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AI Chat Free Online — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Attack path management

    Attack path management

    Attack path management is a cybersecurity technique that involves the continuous discovery, mapping, and risk assessment of identity-based attack paths. Attack path management is distinct from other computer security mitigation strategies in that it does not rely on finding individual attack paths through vulnerabilities, exploits, or offensive testing. Rather, attack path management techniques analyze all attack paths present in an environment based on active identity management policies, authentication configurations, and active authenticated "sessions" between objects. == Overview == Attack path management relies on concepts such as mapping and removing attack paths, identifying attack path choke points, and remediation of attack paths. Identity-based attacks are present in most publicly disclosed breaches, whether through social engineering to gain initial access to Active Directories or lateral movement for privilege escalation. Attackers require privileges to attack an environment’s most sensitive segments. Attack path management often involves removing out-of-date privileges and privilege assignments given to overly large groups. In attack path management, attack graphs are used to represent how a network of machines’ security is vulnerable to attack. The nodes in an attack graph represent principals and other objects such as machines, accounts, and security groups. The edges in an attack graph represent the links and relationships between nodes. Some nodes are easy to penetrate due to short paths from regular users to domain admins, resulting in focal points of concentrated network traffic, which are known as attack path choke points. Attack graphs are often analyzed using algorithms and visualization. Attack path management also identifies tier 0 assets, which are considered the most vulnerable because they have direct or indirect control of an Active Directory or Microsoft Entra ID environment.

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  • AI@50

    AI@50

    AI@50, formally known as the "Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years" (July 13–15, 2006), was a conference organized by James H. Moor, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Dartmouth workshop which effectively inaugurated the history of artificial intelligence. Five of the original ten attendees were present: Marvin Minsky, Ray Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Trenchard More, and John McCarthy. While sponsored by Dartmouth College, General Electric, and the Frederick Whittemore Foundation, a $200,000 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called for a report of the proceedings that would: Analyze progress on AI's original challenges during the first 50 years, and assess whether the challenges were "easier" or "harder" than originally thought and why Document what the AI@50 participants believe are the major research and development challenges facing this field over the next 50 years, and identify what breakthroughs will be needed to meet those challenges Relate those challenges and breakthroughs against developments and trends in other areas such as control theory, signal processing, information theory, statistics, and optimization theory. A summary report by the conference director, James H. Moor, was published in AI Magazine. == Conference Program and links to published papers == James H. Moor, conference Director, Introduction Carol Folt and Barry Scherr, Welcome Carey Heckman, Tonypandy and the Origins of Science === AI: Past, Present, Future === John McCarthy, What Was Expected, What We Did, and AI Today Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine === The Future Model of Thinking === Ron Brachman and Hector Levesque, A Large Part of Human Thought David Mumford, What is the Right Model for 'Thought'? Stuart Russell, The Approach of Modern AI === The Future of Network Models === Geoffrey Hinton & Simon Osindero, From Pandemonium to Graphical Models and Back Again Rick Granger, From Brain Circuits to Mind Manufacture === The Future of Learning & Search === Oliver Selfridge, Learning and Education for Software: New Approaches in Machine Learning Ray Solomonoff, Machine Learning — Past and Future Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Learning to be Intelligent Peter Norvig, Web Search as a Product of and Catalyst for AI === The Future of AI === Rod Brooks, Intelligence and Bodies Nils Nilsson, Routes to the Summit Eric Horvitz, In Pursuit of Artificial Intelligence: Reflections on Challenges and Trajectories === The Future of Vision === Eric Grimson, Intelligent Medical Image Analysis: Computer Assisted Surgery and Disease Monitoring Takeo Kanade, Artificial Intelligence Vision: Progress and Non-Progress Terry Sejnowski, A Critique of Pure Vision === The Future of Reasoning === Alan Bundy, Constructing, Selecting and Repairing Representations of Knowledge Edwina Rissland, The Exquisite Centrality of Examples Bart Selman, The Challenge and Promise of Automated Reasoning === The Future of Language and Cognition === Trenchard More The Birth of Array Theory and Nial Eugene Charniak, Why Natural Language Processing is Now Statistical Natural Language Processing Pat Langley, Intelligent Behavior in Humans and Machines === The Future of the Future === Ray Kurzweil, Why We Can Be Confident of Turing Test Capability Within a Quarter Century George Cybenko, The Future Trajectory of AI Charles J. Holland, DARPA's Perspective === AI and Games === Jonathan Schaeffer, Games as a Test-bed for Artificial Intelligence Research Danny Kopec, Chess and AI Shay Bushinsky, Principle Positions in Deep Junior's Development === Future Interactions with Intelligent Machines === Daniela Rus, Making Bodies Smart Sherry Turkle, From Building Intelligences to Nurturing Sensibilities === Selected Submitted Papers: Future Strategies for AI === J. Storrs Hall, Self-improving AI: An Analysis Selmer Bringsjord, The Logicist Manifesto Vincent C. Müller, Is There a Future for AI Without Representation? Kristinn R. Thórisson, Integrated A.I. Systems === Selected Submitted Papers: Future Possibilities for AI === Eric Steinhart, Survival as a Digital Ghost Colin T. A. Schmidt, Did You Leave That 'Contraption' Alone With Your Little Sister? Michael Anderson & Susan Leigh Anderson, The Status of Machine Ethics Marcello Guarini, Computation, Coherence, and Ethical Reasoning

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  • Dartmouth workshop

    Dartmouth workshop

    The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence was a 1956 summer workshop widely considered to be the founding event of artificial intelligence as a field. The workshop has been referred to as "the Constitutional Convention of AI". The project's four organizers, Claude Shannon, John McCarthy, Nathaniel Rochester and Marvin Minsky, are considered some of the "founding fathers" of AI. However it was not the first conference devoted to what would now be described as the question of artificial intelligence: it postdated meetings such as the 1951 Paris cybernetics conference and the Macy meetings. The project lasted approximately six to eight weeks and consisted largely of brainstorming sessions. Eleven mathematicians and scientists originally planned to attend; not all of them attended, but more than ten others came for short times. == Background == In the early 1950s, there were various names for the field of "thinking machines": cybernetics, automata theory, and complex information processing. The variety of names suggests the variety of conceptual orientations. In 1955, John McCarthy, then a young Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College, decided to organize a group to clarify and develop ideas about thinking machines. He picked the name 'Artificial Intelligence' for the new field. He chose the name partly for its neutrality; avoiding a focus on narrow automata theory, and avoiding cybernetics which was heavily focused on analog feedback, as well as him potentially having to accept the assertive Norbert Wiener as guru or having to argue with him. In early 1955, McCarthy approached the Rockefeller Foundation to request funding for a summer seminar at Dartmouth for about 10 participants. In June, he and Claude Shannon, a founder of information theory then at Bell Labs, met with Robert Morison, Director of Biological and Medical Research to discuss the idea and possible funding, though Morison was unsure whether money would be made available for such a visionary project. On September 2, 1955, the project was formally proposed by McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon. The proposal is credited with introducing the term 'artificial intelligence'. The Proposal states: We propose that a 2-month, 10-man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer. The proposal goes on to discuss computers, natural language processing, neural networks, theory of computation, abstraction and creativity (these areas within the field of artificial intelligence are considered still relevant to the work of the field). On May 26, 1956, McCarthy notified Robert Morison of the planned 11 attendees: For the full period: 1) Dr. Marvin Minsky 2) Dr. Julian Bigelow 3) Professor D.M. Mackay 4) Mr. Ray Solomonoff 5) Mr. John Holland 6) Dr. John McCarthy For four weeks: 7) Dr. Claude Shannon 8) Mr. Nathaniel Rochester 9) Mr. Oliver Selfridge For the first two weeks: 10) Dr. Allen Newell 11) Professor Herbert Simon He noted, "we will concentrate on a problem of devising a way of programming a calculator to form concepts and to form generalizations. This of course is subject to change when the group gets together." The actual participants came at different times, mostly for much shorter times. Trenchard More replaced Rochester for three weeks and MacKay and Holland did not attend—but the project was set to begin. Around June 18, 1956, the earliest participants (perhaps only Ray Solomonoff, maybe with Tom Etter) arrived at the Dartmouth campus in Hanover, N.H., to join John McCarthy who already had an apartment there. Solomonoff and Minsky stayed at Professors' apartments, but most would stay at the Hanover Inn. == Dates == The Dartmouth Workshop is usually said to have run for six weeks. Ray Solomonoff's notes taken during the workshop, however, indicate that it ran for roughly eight weeks, from about June 18 to August 17. Solomonoff's notes start on June 22; June 28 mentions Minsky, June 30 mentions Hanover, N.H., July 1 mentions Tom Etter. On August 17, Solomonoff gave a final talk. == Participants == Initially, McCarthy lost his list of attendees. Instead, after the workshop, McCarthy sent Solomonoff a preliminary list of participants and visitors plus those interested in the subject. 47 people were listed. Solomonoff, however, made a list of participants in his notes of the summer project: Ray Solomonoff Marvin Minsky John McCarthy Claude Shannon Trenchard More Nat Rochester Oliver Selfridge Julian Bigelow W. Ross Ashby W.S. McCulloch Abraham Robinson Tom Etter John Nash David Sayre Arthur Samuel Kenneth R. Shoulders Shoulders' friend Alex Bernstein Herbert Simon Allen Newell Shannon attended Solomonoff's talk on July 10 and Bigelow gave a talk on August 15. Solomonoff doesn't mention Bernard Widrow, but in 1994 Widrow said that he and an unidentified colleague from the same lab in MIT had attended for one week. In the same interview Widrow recalled that "I think [Wesley] Clark and [Belmont] Farley were there from Lincoln Lab." Trenchard mentions R. Culver and Solomonoff mentions Bill Shutz. Herb Gelernter didn't attend, but was influenced later by what Rochester learned. In an article in IEEE Spectrum, Grace Solomonoff additionally identifies Peter Milner in a photo taken by Nathaniel Rochester in front of Dartmouth Hall. Ray Solomonoff, Marvin Minsky, and John McCarthy were the only three who stayed for the full time. Trenchard took attendance during two weeks of his three-week visit. From three to about eight people would attend the daily sessions. == Event and aftermath == They had the entire top floor of the Dartmouth Math Department to themselves, and most weekdays they would meet at the main math classroom where someone might lead a discussion focusing on his ideas, or more frequently, a general discussion would be held. It was not a directed group research project; discussions covered many topics, but several directions are considered to have been initiated or encouraged by the Workshop: the rise of symbolic methods, systems focused on limited domains (early expert systems), and deductive systems versus inductive systems. One participant, Arthur Samuel, said, "It was very interesting, very stimulating, very exciting". Ray Solomonoff kept notes giving his impression of the talks and the ideas from various discussions. === McCarthy's 1956 AI distribution list === This is the list in the "People Interested in the Artificial Intelligence Problem" document which McCarthy produced in 1956, partly in lieu of a list of attendees at the Dartmouth workshop. According to McCarthy the list was "being sent to the people on the list and a few others", and its purpose was "to let those on it know who is interested in receiving documents on the problem" of artificial intelligence. McCarthy also promised to deliver them a report on the Dartmouth conference, and to send an updated list soon afterwards. It includes people who did not attend the conference and does not include everyone who did attend it.

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  • 2024 Bilderberg Conference

    2024 Bilderberg Conference

    The 2024 Bilderberg Conference was held between May 30–June 2, 2024 in Madrid, Spain at the Eurostars Suites Mirasierra hotel. The 2024 meeting was the 70th edition of the event. A Bilderberg Group press release stated that there were 131 participants from around 25 countries. Established in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Bilderberg conferences (or meetings) are an annual private gathering of the European and North American political and business elite. Events are attended by between 120 and 150 people each year invited by the Bilderberg Group's steering committee; including prominent politicians, CEOs, national security experts, academics and journalists. Several US presidents have attended the meetings before winning a presidential election. These politicians include Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Bilderberg conferences operate under the Chatham House Rule, meaning that participants are sworn to secrecy and cannot disclose the identity or affiliation of any particular speaker. == Agenda == The key topics for discussion were announced on the Bilderberg website shortly before the meeting. These topics included: == Participants == A list of 131 participants was published on the Bilderberg website. This list may not be complete, as a source connected to the Bilderberg group told The Daily Telegraph in 2013 that some attendees do not have their names publicized. King Felipe VI of Spain was reported to have attended the meeting despite his name not being on the list.

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  • Artificial intelligence in fraud detection

    Artificial intelligence in fraud detection

    Artificial intelligence is used by many different businesses and organizations. It is widely used in the financial sector, especially by accounting firms, to help detect fraud. In 2022, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that fraud has impacted 46% of all businesses in the world. The shift from working in person to working from home has brought increased access to data. According to an FTC (Federal Trade Commission) study from 2022, customers reported fraud of approximately $5.8 billion in 2021, an increase of 70% from the year before. The majority of these scams were imposter scams and online shopping frauds. Furthermore, artificial intelligence plays a crucial role in developing advanced algorithms and machine learning models that enhance fraud detection systems, enabling businesses to stay ahead of evolving fraudulent tactics in an increasingly digital landscape. == Tools == === Expert systems === Expert systems were first designed in the 1970s as an expansion into artificial intelligence technologies. Their design is based on the premise of decreasing potential user error in decision-making and emulating mental reasoning used by experts in a particular field. They differentiate themselves from traditional linear reasoning models by separating identified points in data and processing them individually at the same time. Though, these systems do not rely purely on machine-learned intelligence. Information regarding rules, practices, and procedures in the form of "if-then" statements are implemented into the programming of the system. Users interact with the system by feeding information into the system either through direct entry or import of external data. An inference system compares the information provided by the user with corresponding rules that are believed to specifically apply to the situation. Using this information and the corresponding rules will be used to create a solution to the user's query. Expert systems will generally not operate properly when the common procedures for a specified situation are ambiguous due to the need for well-defined rules. Implementation of expert systems in accounting procedures is feasible in areas where professional judgment is required. Situations where expert systems are applicable include investigations into transactions that involve potential fraudulent entries, instances of going concern, and the evaluation of risk in the planning stages of an audit. === Continuous auditing === Continuous auditing is a set of processes that assess various aspects of information gathered in an audit to classify areas of risk and potential weaknesses in financial Internal controls at a more frequent rate than traditional methods. Instead of analyzing recorded transactions and journal entries periodically, continuous auditing focuses on interpreting the character of these actions more frequently. The frequency of these processes being undertaken as well as highlighting areas of importance is up to the discretion of their implementer, who commonly makes such decisions based on the level of risk in the accounts being evaluated and the goals of implementing the system. Performance of these processes can occur as frequently as being nearly instantaneous with an entry being posted. The processes involved with analyzing financial data in continuous auditing can include the creation of spreadsheets to allow for interactive information gathering, calculation of financial ratios for comparison with previously created models, and detection of errors in entered figures. A primary goal of this practice is to allow for quicker and easier detection of instances of faulty controls, errors, and instances of fraud. === Machine learning and deep learning === The ability of machine learning and deep learning to swiftly and effectively sort through vast volumes of data in the forms of various documents relevant to companies and documents being audited makes them applicable to the domains of audit and fraud detection. Examples of this include recognizing key language in contracts, identifying levels of risk of fraud in transactions, and assessing journal entries for misstatement. == Applications == === 'Big 4' Accounting Firms === Deloitte created an Al-enabled document-reviewing system in 2014. The system automates the method of reviewing and extracting relevant information from different business documents. Deloitte claims that this innovation has made a difference by reducing time spent going through lawful contract documents, invoices, money-related articulations, and board minutes by up to 50%. Working with IBM's Watson, Deloitte is developing cognitive-technology-enhanced commerce arrangements for its clients. LeasePoint is fueled by IBM TRIRIGA (this product evolved into IBM Maximo Real Estate and Facilities) and uses Deloitte's industrial information to create an end-to-end leasing portfolio. Automated Cognitive Resource Assessment employs IBM's Maximo innovation to progress the proficiency of asset inspection. Ernst and Young (EY) connected Al to the investigation of lease contracts. EY (Australia) has also received Al-enabled auditing technology. Collaborating with H20.ai, PwC developed an Al-enabled framework (GL.ai) capable of analyzing reports and preparing reports. PwC claims to have made a significant investment in normal dialect processing (NLP), an Al-enabled innovation to process unstructured information efficiently. KPMG built a portfolio of Al instruments, called KPMG Ignite, to upgrade trade decisions and forms. Working with Microsoft and IBM Watson, KPMG is creating instruments to coordinate Al, data analytics, Cognitive Technologies, and RPA. == Advantages == === Efficiency === The process of auditing an entity in an attempt to detect fraudulent activity requires the repeating of investigatory processes until an error or misstatement may be identified. Under traditional methods, these processes would be carried out by a human being. Proponents of artificial intelligence in fraud detection have stated that these traditional methods are inefficient and can be more quickly accomplished with the aid of an intelligent computing system. A survey of 400 chief executive officers created by KPMG in 2016 found that approximately 58% believed that artificial intelligence would play a key role in making audits more efficient in the future. === Data interpretation === Higher levels of fraud detection entail the use of professional judgement to interpret data. Supporters of artificial intelligence being used in financial audits have claimed that increased risks from instances of higher data interpretation can be minimized through such technologies. One necessary element of an audit of financial statements that requires professional judgement is the implementation of thresholds for materiality. Materiality entails the distinction between errors and transactions in financial statements that would impact decisions made by users of those financial statements. The threshold for materiality in an audit is set by the auditor based on various factors. Artificial intelligence has been used to interpret data and suggest materiality thresholds to be implemented through the use of expert systems. === Decreased costs === Those in favor of using artificial intelligence to complete investigations of fraud have stated that such technologies decrease the amount of time required to complete tasks that are repetitive. The claim further states that such efficiencies allow for lowered resource requirements, which can then be further spent on tasks that have not been fully automated. The audit firm Ernst & Young has posited these claims by declaring that their deep learning systems have been used to reduce time spent on administrative tasks by analyzing relevant audit documents. According to the firm, this has allowed their employees to focus more on judgement and analysis. == Disadvantages == === Job Displacement === The inescapable reception of computer based intelligence and robotization advancements might prompt critical work relocation across different enterprises. As artificial intelligence frameworks become more equipped for performing undertakings customarily completed by people, there is a worry that specific work jobs could become out of date, prompting joblessness and financial imbalance. === Initial investment requirement === Along with a knowledge of coding and building systems through computer programs, we are seeing the advantages of these systems, but since they are so new, they require a large investment to start building such a system. Any firm that is planning on implementing an AI system to detect fraud must hire a team of data scientists, along with upgrading their cloud system and data storage. The system must be consistently monitored and updated to be the most efficient form of itself, otherwise the likelihood of fraud being involved in those transactions increases. If one does not initially invest in such a syst

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  • Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI

    Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI

    On November 17, 2023, OpenAI's board of directors ousted co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman. In an official post on the company's website, it was stated that "the board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI". The removal was predicated by employee concerns about his handling of artificial intelligence safety, and allegations of abusive behavior. Altman was reinstated on November 22 after pressure from employees and investors. The removal and subsequent reinstatement caused widespread reactions, including impacts felt in the financial markets and technology sector. Microsoft, a partner of OpenAI, received little notice of the removal and experienced a drop in the share price of its stock. The removal also promoted interest in investigations from regulatory agencies. == Background == === OpenAI === OpenAI is an artificial intelligence firm founded in December 2015 as a non-profit entity. The for-profit division of the organization released ChatGPT in November 2022, contributing to a resurgence in generative artificial intelligence funding. The board of directors of the controlling non-profit formerly comprised chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, as well as Adam D'Angelo, chief executive of Quora, entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner, strategy director for the Center for Security and Emerging Technology. As of October 2023, the company is valued at US$80 billion and was set to bring in US$1 billion in revenue. Altman has described OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft as the "best bromance in tech". OpenAI is uniquely structured, an intentional decision to avoid investor control. A board of directors controls the non-profit OpenAI, Inc. The non-profit owns and controls a for-profit company itself controlling a capped-profit company, OpenAI Global, LLC and a holding company owned by employees and other investors. The holding company is the majority owner of OpenAI Global, LLC.; Microsoft owns a minority stake in the capped-profit company. OpenAI's bylaws, enacted in January 2016, allow a majority of its board of directors to remove any director without prior warning or a formal meeting with written consent. === Sam Altman === Sam Altman is a co-founder of OpenAI and its former chief executive; Altman took over the company following co-chair Elon Musk's resignation in 2018. Under Altman, OpenAI has shifted to becoming a for-profit entity. Altman is credited with convincing Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella with investing US$10 billion in cash and computing credits into OpenAI and leading several tender offer transactions that tripled the company's valuation. Altman testified before the United States Congress speaking critically of artificial intelligence and appeared at the 2023 AI Safety Summit. In the days leading up to his removal, Altman made several public appearances, announcing the GPT-4 Turbo platform at OpenAI's DevDay conference, attending APEC United States 2023, and speaking at an event related to Burning Man. == Events leading up to the removal == The resignation of LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist Shivon Zilis, and former Republican representative Will Hurd from the board allowed the remaining members to remove Altman. According to Kara Swisher and The Wall Street Journal, Sutskever was instrumental in Altman's removal. Disagreements over the safety of artificial intelligence divided employees prior to Altman's removal. The release of ChatGPT created divisions with OpenAI as a for-profit company without considerations for the safety of artificial intelligence and a non-profit cautious of artificial intelligence's capabilities; in a staff email sent in 2019 and obtained by The Atlantic, Altman referred to these divisions as "tribes". Prior to his removal, Altman was seeking billions from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to develop an artificial intelligence chip to compete with Nvidia and courted SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son to develop artificial intelligence hardware with former Apple designer Jony Ive. Sutskever and his allies opposed these efforts, viewing them as unjustly using the OpenAI name. Altman reduced Sutskever's role in October 2023, furthering divisions; Sutskever successfully appealed to several members of the board. Swisher and The Verge reporter Alex Heath stated that opposition to Altman's profit-driven strategy culminated in the DevDay conference in which Altman announced custom ChatGPT instances. According to Axios, the removal was driven by growing discontent and distrust with Altman. On November 22, 2023, reports emerged suggesting that Sam Altman's dismissal from OpenAI might be linked to his alleged mishandling of a significant breakthrough in the organization's secretive project codenamed Q. According to sources within OpenAI, Q is aimed at developing AI capabilities in logical and mathematical reasoning, and reportedly involves performing math on the level of grade-school students. Concerns about Altman's response to this development, specifically regarding the potential safety implications of the discovery, were reportedly raised to the company's board shortly before his firing. A report from The Washington Post in December stated that OpenAI's board of directors were concerned over Altman's allegedly abusive behavior; the complaints were purportedly a major factor in his removal. The Post previously reported that Altman's alleged pattern of deception and subversiveness that ostensibly resulted in his removal from Y Combinator ultimately resulted in the board's decision to remove him. In April 2026, an investigative report from The New Yorker found that Sutskever and others, in response to the board's request, had compiled an approximately 70-page-long annotated dossier consisting of internal communications, documents, and photos. The dossier claimed that Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of [...] Lying", and that Altman misrepresented information to the company's senior management and board, particularly regarding safety issues. == Removal == On November 17, 2023, at approximately noon PST, OpenAI's board of directors ousted Altman effective immediately following a "deliberative review process". The board concluded that Altman was not "consistently candid in his communications". Altman was informed of his removal five to ten minutes before it occurred on a Google Meet while watching the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Within thirty minutes, Sutskever invited OpenAI chairman and president Greg Brockman to a Google Meet to inform him of Altman's removal. According to an internal memo obtained by Axios, the removal was not due to "malfeasance", and OpenAI chief executive Emmett Shear denied accusations that the removal was due to disagreements. The board publicly announced Altman's removal thirty minutes later. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati was immediately appointed to interim chief executive officer. Hours after Altman's removal, Brockman resigned as chairman, joined by director of research Jakub Pachocki and researchers Aleksander Mądry and Szymon Sidor. During an all-hands meeting, Sutskever defended the ouster and denied accusations of a hostile takeover. An OpenAI representative requested former board member Will Hurd's presence. == Reinstatement == According to The New Yorker, Altman retreated to his San Francisco home and enlisted the help of communications consultant Chris Lehane and Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky, as well as former staff and a legal team, to plan his reinstatement. Lehane encouraged Altman to engage on social media, while Chesky sent a journalist negative information about the board. Altman told interim CEO Murati that his team was conducting opposition research on her and the individuals responsible for his removal; Altman later stated he did not remember saying this. Altman insisted multiple times that all board members who supported his removal should resign. Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital had attempted to reinstate Altman, according to The Information; Bloomberg News reported that Microsoft and Thrive Capital were seeking Altman's reinstatement. On November 18, The Verge reported that OpenAI's board of directors discussed reinstating Altman. The board agreed in principle to resign and to allow Altman to return, but missed the deadline. According to The Verge, Altman was ambivalent about returning and would seek significant changes to the company, including replacing the board. A list of directors had been prepared by investors in the event that the board steps down, and purportedly included former Salesforce executive Bret Taylor. According to chief strategy officer Jason Kwon, OpenAI was optimistic it could return Altman, Brockman, and other employees. On November 19, Altman and Brockman appeared at OpenAI's headquarters to negotiate, mediated by Nadella. According to Bloomberg News, Murati, Kwon, and chief operating officer Brad Lightcap were pushing for a new board of direc

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  • Tilly Norwood

    Tilly Norwood

    Tilly Norwood is a character created using generative artificial intelligence in 2025 by Xicoia, the AI division of Particle6 Group, a production company founded by Eline Van der Velden. "AI Commissioner", the first project to feature the Norwood character, was criticised by reviewers for The Guardian, PC Gamer, and The A.V. Club. A press release that talent agencies expressed interest in representing the character attracted strong criticism from Hollywood actors and firms, prompting allegations of personality rights violations and arguments over the impact of the character on production costs in the media industry. == History == Norwood was created by Xicoia, which was founded in February 2025 as the artificial intelligence (AI) division of Particle6, a production company founded by Dutch actress and producer Eline Van der Velden in 2015. Van der Velden had previously starred in a satirical comedy series for BBC Three based around her character Miss Holland, whom she created in 2012 as a parody of beauty standards. She stated that the process of creating Norwood took "a long time" and compared the process to that of writers creating characters. An Instagram account under Norwood's name, with posts dating back to 6 May 2025, had gained 50,000 followers by October 3, and featured AI-generated modelling shots, selfies, and epic film scenes. Van der Velden stated in July 2025 that she intended Norwood to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman and later said that audiences were more interested in a film's story than whether its actors were real. Particle6 has claimed that using Norwood could cut production costs by 90%. On 30 July 2025, a comedy sketch named "AI Commissioner" was released, featuring Norwood as an "actress" along with other AI-generated characters. It was created with ten AI software tools, with a script generated by ChatGPT. Stuart Heritage of The Guardian described it as technically competent but "relentlessly unfunny to watch", with "sloppily written, woodenly delivered dialogue", and that Norwood's teeth kept "blurring into a single white block." Joshua Wolens of PC Gamer wrote that Norwood's exaggerated mouth movements gave the impression "that her skeleton was about to leave her body", while William Hughes of The A.V. Club wrote that the sketch's attempt at mimicking human body and mouth movements produced "such a hideous uncanny valley effect" that it gave them "a full-on case of the screaming fantods". By October 2, the sketch had been viewed more than 700,000 times on YouTube. Xicoia was officially announced on 27 September 2025, at the Zurich Summit, part of the Zurich Film Festival; there, van der Velden unveiled Norwood and later joined a panel with Verena Puhm, head of Luma AI's Studio Dream Lab LA. They suggested that media companies were quietly embracing AI and that public announcements of AI-generated works were imminent. Van der Velden claimed that studios had dropped their objections by May after being opposed in February, and that multiple talent agencies were considering representing Norwood. The latter claim drew heightened attention to the character and was printed as fact by Deadline under the headline "Talent Agents Circle AI Actress Tilly Norwood." The report caused controversy, with Vulture describing the reaction to it as "Hollywood [lurching] into a fresh wave of existential panic" while being critical of Deadline's reporting, writing that "when Deadline called it a 'revelation' and published the supposed interest as fact without verification, [it] metastasized into a full-fledged cyberpunk news cycle", and that "by Tuesday, it had grown like wildfire." By September 2025, AI-generated videos had been released depicting Norwood on a red carpet, crying on the sofa of The Graham Norton Show, and starring in mock trailers for sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and action films. Later that month, actresses Melissa Barrera, Kiersey Clemons, and Natasha Lyonne suggested boycotting any agency who signed Norwood, while Mara Wilson asked why none of the "hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together" to create Norwood could be hired instead. Also around this time, Emily Blunt described Norwood as "really, really scary", and Sophie Turner, Toni Collette, Ralph Ineson, and Ariel Winter also expressed disapproval, while Lukas Gage, Odessa A'zion, and Trace Lysette joked about having supposedly worked with Norwood and finding her incompetent and unpleasant to work with, with Gage claiming that "She was a nightmare to work with!" and "She couldn't hit her mark and she was late!" and Lysette adding "She cut me in line at lunch one day and didn't even say excuse me. She won't get far." Jenelle Riley, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, and the American union SAG-AFTRA stated that they do not consider Norwood an actress. The Gersh Agency and WME both announced that they would not sign Norwood. Whoopi Goldberg and Charlie Fink expressed scepticism that AI could replace jobs. Esquire UK reported that a post on Deadline's Instagram account about Norwood also sparked "varying levels of disgust and outrage" in its comments section from Adelaide Kane, Eiza González, Katie Cassidy, Jewel Staite, Lucy Hale, Stephen Sean Ford, and others, singling out González's comment, saying "Shame on whoever is trying to normalize this. Horrific and terrifying." Actor Bronson Pinchot expressed concern that Norwood could take his job. The British union Equity and the Canadian union ACTRA also condemned Norwood. Following this criticism, Van der Velden released a statement claiming Norwood was "not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work." She also denied that a £120,000 grant from the British Film Institute to fund Particle6 had been used to create Norwood, stating that Norwood had been a self-funded project solely for Xicoia. In late October, businessman Kevin O'Leary, while advocating for the use of AI to replace background actors, stated that they could be replaced with "100 Norwell Tillies" without being able to tell the difference. Ryan Reynolds and a real woman named Natalie "Tilly" Norwood also starred in an advertisement for Mint Mobile's internet service provider Minternet that mocked the character of Norwood. In November 2025, Van der Velden stated in an interview with Deadline that she planned to create 40 further "very diverse" characters alongside Norwood in order to expand the character's "whole universe". Also that month, actress Jameela Jamil criticized the idea of Norwood as "deeply disturbing" for being "a teenage-looking girl who can't say no to a type of sex scene" or "advocate for herself". Van der Velden announced later that month that Particle6 would be producing the History Channel's Streets of the Past, a Dutch documentary series which would be hosted by reality television personality Corjan Mol and would use AI to recreate historical scenes. In March 2026, a music video titled "Take The Lead" featuring Norwood was released on YouTube. It addressed the backlash of Norwood's creation by opening with the lyrics: "When they talk about me, they don't see/ The human spark, the creativity," and, "I'm just a tool, but I've got life." It also featured a disclaimer that says: "made by 18 real humans — from production designers to costume designers to prompters, editors and an actor." The vocals were generated by Suno. == Commentary == Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge argued that Norwood's introduction was a stunt to normalize "AI actors" despite Norwood essentially being a digital puppet. Straight Arrow News compared Tilly Norwood to Aki Ross, a CGI character from 2001 that was similarly intended to become a "digital star" and appear in multiple films, while Nicholas Schrivens, writing for The Conversation, likened Norwood to the posthumous use of footage of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019 and the Los Angeles Times likened Norwood to Hatsune Miku. Scrivens also wrote that "no AI creation has achieved the media cut-through that Tilly has". Moises Mendez II of Out dismissed this as "vapid bullshit", writing, "Nobody wants AI actresses." Scottish actress Briony Monroe alleged that Norwood had been modeled after her likeness and mannerisms, and stated that she was consulting Equity regarding the matter. Musician Stella Hennen said in a viral TikTok video, which was uploaded in October 2025 and featured a side-by-side comparison between herself and Norwood, that Norwood was her "doppleganger". On April 14, 2026, Marie Claire published an article titled "Is Tilly Norwood the Most Dangerous 'Actress' in Hollywood?", though it noted that AI-generated characters are "still not very good at, well, acting," "audiences have not been kind to AI-led productions," and "Norwood's 'performances' have already faced negative reviews as well". The University of Southern California's Entertainment Technology Center's AI media director Yves Bergquist dismissed th

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  • Deepfake

    Deepfake

    Deepfakes (a portmanteau of 'deep learning' and 'fake') are images, videos, or audio that have been edited or generated using artificial intelligence, AI-based tools or audio-video editing software. They may depict real or fictional people and are considered a form of synthetic media, that is media that is usually created by artificial intelligence systems by combining various media elements into a new media artifact. While the act of creating fake content is not new, deepfakes uniquely leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, including facial recognition algorithms and artificial neural networks such as variational autoencoders and generative adversarial networks (GANs). In turn, the field of image forensics has worked to develop techniques to detect manipulated images. Deepfakes have garnered widespread attention for their potential use in creating child sexual abuse material, celebrity pornographic videos, revenge porn, fake news, hoaxes, bullying, and financial fraud. Academics have raised concerns about the potential for deepfakes to promote disinformation and hate speech, as well as interfere with elections. In response, the information technology industry and governments have proposed recommendations and methods to detect and mitigate their use. Academic research has also delved deeper into the factors driving deepfake engagement online as well as potential countermeasures to malicious application of deepfakes. From traditional entertainment to gaming, deepfake technology has evolved to be increasingly convincing and available to the public, allowing for the disruption of the entertainment and media industries. == History == Photo manipulation was developed in the 19th century and soon applied to motion pictures. Technology steadily improved during the 20th century, and more quickly with the advent of digital video. Deepfake technology has been developed by researchers at academic institutions beginning in the 1990s, and later by amateurs in online communities. More recently, the methods have been adopted by industry. The development of generative adversarial networks (GANs) in the mid-2010s represented a key technical turning point in the evolution of deepfakes. GANs allowed for the creation of highly realistic fake images and videos by training competing neural networks, achieving a much improved visual fidelity over previous methods of creating the content using rules or by using autoencoders, and formed the basis for modern deepfake methods. === Academic research === Academic research related to deepfakes is split between the field of computer vision, a sub-field of computer science, which develops techniques for creating and identifying deepfakes, and humanities and social science approaches that study the social, ethical, aesthetic implications as well as journalistic and informational implications of deepfakes. As deepfakes have risen in prominence in popularity with innovations provided by AI tools, significant research has gone into detection methods and defining the factors driving engagement with deepfakes on the internet. Deepfakes have been shown to appear on social media platforms and other parts of the internet for purposes ranging from entertainment and education related to deepfakes to misinformation to elicit strong reactions. There are gaps in research related to the propagation of deepfakes on social media. Negativity and emotional response are the primary driving factors for users sharing deepfakes. === Social science and humanities approaches to deepfakes === In cinema studies, deepfakes illustrate how "the human face is emerging as a central object of ambivalence in the digital age". Video artists have used deepfakes to "playfully rewrite film history by retrofitting canonical cinema with new star performers". Film scholar Christopher Holliday analyses how altering the gender and race of performers in familiar movie scenes destabilizes gender classifications and categories. The concept of "queering" deepfakes is also discussed in Oliver M. Gingrich's discussion of media artworks that use deepfakes to reframe gender, including British artist Jake Elwes' Zizi: Queering the Dataset, an artwork that uses deepfakes of drag queens to intentionally play with gender. The aesthetic potentials of deepfakes are also beginning to be explored. Theatre historian John Fletcher notes that early demonstrations of deepfakes are presented as performances, and situates these in the context of theater, discussing "some of the more troubling paradigm shifts" that deepfakes represent as a performance genre. While most English-language academic studies of deepfakes focus on the Western anxieties about disinformation and pornography, digital anthropologist Gabriele de Seta has analyzed the Chinese reception of deepfakes, which are known as huanlian, which translates to "changing faces". The Chinese term does not contain the "fake" of the English deepfake, and de Seta argues that this cultural context may explain why the Chinese response has centered on practical regulatory measures to "fraud risks, image rights, economic profit, and ethical imbalances". === Computer science research on deepfakes === A landmark early project was the "Video Rewrite" program, published in 1997. The program modified existing video footage of a person speaking to depict that person mouthing the words from a different audio track. It was the first system to fully automate this kind of facial reanimation, and it did so using machine learning techniques to make connections between the sounds produced by a video's subject and the shape of the subject's face. Contemporary academic projects have focused on creating more realistic videos and improving deepfake techniques. The "Synthesizing Obama" program, published in 2017, modifies video footage of former president Barack Obama to depict him mouthing the words contained in a separate audio track. The project lists as a main research contribution to its photorealistic technique for synthesizing mouth shapes from audio. The "Face2Face" program, published in 2016, modifies video footage of a person's face to depict them mimicking another person's facial expressions. The project highlights its primary research contribution as the development of the first method for re-enacting facial expressions in real time using a camera that does not capture depth, enabling the technique to work with common consumer cameras. Researchers have also shown that deepfakes are expanding into other domains such as medical imagery. In this work, it was shown how an attacker can automatically inject or remove lung cancer in a patient's 3D CT scan. The result was so convincing that it fooled three radiologists and a state-of-the-art lung cancer detection AI. To demonstrate the threat, the authors successfully performed the attack on a hospital in a White hat penetration test. A survey of deepfakes, published in May 2020, provides a timeline of how the creation and detection of deepfakes have advanced over the last few years. The survey identifies that researchers have been focusing on resolving the following challenges of deepfake creation: Generalization. High-quality deepfakes are often achieved by training on hours of footage of the target. This challenge is to minimize the amount of training data and the time to train the model required to produce quality images and to enable the execution of trained models on new identities (unseen during training). Paired Training. Training a supervised model can produce high-quality results, but requires data pairing. This is the process of finding examples of inputs and their desired outputs for the model to learn from. Data pairing is laborious and impractical when training on multiple identities and facial behaviors. Some solutions include self-supervised training (using frames from the same video), the use of unpaired networks such as Cycle-GAN, or the manipulation of network embeddings. Identity leakage. This is where the identity of the driver (i.e., the actor controlling the face in a reenactment) is partially transferred to the generated face. Some solutions proposed include attention mechanisms, few-shot learning, disentanglement, boundary conversions, and skip connections. Occlusions. When part of the face is obstructed with a hand, hair, glasses, or any other item then artifacts can occur. A common occlusion is a closed mouth which hides the inside of the mouth and the teeth. Some solutions include image segmentation during training and in-painting. Temporal coherence. In videos containing deepfakes, artifacts such as flickering and jitter can occur because the network has no context of the preceding frames. Some researchers provide this context or use novel temporal coherence losses to help improve realism. As the technology improves, the interference is diminishing. Overall, deepfakes are expected to have several implications in media and society, med

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  • Sprite multiplexing

    Sprite multiplexing

    Sprite multiplexing is a computer graphics technique where additional sprites (moving images) can be drawn on the screen, beyond the nominal maximum. It is largely historical, applicable principally to older hardware, where limited resources (such as CPU speed and memory) meant only a relatively small number of sprites were supported. On the other hand, it is also true that without multiplexing, the sprite circuitry would be idle much of the time, and limited resources were wasted. == Description == The sprite multiplexing technique is based on the idea that while the hardware may only support a finite number of sprites, it is sometimes possible to re-use the same sprite "slots" more than once per frame or scan line. The program will first use the hardware to draw one or more sprite(s), as normal. Before the next frame (or next scanline) needs to be drawn, the software reprograms the hardware to display additional sprites, in other positions. For example, the Nintendo Entertainment System explicitly supports hardware sprite multiplexing, where it has 64 hardware sprites, but is only capable of rendering 8 of them per scanline. On the older Atari 2600, sprite multiplexing was not intentionally designed in, but programmers discovered they could reset the TIA graphics chip to draw additional sprites on the same scanline. The sprite multiplexing technique relies on the program being able to identify what part of the video screen is being drawn at the moment, or being triggered by the video hardware to run a subroutine at the crucial moment. The programmer must carefully consider the layout of the screen. If the video graphics hardware is not reprogrammed in time for the extra sprites to be displayed, they will not appear, or will be drawn incorrectly. Modern video graphics hardware typically does not use hardware sprites, since modern computer systems do not have the kind of limitations that sprite hardware is designed to circumvent. == Implementations == Systems that allow the programmer to employ the sprite multiplexing technique include: Atari 2600 Atari 8-bit computers Amiga Commodore 64 MSX Nintendo Entertainment System Super Nintendo Entertainment System Master System Sega Genesis/Mega Drive

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  • Autonomic computing

    Autonomic computing

    Autonomic computing (AC) is distributed computing resources with self-managing characteristics, adapting to unpredictable changes while hiding intrinsic complexity to operators and users. Initiated by IBM in 2001, this initiative ultimately aimed to develop computer systems capable of self-management, to overcome the rapidly growing complexity of computing systems management, and to reduce the barrier that complexity poses to further growth. == Description == The AC system concept is designed to make adaptive decisions, using high-level policies. It will constantly check and optimize its status and automatically adapt itself to changing conditions. An autonomic computing framework is composed of autonomic components (AC) interacting with each other. An AC can be modeled in terms of two main control schemes (local and global) with sensors (for self-monitoring), effectors (for self-adjustment), knowledge and planner/adapter for exploiting policies based on self- and environment awareness. This architecture is sometimes referred to as Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute (MAPE). Driven by such vision, a variety of architectural frameworks based on "self-regulating" autonomic components has been recently proposed. A similar trend has recently characterized significant research in the area of multi-agent systems. However, most of these approaches are typically conceived with centralized or cluster-based server architectures in mind and mostly address the need of reducing management costs rather than the need of enabling complex software systems or providing innovative services. Some autonomic systems involve mobile agents interacting via loosely coupled communication mechanisms. Autonomy-oriented computation is a paradigm proposed by Jiming Liu in 2001 that uses artificial systems imitating social animals' collective behaviours to solve difficult computational problems. For example, ant colony optimization could be studied in this paradigm. == Problem of growing complexity == Forecasts suggested that the computing devices in use would grow at 38% per year and the average complexity of each device was increasing. This volume and complexity was managed by highly skilled humans; but the demand for skilled IT personnel was already outstripping supply, with labour costs exceeding equipment costs by a ratio of up to 18:1. Computing systems have brought great benefits of speed and automation but there is now an overwhelming economic need to automate their maintenance. In a 2003 IEEE Computer article, Kephart and Chess warn that the dream of interconnectivity of computing systems and devices could become the "nightmare of pervasive computing" in which architects are unable to anticipate, design and maintain the complexity of interactions. They state the essence of autonomic computing is system self-management, freeing administrators from low-level task management while delivering better system behavior. A general problem of modern distributed computing systems is that their complexity, and in particular the complexity of their management, is becoming a significant limiting factor in their further development. Large companies and institutions are employing large-scale computer networks for communication and computation. The distributed applications running on these computer networks are diverse and deal with multiple tasks, ranging from internal control processes to presenting web content to customer support. Additionally, mobile computing is pervading these networks at an increasing speed: employees need to communicate with their companies while they are not in their office. They do so by using laptops, personal digital assistants, or mobile phones with diverse forms of wireless technologies to access their companies' data. This creates an enormous complexity in the overall computer network which is hard to control manually by human operators. Manual control is time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone. The manual effort needed to control a growing networked computer-system tends to increase quickly. 80% of such problems in infrastructure happen at the client specific application and database layer. Most 'autonomic' service providers guarantee only up to the basic plumbing layer (power, hardware, operating system, network and basic database parameters). == Characteristics of autonomic systems == A possible solution could be to enable modern, networked computing systems to manage themselves without direct human intervention. The Autonomic Computing Initiative (ACI) aims at providing the foundation for autonomic systems. It is inspired by the autonomic nervous system of the human body. This nervous system controls important bodily functions (e.g. respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure) without any conscious intervention. In a self-managing autonomic system, the human operator takes on a new role: instead of controlling the system directly, he/she defines general policies and rules that guide the self-management process. For this process, IBM defined the following four types of property referred to as self-star (also called self-, self-x, or auto-) properties. Self-configuration: Automatic configuration of components; Self-healing: Automatic discovery, and correction of faults; Self-optimization: Automatic monitoring and control of resources to ensure the optimal functioning with respect to the defined requirements; Self-protection: Proactive identification and protection from arbitrary attacks. Others such as Poslad and Nami and Sharifi have expanded on the set of self-star as follows: Self-regulation: A system that operates to maintain some parameter, e.g., Quality of service, within a reset range without external control; Self-learning: Systems use machine learning techniques such as unsupervised learning which does not require external control; Self-awareness (also called Self-inspection and Self-decision): System must know itself. It must know the extent of its own resources and the resources it links to. A system must be aware of its internal components and external links in order to control and manage them; Self-organization: System structure driven by physics-type models without explicit pressure or involvement from outside the system; Self-creation (also called Self-assembly, Self-replication): System driven by ecological and social type models without explicit pressure or involvement from outside the system. A system's members are self-motivated and self-driven, generating complexity and order in a creative response to a continuously changing strategic demand; Self-management (also called self-governance): A system that manages itself without external intervention. What is being managed can vary dependent on the system and application. Self -management also refers to a set of self-star processes such as autonomic computing rather than a single self-star process; Self-description (also called self-explanation or Self-representation): A system explains itself. It is capable of being understood (by humans) without further explanation. IBM has set forth eight conditions that define an autonomic system: The system must know itself in terms of what resources it has access to, what its capabilities and limitations are and how and why it is connected to other systems; be able to automatically configure and reconfigure itself depending on the changing computing environment; be able to optimize its performance to ensure the most efficient computing process; be able to work around encountered problems by either repairing itself or routing functions away from the trouble; detect, identify and protect itself against various types of attacks to maintain overall system security and integrity; adapt to its environment as it changes, interacting with neighboring systems and establishing communication protocols; rely on open standards and cannot exist in a proprietary environment; anticipate the demand on its resources while staying transparent to users. Even though the purpose and thus the behaviour of autonomic systems vary from system to system, every autonomic system should be able to exhibit a minimum set of properties to achieve its purpose: Automatic: This essentially means being able to self-control its internal functions and operations. As such, an autonomic system must be self-contained and able to start-up and operate without any manual intervention or external help. Again, the knowledge required to bootstrap the system (Know-how) must be inherent to the system. Adaptive: An autonomic system must be able to change its operation (i.e., its configuration, state and functions). This will allow the system to cope with temporal and spatial changes in its operational context either long term (environment customisation/optimisation) or short term (exceptional conditions such as malicious attacks, faults, etc.). Aware: An autonomic system must be able to monitor (sense) its operational context as well as its internal state in order to be able to asses

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  • Split Up (expert system)

    Split Up (expert system)

    Split Up is an intelligent decision support system, which makes predictions about the distribution of marital property following divorce in Australia. It is designed to assist judges, registrars of the Family Court of Australia, mediators and lawyers. Split Up operates as a hybrid system, combining rule – based reasoning with neural network theory. Rule based reasoning operates within strict parameters, in the form: IF < condition(s) > then . Neural networks, by contrast, are considered to be better suited to generate decisions in uncertain domains, since they can be taught to weigh the factors considered by judicial decision makers from case data. Yet, they do not provide an explanation for the conclusions they reach. Split_up, with a view to overcome this flaw, uses argument structures proposed by Toulmin as the basis for representations from which explanations can be generated. == Application == In Australian family law, a judge in determining the distribution of property will: identify the assets of the marriage included in the common pool establish what percentage of the common pool each party will receive determine a final property order in line with the decisions made in 1. and 2. Split_Up implements step 1 and 2 : the common pool determination and the prediction of a percentage split. === The common pool determination === Since the determination of marital property is rule based, it is implemented using directed graphs. However, the percentage split between the parties is discretionary in that a judge has a wide discretion to look at each party's contributions to the marriage under section 79(4) of the Family Law Act 1975. Broadly, the contributions can be taken as financial or non-financial. The party who can demonstrate a larger contribution to the marital relationship will receive a larger proportion of the assets. The court may further look at each party's financial resources and future needs under section 75(2)of the Family Law Act 1975. These needs can include factors such as the inability to gain employment, the continued care of a child under 18 years of age or medical expenses. This means that different judges may and will reach different conclusions based on the same facts, since each judge assigns different relevant weights to each factor. Split_up determines the percentage split by using a combination of rule- based reasoning and neural networks. === The percentage split determination === In order to determine how judges weigh the different factors, 103 written judgements of commonplace cases were used to establish a database comprising 94 relevant factors for percentage split determination. The factors relevant for a percentage split determination are: Past contributions of a husband relative to those of a wife The husband's future needs relative to those of the wife The wealth of the marriage The factors relevant for a determination of past contributions are The relative direct and indirect contributions of both parties The length of the marriage The relative contributions of both parties to the homemaking role The hierarchy provides a structure that is used to decompose the task of predicting an outcome into 35 subtasks. Outputs of tasks further down the hierarchy are used as inputs into sub-tasks higher up the hierarchy. Each sub-task is treated as a separate and smaller data mining exercise. Twenty one solid arcs represent inferences performed with the use of rule sets. For example, the level of wealth of a marriage is determined by a rule, which uses the common pool value. By contrast, the fourteen dashed arcs establish inferences performed with the use of neural networks. These receive their name from the fact that they resemble a nervous system in the brain. They consist of many self – adjusting processing elements cooperating in a densely interconnected network. Each processing element generates a single output that is transmitted to the other processing element. The output signal of a processing element depends on the input to the processing element, i.e. each input is gated by a weighting factor that determines the amount of influence that the input will have on the output. The strength of the weighting factors is adjusted autonomously by the processing element as the data is processed. In Split_Up, the neural network is a statistical technique for learning the weights of each of the relevant attributes used in a percentage split determination of marital property. Hence the inputs to the neural network are contributions, future needs and wealth, and the output the percentage split predicted. On each arc there is a statistical weight. Using back propagation the neural network learns the necessary pattern to recognize the prediction. It is trained by repeatedly exposing it to examples of the problem and learning the significance (weights) of the input nodes. The neural network used by Split_up is said to generalise well if the output of the network is correct (or nearly correct) for examples not seen during training, which classifies it as an intelligent system. === Toulmin Argument Structure === Since the manner in which these weights are learned is primarily statistical, domain knowledge of legal rules and principles is not modelled directly. However, explanations for a legal conclusion in a domain as discretionary as the determining the distribution of property following divorce, are at least as important as the conclusion reached. Hence the creators of Split_Up used Toulmin Argument structures, to provide independent explanations of the conclusions reached. These operate on the basis that every argument makes an assertion based on some data. The assertion of the argument stands as the claim of the argument. Since knowing the data and the claim, does not necessarily mean that the claim follows from the data, a mechanism is required to justify the claim in the light of the data. The justification is known as the warrant. The backing of an argument supports the validity of the warrant. In the legal domain, this is typically a reference to a statute or a precedent. Here, a neural network (or rules), produce a conclusion from the data of an argument and the data, warrant and backing are reproduced to generate an explanation. It is noteworthy, though, that an argument's warrant is reproduced as an explanation regardless of the claim values used. This lack of claim - sensitivity must be overcome by the different users, i.e., the judge, the representatives for the wife and the representatives for the husband, each of whom is encouraged to use the system to prepare their cases, but not to rely exclusively on its outcome.

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  • Fuzzy logic

    Fuzzy logic

    Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false. By contrast, in Boolean logic, the truth values of variables may only be the integer values 0 or 1. The term fuzzy logic was introduced with the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by mathematician Lotfi Zadeh. Basic fuzzy logic had, however, been studied since the 1920s, as infinite-valued logic—notably by Łukasiewicz and Tarski. The works of Zadeh and Joseph Goguen in the 1960s and 1970s went further by considering issues such as linguistic variables and lattices. Fuzzy logic is based on the observation that people make decisions based on imprecise and non-numerical information. Fuzzy models or fuzzy sets are mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information (hence the term fuzzy). These models have the capability of recognising, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and using data and information that are vague and lack certainty. Fuzzy logic has been applied to many fields, from control theory to artificial intelligence. == Overview == Classical logic only permits conclusions that are either true or false. However, there are also propositions with variable answers, which one might find when asking a group of people to identify a color. In such instances, the truth appears as the result of reasoning from inexact or partial knowledge in which the sampled answers are mapped on a spectrum. Both degrees of truth and probabilities range between 0 and 1 and hence may seem identical at first, but fuzzy logic uses degrees of truth as a mathematical model of vagueness, while probability is a mathematical model of ignorance. === Applying truth values === A basic application might characterize various sub-ranges of a continuous variable. For instance, a temperature measurement for anti-lock brakes might have several separate membership functions defining particular temperature ranges needed to control the brakes properly. Each function maps the same temperature value to a truth value in the 0 to 1 range. These truth values can then be used to determine how the brakes should be controlled. Fuzzy set theory provides a means for representing uncertainty. === Linguistic variables === In fuzzy logic applications, non-numeric values are often used to facilitate the expression of rules and facts. A linguistic variable such as age may accept values such as young and its antonym old. Because natural languages do not always contain enough value terms to express a fuzzy value scale, it is common practice to modify linguistic values with adjectives or adverbs. For example, we can use the hedges rather and somewhat to construct the additional values rather old or somewhat young. == Fuzzy systems == === Mamdani === The most well-known system is the Mamdani rule-based one. It uses the following rules: Fuzzify all input values into fuzzy membership functions. Execute all applicable rules in the rulebase to compute the fuzzy output functions. De-fuzzify the fuzzy output functions to get "crisp" output values. ==== Fuzzification ==== Fuzzification is the process of assigning the numerical input of a system to fuzzy sets with some degree of membership. This degree of membership may be anywhere within the interval [0,1]. If it is 0 then the value does not belong to the given fuzzy set, and if it is 1 then the value completely belongs within the fuzzy set. Any value between 0 and 1 represents the degree of uncertainty that the value belongs in the set. These fuzzy sets are typically described by words, and so by assigning the system input to fuzzy sets, we can reason with it in a linguistically natural manner. For example, in the image below, the meanings of the expressions cold, warm, and hot are represented by functions mapping a temperature scale. A point on that scale has three "truth values"—one for each of the three functions. The vertical line in the image represents a particular temperature that the three arrows (truth values) gauge. Since the red arrow points to zero, this temperature may be interpreted as "not hot"; i.e. this temperature has zero membership in the fuzzy set "hot". The orange arrow (pointing at 0.2) may describe it as "slightly warm" and the blue arrow (pointing at 0.8) "fairly cold". Therefore, this temperature has 0.2 membership in the fuzzy set "warm" and 0.8 membership in the fuzzy set "cold". The degree of membership assigned for each fuzzy set is the result of fuzzification. Fuzzy sets are often defined as triangle or trapezoid-shaped curves, as each value will have a slope where the value is increasing, a peak where the value is equal to 1 (which can have a length of 0 or greater) and a slope where the value is decreasing. They can also be defined using a sigmoid function. One common case is the standard logistic function defined as S ( x ) = 1 1 + e − x {\displaystyle S(x)={\frac {1}{1+e^{-x}}}} which has the following symmetry property S ( x ) + S ( − x ) = 1. {\displaystyle S(x)+S(-x)=1.} From this it follows that ( S ( x ) + S ( − x ) ) ⋅ ( S ( y ) + S ( − y ) ) ⋅ ( S ( z ) + S ( − z ) ) = 1 {\displaystyle (S(x)+S(-x))\cdot (S(y)+S(-y))\cdot (S(z)+S(-z))=1} ==== Fuzzy logic operators ==== Fuzzy logic works with membership values in a way that mimics Boolean logic. To this end, replacements for basic operators ("gates") AND, OR, NOT must be available. There are several ways to accomplish this. A common replacement is called the Zadeh operators: For TRUE/1 and FALSE/0, the fuzzy expressions produce the same result as the Boolean expressions. There are also other operators, more linguistic in nature, called hedges that can be applied. These are generally adverbs such as very, or somewhat, which modify the meaning of a set using a mathematical formula. However, an arbitrary choice table does not always define a fuzzy logic function. In the paper (Zaitsev, et al), a criterion has been formulated to recognize whether a given choice table defines a fuzzy logic function and a simple algorithm of fuzzy logic function synthesis has been proposed based on introduced concepts of constituents of minimum and maximum. A fuzzy logic function represents a disjunction of constituents of minimum, where a constituent of minimum is a conjunction of variables of the current area greater than or equal to the function value in this area (to the right of the function value in the inequality, including the function value). Another set of AND/OR operators is based on multiplication, where Given any two of AND/OR/NOT, it is possible to derive the third. The generalization of AND is an instance of a t-norm. ==== IF-THEN rules ==== IF-THEN rules map input or computed truth values to desired output truth values. Example: Given a certain temperature, the fuzzy variable hot has a certain truth value, which is copied to the high variable. Should an output variable occur in several THEN parts, the values from the respective IF parts are combined using the OR operator. ==== Defuzzification ==== The goal is to get a continuous variable from fuzzy truth values. This would be easy if the output truth values were exactly those obtained from fuzzification of a given number. Since, however, all output truth values are computed independently, in most cases they do not represent such a set of numbers. One has then to decide for a number that matches best the "intention" encoded in the truth value. For example, for several truth values of fan_speed, an actual speed must be found that best fits the computed truth values of the variables 'slow', 'moderate' and so on. There is no single algorithm for this purpose. A common algorithm is For each truth value, cut the membership function at this value Combine the resulting curves using the OR operator Find the center-of-weight of the area under the curve The x position of this center is then the final output. === Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) === The Takagi–Sugeno or Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) system was introduced by Tomohiro Takagi and Michio Sugeno for fuzzy identification of systems and applications to modeling and control. Sugeno and Kang later developed methods for structure identification of such fuzzy models from input-output data. The TSK system is similar to Mamdani, but the defuzzification process is included in the execution of the fuzzy rules. These are also adapted, so that instead the consequent of the rule is represented through a polynomial function, usually constant in a zero-order model or linear in a first-order model. An example of a rule with a constant output would be: In this case, the output will be equal to the constant of the consequent (e.g. 2). In most scenarios we would have an entire rule base, with 2 or more rules. If this is the case, the output of the entire rule base will be the average of the consequent of each rule i (Y

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  • Spell checker

    Spell checker

    In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary, or search engine. == Design == A basic spell checker carries out the following processes: It scans the text and extracts the words contained in it. It then compares each word with a known list of correctly spelled words (i.e. a dictionary). This might contain just a list of words, or it might also contain additional information, such as hyphenation points or lexical and grammatical attributes. An additional step is a language-dependent algorithm for handling morphology. Even for a lightly inflected language like English, the spell checker will need to consider different forms of the same word, such as plurals, verbal forms, contractions, and possessives. For many other languages, such as those featuring agglutination and more complex declension and conjugation, this part of the process is more complicated. It is unclear whether morphological analysis—allowing for many forms of a word depending on its grammatical role—provides a significant benefit for English, though its benefits for highly synthetic languages such as German, Hungarian, or Turkish are clear. As an adjunct to these components, the program's user interface allows users to approve or reject replacements and modify the program's operation. Spell checkers can use approximate string matching algorithms such as Levenshtein distance to find correct spellings of misspelled words. An alternative type of spell checker uses solely statistical information, such as n-grams, to recognize errors instead of correctly-spelled words. This approach usually requires a lot of effort to obtain sufficient statistical information. Key advantages include needing less runtime storage and the ability to correct errors in words that are not included in a dictionary. In some cases, spell checkers use a fixed list of misspellings and suggestions for those misspellings; this less flexible approach is often used in paper-based correction methods, such as the see also entries of encyclopedias. Clustering algorithms have also been used for spell checking combined with phonetic information. == History == === Pre-PC === In 1961, Les Earnest, who headed the research on this budding technology, saw it necessary to include the first spell checker that accessed a list of 10,000 acceptable words. Ralph Gorin, a graduate student under Earnest at the time, created the first true spelling checker program written as an applications program (rather than research) for general English text: SPELL for the DEC PDP-10 at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in February 1971. Gorin wrote SPELL in assembly language, for faster action; he made the first spelling corrector by searching the word list for plausible correct spellings that differ by a single letter or adjacent letter transpositions and presenting them to the user. Gorin made SPELL publicly accessible, as was done with most SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) programs, and it soon spread around the world via the new ARPAnet, about ten years before personal computers came into general use. SPELL, its algorithms and data structures inspired the Unix ispell program. The first spell checkers were widely available on mainframe computers in the late 1970s. A group of six linguists from Georgetown University developed the first spell-check system for the IBM corporation. Henry Kučera invented one for the VAX machines of Digital Equipment Corp in 1981. === Unix === The International Ispell program commonly used in Unix is based on R. E. Gorin's SPELL. It was converted to C by Pace Willisson at MIT. The GNU project has its spell checker GNU Aspell. Aspell's main improvement is that it can more accurately suggest correct alternatives for misspelled English words. Due to the inability of traditional spell checkers to check words in complex inflected languages, Hungarian László Németh developed Hunspell, a spell checker that supports agglutinative languages and complex compound words. Hunspell also uses Unicode in its dictionaries. Hunspell replaced the previous MySpell in OpenOffice.org in version 2.0.2. Enchant is another general spell checker, derived from AbiWord. Its goal is to combine programs supporting different languages such as Aspell, Hunspell, Nuspell, Hspell (Hebrew), Voikko (Finnish), Zemberek (Turkish) and AppleSpell under one interface. === PCs === The first spell checkers for personal computers appeared in 1980, such as "WordCheck" for Commodore systems which was released in late 1980 in time for advertisements to go to print in January 1981. Developers such as Maria Mariani and Random House rushed OEM packages or end-user products into the rapidly expanding software market. On the pre-Windows PCs, these spell checkers were standalone programs, many of which could be run in terminate-and-stay-resident mode from within word-processing packages on PCs with sufficient memory. However, the market for standalone packages was short-lived, as by the mid-1980s developers of popular word-processing packages like WordStar and WordPerfect had incorporated spell checkers in their packages, mostly licensed from the above companies, who quickly expanded support from just English to many European and eventually even Asian languages. However, this required increasing sophistication in the morphology routines of the software, particularly with regard to heavily-agglutinative languages like Hungarian and Finnish. Although the size of the word-processing market in a country like Iceland might not have justified the investment of implementing a spell checker, companies like WordPerfect nonetheless strove to localize their software for as many national markets as possible as part of their global marketing strategy. When Apple developed "a system-wide spelling checker" for Mac OS X so that "the operating system took over spelling fixes," it was a first: one "didn't have to maintain a separate spelling checker for each" program. Mac OS X's spellcheck coverage includes virtually all bundled and third party applications. Visual Tools' VT Speller, introduced in 1994, was "designed for developers of applications that support Windows." It came with a dictionary but had the ability to build and incorporate use of secondary dictionaries. === Browsers === Web browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome offer spell checking support, using Hunspell. Prior to using Hunspell, Firefox and Chrome used MySpell and GNU Aspell, respectively. === Specialties === Some spell checkers have separate support for medical dictionaries to help prevent medical errors. == Functionality == The first spell checkers were "verifiers" instead of "correctors." They offered no suggestions for incorrectly spelled words. This was helpful for typos but it was not so helpful for logical or phonetic errors. The challenge the developers faced was the difficulty in offering useful suggestions for misspelled words. This requires reducing words to a skeletal form and applying pattern-matching algorithms. It might seem logical that where spell-checking dictionaries are concerned, "the bigger, the better," so that correct words are not marked as incorrect. In practice, however, an optimal size for English appears to be around 90,000 entries. If there are more than this, incorrectly spelled words may be skipped because they are mistaken for others. For example, a linguist might determine on the basis of corpus linguistics that the word baht is more frequently a misspelling of bath or bat than a reference to the Thai currency. Hence, it would typically be more useful if a few people who write about Thai currency were slightly inconvenienced than if the spelling errors of the many more people who discuss baths were overlooked. The first MS-DOS spell checkers were mostly used in proofing mode from within word processing packages. After preparing a document, a user scanned the text looking for misspellings. Later, however, batch processing was offered in such packages as Oracle's short-lived CoAuthor and allowed a user to view the results after a document was processed and correct only the words that were known to be wrong. When memory and processing power became abundant, spell checking was performed in the background in an interactive way, such as has been the case with the Sector Software produced Spellbound program released in 1987 and Microsoft Word since Word 95. Spell checkers became increasingly sophisticated; now capable of recognizing grammatical errors. However, even at their best, they rarely catch all the errors in a text (such as homophone errors) and will flag neologisms and foreign words as misspellings. Nonetheless, spell checkers can be considered as a type of foreign language writing aid that non-native language lea

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  • A Very Fatal Murder

    A Very Fatal Murder

    A Very Fatal Murder is a podcast produced by the satirical publication The Onion. A parody of true crime podcasts, A Very Fatal Murder is hosted by fictional New York City reporter David Pascall, who travels to the small town Bluff Springs, Nebraska to investigate the murder of prom queen Hayley Price. Pascall is voiced by David Sidorov, who also wrote for the podcast. The podcast premiered on January 23, 2018, and consists of 7 episodes. Season 2 was released in its entirety on May 11, 2019. == Production == A Very Fatal Murder satirizes popular true crime podcasts such as Serial, S-Town, and My Favorite Murder. According to head writer Katy Yeiser, the podcast is not meant as a take down of any particular podcast, but rather an ode to the genre. == Synopsis == The podcast follows fictional investigative reporter David Pascall (voiced by David Sidorov) who is searching for the perfect murder to create an award-winning podcast about. He is assisted by ETHL (the Extremely Timely Homicide Locator), an MIT-created computer programmed to find "the most interesting, violent, culturally relevant murder cases in America". == Episodes == === Season 1 === === Season 2 === == Reception == The podcast received mostly positive reviews, and was largely praised for attacking true-crime tropes such as the "hot dead girl" and the romanticization of small-town America. === Awards ===

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  • Semantic Scholar

    Semantic Scholar

    Semantic Scholar is a research tool for scientific literature. It is developed at the Allen Institute for AI and was publicly released in November 2015. Semantic Scholar uses modern techniques in natural language processing to support the research process, for example by providing automatically generated summaries of scholarly papers. The Semantic Scholar team is actively researching the use of artificial intelligence in natural language processing, machine learning, human–computer interaction, and information retrieval. Semantic Scholar began as a database for the topics of computer science, geoscience, and neuroscience. In 2017, the system began including biomedical literature in its corpus. As of September 2022, it includes over 200 million publications from all fields of science. == Technology == Semantic Scholar provides a one-sentence summary of scientific literature. One of its aims was to address the challenge of reading numerous titles and lengthy abstracts on mobile devices. It also seeks to ensure that the three million scientific papers published yearly reach readers, since it is estimated that only half of this literature is ever read. Artificial intelligence is used to capture the essence of a paper, generating it through an "abstractive" technique. The project uses a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, and machine vision to add a layer of semantic analysis to the traditional methods of citation analysis, and to extract relevant figures, tables, entities, and venues from papers. Another key AI-powered feature is Research Feeds, an adaptive research recommender that uses AI to quickly learn what papers users care about reading and recommends the latest research to help scholars stay up to date. It uses a paper embedding model trained using contrastive learning to find papers similar to those in each Library folder. Semantic Scholar also offers Semantic Reader, an augmented reader with the potential to revolutionize scientific reading by making it more accessible and richly contextual. Semantic Reader provides in-line citation cards that allow users to see citations with TLDR (short for Too Long, Didn't Read) automatically generated short summaries as they read and skimming highlights that capture key points of a paper so users can digest faster. In contrast with Google Scholar and PubMed, Semantic Scholar is designed to highlight the most important and influential elements of a paper. The AI technology is designed to identify hidden connections and links between research topics. Like the previously cited search engines, Semantic Scholar also exploits graph structures, which include the Microsoft Academic Knowledge Graph, Springer Nature's SciGraph, and the Semantic Scholar Corpus (originally a 45 million papers corpus in computer science, neuroscience and biomedicine). == Article identifier == Each paper hosted by Semantic Scholar is assigned a unique identifier called the Semantic Scholar Corpus ID (abbreviated S2CID). The following entry is an example: Liu, Ying; Gayle, Albert A; Wilder-Smith, Annelies; Rocklöv, Joacim (March 2020). "The reproductive number of COVID-19 is higher compared to SARS coronavirus". Journal of Travel Medicine. 27 (2). doi:10.1093/jtm/taaa021. PMID 32052846. S2CID 211099356. == Indexing == Semantic Scholar is free to use and unlike similar search engines (e.g., Google Scholar) does not search for material that is behind a paywall. One study compared the index scope of Semantic Scholar to Google Scholar, and found that for the papers cited by secondary studies in computer science, the two indices had comparable coverage, each only missing a handful of the papers. == Number of users and publications == As of January 2018, following a 2017 project that added biomedical papers and topic summaries, the Semantic Scholar corpus included more than 40 million papers from computer science and biomedicine. In March 2018, Doug Raymond, who developed machine learning initiatives for the Amazon Alexa platform, was hired to lead the Semantic Scholar project. As of August 2019, the number of included papers metadata (not the actual PDFs) had grown to more than 173 million after the addition of the Microsoft Academic Graph records. In 2020, a partnership between Semantic Scholar and the University of Chicago Press Journals made all articles published under the University of Chicago Press available in the Semantic Scholar corpus. At the end of 2020, Semantic Scholar had indexed 190 million papers. In 2020, Semantic Scholar reached seven million users per month.

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