial Life Route To Artificial Intelligence: Building Embodied, Situated Agents, Luc Steels and Rodney Brooks Eds., Lawrence Erlbaum Publishing, 1995. (ISBN 978-0805815184) Rodney A. Brooks Cambrian Intelligence (MIT Press, 1999) ISBN 0-262-52263-2; collection of early papers including "Intelligence without representation" and "Intelligence without reason", from 1986 & 1991 respectively. Ronald C. Arkin Behavior-Based Robotics (MIT Press, 1998) ISBN 0-262-01165-4 Hendriks-Jansen, Horst (1996) Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Read more →
AI Headshot Generators: Free vs Paid (2026)

Curious about the best AI headshot generator? An AI headshot generator is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI headshot generator slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.
Read more →
Top 10 AI Voice Assistants Compared (2026)

Comparing the best AI voice assistant? An AI voice assistant is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI voice assistant slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Below we compare features, pricing, and real output so you can choose with confidence.
Read more →