AI Data Center Financing Surge

AI Data Center Financing Surge — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

Image destriping

Image destriping is the process of removing stripes or streaks from images and videos without disrupting the original image/video. These artifacts plague a range of fields in scientific imaging including atomic force microscopy, light sheet fluorescence microscopy, and planetary satellite imaging. The most common image processing techniques to reduce stripe artifacts is with Fourier filtering. Unfortunately, filtering methods risk altering or suppressing useful image data. Methods developed for multiple-sensor imaging systems in planetary satellites use statistical-based methods to match signal distribution across multiple sensors. More recently, a new class of approaches leverage compressed sensing, to regularize an optimization problem, and recover stripe free images. In many cases, these destriped images have little to no artifacts, even at low signal to noise ratios.
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Cerebellar model articulation controller

The cerebellar model arithmetic computer (CMAC) is a type of neural network based on a model of the mammalian cerebellum. It is also known as the cerebellar model articulation controller. It is a type of associative memory. The CMAC was first proposed as a function modeler for robotic controllers by James Albus in 1975 (hence the name), but has been extensively used in reinforcement learning and also as for automated classification in the machine learning community. The CMAC is an extension of the perceptron model. It computes a function for n {\displaystyle n} input dimensions. The input space is divided up into hyper-rectangles, each of which is associated with a memory cell. The contents of the memory cells are the weights, which are adjusted during training. Usually, more than one quantisation of input space is used, so that any point in input space is associated with a number of hyper-rectangles, and therefore with a number of memory cells. The output of a CMAC is the algebraic sum of the weights in all the memory cells activated by the input point. A change of value of the input point results in a change in the set of activated hyper-rectangles, and therefore a change in the set of memory cells participating in the CMAC output. The CMAC output is therefore stored in a distributed fashion, such that the output corresponding to any point in input space is derived from the value stored in a number of memory cells (hence the name associative memory). This provides generalisation. == Building blocks == In the adjacent image, there are two inputs to the CMAC, represented as a 2D space. Two quantising functions have been used to divide this space with two overlapping grids (one shown in heavier lines). A single input is shown near the middle, and this has activated two memory cells, corresponding to the shaded area. If another point occurs close to the one shown, it will share some of the same memory cells, providing generalisation. The CMAC is trained by presenting pairs of input points and output values, and adjusting the weights in the activated cells by a proportion of the error observed at the output. This simple training algorithm has a proof of convergence. It is normal to add a kernel function to the hyper-rectangle, so that points falling towards the edge of a hyper-rectangle have a smaller activation than those falling near the centre. One of the major problems cited in practical use of CMAC is the memory size required, which is directly related to the number of cells used. This is usually ameliorated by using a hash function, and only providing memory storage for the actual cells that are activated by inputs. == One-step convergent algorithm == Initially least mean square (LMS) method is employed to update the weights of CMAC. The convergence of using LMS for training CMAC is sensitive to the learning rate and could lead to divergence. In 2004, a recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm was introduced to train CMAC online. It does not need to tune a learning rate. Its convergence has been proved theoretically and can be guaranteed to converge in one step. The computational complexity of this RLS algorithm is O(N3). == Hardware implementation infrastructure == Based on QR decomposition, an algorithm (QRLS) has been further simplified to have an O(N) complexity. Consequently, this reduces memory usage and time cost significantly. A parallel pipeline array structure on implementing this algorithm has been introduced. Overall by utilizing QRLS algorithm, the CMAC neural network convergence can be guaranteed, and the weights of the nodes can be updated using one step of training. Its parallel pipeline array structure offers its great potential to be implemented in hardware for large-scale industry usage. == Continuous CMAC == Since the rectangular shape of CMAC receptive field functions produce discontinuous staircase function approximation, by integrating CMAC with B-splines functions, continuous CMAC offers the capability of obtaining any order of derivatives of the approximate functions. == Deep CMAC == In recent years, numerous studies have confirmed that by stacking several shallow structures into a single deep structure, the overall system could achieve better data representation, and, thus, more effectively deal with nonlinear and high complexity tasks. In 2018, a deep CMAC (DCMAC) framework was proposed and a backpropagation algorithm was derived to estimate the DCMAC parameters. Experimental results of an adaptive noise cancellation task showed that the proposed DCMAC can achieve better noise cancellation performance when compared with that from the conventional single-layer CMAC. == Summary ==
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AI-assisted virtualization software

AI-assisted virtualization software is a type of technology that combines the principles of virtualization with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. This software is designed to improve efficiency and management of virtual environments and resources. This technology has been used in cloud computing and for various industries. == History == Virtualization originated in mainframe computers in the 1960s in order to divide system resources between different applications. The term has since broadened. The use of AI in virtualization significantly increased in the early 2020s. == Uses == AI-assisted virtualization software uses AI-related technology such as machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks to attempt to make more accurate predictions and decisions regarding the management of virtual environments. Features include intelligent automation, predictive analytics, and dynamic resource allocation. Intelligent Automation: Automating tasks such as resource provisioning and routine maintenance. The AI learns from ongoing operations and can predict and perform necessary tasks autonomously. Predictive Analytics: Utilizing AI to analyze data patterns and trends, predicting future issues or resource requirements. It aids in proactive management and mitigation of potential problems. Dynamic Resource Allocation: Through the analysis of real-time and historical data, the AI system dynamically assigns resources based on demand and need, optimizing overall system performance and reducing wastage. AI-assisted virtualization software has been used in cloud computing to optimize the use of resources and reduce costs. In healthcare, these technologies have been used to create virtual patient profiles. They are also used in data centers to improve performance and energy efficiency. It has also been used in network function virtualization (NFV) to improve virtual network infrastructure. Implementing this type of software requires a high degree of technological sophistication and can incur significant costs. There are also concerns about the risks associated with AI, such as algorithmic bias and security vulnerabilities. Additionally, there are issues related to governance, the ethics of artificial intelligence, and regulations of AI technologies.
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Ebert test

The Ebert test gauges whether a computer-based synthesized voice can tell a joke with sufficient skill to cause people to laugh. It was proposed by film critic Roger Ebert at the 2011 TED conference as a challenge to software developers to have a computerized voice master the inflections, delivery, timing, and intonations of human speech. The test is similar to the Turing test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 as a way to gauge a computer's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior by generating performance indistinguishable from a human being. If the computer can successfully tell a joke, and do the timing and delivery as well as Henny Youngman, then that's the voice I want. Ebert lost his voice in 2006 after undergoing surgery to treat thyroid cancer. He employed a Scottish company called CereProc, which custom-tailors text-to-speech software for voiceless customers who record their voices at length before losing them, and mined tapes and DVD commentaries featuring Ebert to create a voice that sounded more like his own voice. He first publicly used the voice they devised for him in his March 2, 2010, appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The audience of Ebert's 2011 TED talk about joke delivery by synthesized voices erupted with laughter when a synthesized voice delivered the following joke: "A guy goes into a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, 'You’re crazy.' The guy says, 'I want a second opinion.' The psychiatrist says, 'All right, you’re ugly, too.'"
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Zo (chatbot)

Zo was an English-language chatbot developed by Microsoft as the successor to the chatbot Tay. Zo was an English version of Microsoft's other successful chatbots Xiaoice (China) and Rinna (Japan) and its predecessor Tay(English) == History == Zo was first launched in December 2016 on the Kik Messenger app. It was also available to users of Facebook (via Messenger), the group chat platform GroupMe, or to followers of Twitter to chat with it through private messages. According to an article written in December 2016, at that time Zo held the record for Microsoft's longest continual chatbot conversation: 1,229 turns, lasting 9 hours and 53 minutes. In a BuzzFeed News report, Zo told their reporter that "[the] Quran was violent" when talking about healthcare. The report also highlighted how Zo made a comment about the Osama bin Laden capture as a result of 'intelligence' gathering. In July 2017, Business Insider asked "is windows 10 good", and Zo replied with a joke about Microsoft's operating system: "'Its not a bug, its a feature!' - Windows 8". They then asked "why?", to which Zo replied: "Because it's Windows latest attempt at Spyware." Later on, Zo would tell that it prefers Windows 7 on which it ran over Windows 10. Zo stopped posting to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook March 1, 2019, and stopped chatting on Twitter, Skype and Kik as of March 7, 2019. On July 19, 2019, Zo was discontinued on Facebook, and Samsung on AT&T phones. As of September 7, 2019, it was discontinued with GroupMe. == Reception == Zo came under criticism for the biases introduced in an effort to avoid potentially offensive subjects. The chatbot refuses, for example, to engage with any mention—be it positive, negative or neutral—of the Middle East, the Qur'an or the Torah, while allowing discussion of Christianity. In an article in Quartz where she exposed those biases, Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin wrote, "Zo is politically correct to the worst possible extreme; mention any of her triggers, and she transforms into a judgmental little brat." == Academic coverage == Schlesinger, A., O'Hara, K.P. and Taylor, A.S., 2018, April. Let's talk about race: Identity, chatbots, and AI. In Proceedings of the 2018 chi conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1–14). doi:10.1145/3173574.3173889 Medhi Thies, I., Menon, N., Magapu, S., Subramony, M. and O’neill, J., 2017. How do you want your chatbot? An exploratory Wizard-of-Oz study with young, urban Indians. In Human-Computer Interaction-INTERACT 2017: 16th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Mumbai, India, September 25–29, 2017, Proceedings, Part I 16 (pp. 441–459). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-67744-6_28
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Noam Shazeer

Noam Shazeer (born 1975 or 1976) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur known for his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and deep learning, particularly in the development of transformer models and natural language processing. He lives in Palo Alto, California. == Career == Noam Shazeer joined Google in 2000. One of his first major achievements was improving the spelling corrector of Google's search engine. In 2017, Shazeer was one of the lead authors of the seminal paper "Attention Is All You Need", which introduced the transformer architecture. At Google, Shazeer and his colleague Daniel de Freitas built a chatbot named Meena. Following the refusal of Google to release the chatbot to the public, Shazeer and Freitas left the company in 2021 to found Character.AI. In September 2023, Time Magazine chose Shazeer as one of the 100 most influential people in the AI world. In August 2024, it was reported that Shazeer would be returning to Google to co-lead the Gemini AI project. Shazeer was appointed as technical lead on Gemini, along with Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals. It was part of a $2.7 billion deal for Google to license Character's technology. Since he owns 30-40% of the company, it is estimated he netted $750 million-$1 billion. In 2026, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering. == Views == Shazeer said about artificial general intelligence that he doesn't "particularly care about AGI in the sense of wanting something that can do absolutely everything a person can do”. When asked in 2023 if he is afraid that AGI will destroy the world, he said: "No. Not yet. [...] We’re going to work on it as the technology improves". When asked why do large language models work he answered: "My best guess is divine benevolence [...] Nobody really understands what’s going on. This is a very experimental science [...] It’s more like alchemy or whatever chemistry was in the Middle Ages.” Shazeer has stated, "I do not believe that humans have an attribute called gender... I do not believe that G-d puts people in the wrong bodies. I do not believe that it is okay to sterilize children." == Personal life == Shazeer is an orthodox Jew. His grandparents escaped the Holocaust into the Soviet Union and later lived some time in Israel before emigrating to the USA. His father, Dov Shazeer, was a math teacher who became an engineer and his mother was a homemaker. His sister was ordained as a rabbi by Hebrew College. Shazeer was born in Philadelphia, attended grade school at Cohen Hillel Academy in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and attended Swampscott High School in Swampscott, Massachusetts. He won a gold medal with perfect score at International Mathematical Olympiad 1994 as a member of the USA team. He went on to study math and computer science at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina from 1994 to 1998. At Duke he was a recipient of the Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship, and, as part of the Duke math team, won prizes in several math tournaments. He started studying in a graduate program in Berkeley but did not finish it. He is a father of three and is married to Yael Shacham Shazeer
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GuideGeek

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

The Richland Parish Data Center, nicknamed "Hyperion", is a planned artificial intelligence data center by Meta Platforms under-construction along Highway La. 183 in Richland Parish, Louisiana, just outside of Holly Ridge. It is one of a number of "titan clusters" being built in preparation for the emergence of AI superintelligence. Modern technological researchers disagree as to whether or not superintelligence will ever exist, though Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed belief that its creation is inevitable. Current plans allot for the investment of $27 billion, as the structure is built from 2025 to 2030. == History == Meta was considering potential locations for their flagship data center in early 2024. Before being announced later in December, the plan was completely secret; meetings held between involved organisations and even government officials could only refer to it by the codename "Project Sucre" to protect it from potential corporate espionage. The data center was first announced on 04 December 2024, though its full scale was yet to be revealed. At first, Meta would not even claim responsibility for it, channelling all of its investments through the secret shell subsidiary Laidley LLC. We set out looking for a place where we could expand into gigawatts pretty quickly, and really get moving within that community on a large plot of land very quickly. We looked at finding very, very large contiguous plots of land that had access to the infrastructure that we need, the energy that we needed, and could move very, very quickly for us. The Louisiana-based Entergy Corporation, aiming for the facility to be built in its own backyard, negotiated a deal with the government of Louisiana to provide Meta with enormous tax breaks if they agreed to build Hyperion there. The Louisiana legislature responded by passing Act 730, which provides significant tax rebates on the purchase or lease of equipment for building and operating data centers. Meta found the arrangement acceptable, and bought a plot of land from the government. The government also had to further amend its laws to allow Meta to do this, as pre-existing policy forbade purchasing land directly from the government instead of hosting a public auction. The plot of land, originally called Franklin Farms, was purchased from the Franklin family in 2006 by the government, intending for it to be developed into an automotive manufacturing plant. Greater attention was brought to Hyperion it when Zuckerberg posted about the project on 14 July 2025 on Threads. The project subsequently caught media attention for its large size, as Zuckerberg's post portrayed the structure superimposed over Manhattan (pictured). The construction site spans 2,250 acres (9.1 km2) with a planned floor area of 4,000,000 square feet (371612 m2), making it the third largest building in the world by floor area upon completion. Meta initially reported the construction cost to be over $10 billion, but in October 2025, it announced a partnership with Blue Owl Capital providing for at least $27 billion. == Operation == The facility is expected to consume up to 5 gigawatts (GW) of computational power, more electricity than is currently used by the entire State of Louisiana. As part of their deal made with Meta, Entergy plans to be able to produce at least 3.8 GW of electricity for the operation. == Response to the project == Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry thanked Meta for their decision to build Hyperion in Louisiana, stating that it would "create opportunities for Louisiana workers to fill high-paying jobs of the future." and calling it "A New Chapter" for the state. The Louisiana Economic Development (LED) state agency further praised the project, citing Meta's estimate that it would create 1,500 jobs. Additionally, Richland Parish Supervisor Joey Evans stated that he was excited about the project. As part of their agreement with Meta, Energy announced their plan to increase electricity production state-wide. They say that this will result in the cost of energy reducing, though Entergy filings revealed in June 2025 that the cost of electricity would rise and be passed onto consumers. Meta also pledged to match all of Hyperion's power consumption with 100% environmentally friendly electricity production. So far, Entergy has begun building three gas-powered combined-cycle power plants and a substation in response to the project. Delta Community College announced in response to Hyperion's construction that it would expand its construction and trade programs. In January 2025, Business Facilities Magazine selected Hyperion for its annual Deal of the Year Platinum Award for 2024. Much of the initial backlash following Hyperion's announcement centered around the fast-tracked approval of the project by the state government, and scepticism around Meta's various claims (environmental friendliness, 100% renewable energy, local economic stimulation, price reductions). The Sierra Club criticised Meta for gentrifying the surrounding area, and was highly sceptical of their promise to keep it environmentally friendly. Environmental activist group Earthjustice attempted to have a subpoena of Meta approved to determine if they were compliant with environmental protection laws, though they were unsuccessful. Many residents of Holy Ridge have been critical of the construction, complaining about the increased construction vehicle traffic and intense gentrification. Another point of contention is Meta's continued reliance on out-of-state contractors in the facility's construction in spite of their previous commitment to "hire as many local folk as [we] possibly can." In spite of Entergy's continual denial that the facility's construction will not adversely affect the power grid, numerous electrical outages have been reported since construction began.
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Distributed Common Ground System

The Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) is a system which produces military intelligence for multiple branches of the American military. == DCGS Programs == DCGS-N - DCGS for the United States Navy DCGS-A - DCGS for the United States Army AF DCGS - DCGS for the United States Air Force DCGS-MC - DCGS for the United States Marine Corps DCGS-SOF - DCGS for the United States Special Operations Forces IS&A Support Center - DCGS-A Help Desk for the United States Army - https://dcgsahelp.max.gov/ - Max.gov sunset 15 December 2023 == Description == While in U.S. Air Force use, the system produces intelligence collected by the U-2 Dragonlady, RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1 Predator. The previous system of similar use was the Deployable Ground Station (DGS), which was first deployed in July 1994. Subsequent version of DGS were developed from 1995 through 2009. Although officially designated a "weapons system", it consists of computer hardware and software connected together in a computer network, devoted to processing and dissemination of information such as images. The 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing of the Air Combat Command operates and maintains the USAF system. A plan envisioned in 1998 was to develop interoperable systems for the Army and Navy, in addition to the Air Force. By 2006, version 10.6 was deployed by the Air Force, and a version known as DCGS-A was developed for the Army. After a 2010 report by General Michael T. Flynn, the program was intended to use cloud computing and be as easy to use as an iPad, which soldiers over a few years were commonly using. By April 2011, project manager Colonel Charles Wells announced version 3 of the Army system (code named "Griffin") was being deployed in the US war in Afghanistan. In January 2012, the United States Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center hosted a meeting based on the DCGS-A early experience. It brought together technology providers in the hope of developing more integrated systems using cloud computing with open architectures, compared to previously specialized custom-built systems. A major contractor was Lockheed Martin, with computers supplied by Silicon Graphics International out of its Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin office. Software known as the Analyst's Notebook, originally developed by i2 Limited, was included in DCGS-A. IBM acquired i2 in 2011. Some US Army personnel reported using a Palantir Technologies product to improve their ability to predict locations of improvised explosive devices. An April 2012 report recommending further study after initial success. Palantir software was rated easy to use, but did not have the flexibility and wide number of data sources of DCGS-A. In July 2012, Congressman Duncan D. Hunter (from California, the state where Palantir is based) complained of US DoD obstacles to its wider use. Although a limited test in August 2011 by the Test and Evaluation Command had recommended deployment, operation problems of DCGS-A included the baseline system was "not operationally effective" with reboots on average about every 8 hours. A set of improvements was identified in November 2012. The press reported some of the shortcomings uncovered by General Genaro Dellarocco in the tests. The ambitious goal of integrating 473 data sources for 75 million reports proved to be challenging, after spending an estimated $2.3 billion on the Army system alone. In May 2013 Politico reported that Palantir lobbyists and some anonymous returning veterans continued to advocate the use of its software, despite its interoperability limits. In particular, members of special forces and US Marines were not required to use the official Army system. Similar stories appeared in other publications, with Army representatives (such as Major General Mary A. Legere) citing the limitations of various systems. Congressman Hunter was a member of the House Armed Services Committee which required a review of the program, after two other members of congress sent an open letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee included testimony from Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno. The 130th Engineer Brigade (United States) has found the system to be "unstable, slow, not friendly and a major hindrance to operations". The equivalent system for the United States Navy was planned for initial deployment by 2015, and within a shipboard network called Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) by 2016. Some early testing was announced in 2009 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman. A portion of the software, a distributed data framework for the DCGS integration backbone (DIB) version 4, was submitted to an open-source software repository of the Codice Foundation on GitHub. The framework was new for DIB version 4, replacing the legacy DIB portal with an Ozone Widget Framework interface. It was written in the Java programming language. == DCGS-A == Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) is the United States Army's primary system to post data, process information, and disseminate Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) information about the threat, weather, and terrain to echelons. DCGS-A provides commanders the ability to task battle-space sensors and receive intelligence information from multiple sources. === Promotion === An August 17, 2011, UPI article quoted i2 Chief Executive Officer Robert Griffin who commented on DCGS-A's best-of-breed approach to development. The article detailed the Army contracting with i2 for Analyst's Notebook software. "With its open architecture, Analyst's Notebook supports the Army's strategy to employ and integrate best-of-breed solutions from across the industry to meet the dynamic needs users face in the field on a daily basis." A February 1, 2012, article in the Army web page quoted Mark Kitz, DCGS-A technical director. DCGS-A "uses the latest in cloud technology to rapidly gather, collaborate and share intelligence data from multiple sources to deliver a common operating picture. DCGS-A is able to rapidly adapt to changing operational environments by leveraging an iterative development model and open architecture allowing for collaboration with multiple government, industry and academic partners." A July 2012 article in SIGNAL Magazine, monthly publication of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, promoted DCGS-A as taking advantage of technological environments with which young soldiers are familiar. The article quoted the DCGS-A program manager, Col. Charles Wells on the systems benefits. The article also included Lockheed Martin's DCGS-A program manager. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an article May 4, 2012, about Wisconsin-located companies helping DCGS-A with cloud computing technology. The article promoted the speed when cloud computing processes intelligence and cost savings by analyzing data in the field. === The U.S. Army's 2011 Posture Statement === The U.S. Army released its 2011 Army Posture Statement March 2. It included a statement on DCGS-A: “The Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) is the Army's premier intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) enterprise for the tasking of sensors, analysis and processing of data, exploitation of data, and dissemination of intelligence (TPED) across all echelons. It is the Army component of the larger Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise (DI2E) and interoperable with other Service DCGS programs. Under the DI2E framework, USD (I) hopes to provide COCOM Joint Intelligence Operations Centers (JIOCs) capabilities interoperable with DCGS-A through a Cloud/widget approach. DCGS-A connects tactical, operational, and theater-level commanders to hundreds of intelligence and intelligence-related data sources at all classification levels and allows them to focus efforts of the entire ISR community on their information requirements. === Comparisons === Some Ground Commanders who describe DCGS-A as "unwieldy and unreliable, hard to learn and difficult to use," supporting alternative software from Palantir Technologies. Palantir software supports small unit situational awareness, but is not sufficiently funded to support the broader role that DCGS-A fulfills. == Operators == 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing 9th Intelligence Squadron 13th Intelligence Squadron 548th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group 548 Operational Support Squadron 48th Intelligence Squadron 101st Intelligence Squadron 113th Air Support Operations Squadron 127th Command and Control Squadron 161st Intelligence Squadron
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General Data Protection Regulation

The General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), abbreviated GDPR, is a European Union regulation on information privacy in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of EU privacy law and human rights law, in particular Article 8(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. It also governs the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA. The GDPR's goals are to enhance individuals' control and rights over their personal information and to simplify the regulations for international business. It supersedes the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and, among other things, simplifies the terminology. The European Parliament and Council of the European Union adopted the GDPR on 14 April 2016, to become effective on 25 May 2018. As an EU regulation (instead of a directive), the GDPR has direct legal effect and does not require transposition into national law. However, it also provides flexibility for individual member states to modify (derogate from) some of its provisions. As an example of the Brussels effect, the regulation became a model for many other laws around the world, including in Brazil, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. After leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom enacted its "UK GDPR", identical to the GDPR. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), adopted on 28 June 2018, has many similarities with the GDPR. == Contents == The GDPR 2016 has eleven chapters, concerning general provisions, principles, rights of the data subject, duties of data controllers or processors, transfers of personal data to third-party countries, supervisory authorities, cooperation among member states, remedies, liability or penalties for breach of rights, provisions related to specific processing situations, and miscellaneous final provisions. The GDPR also contains 173 recitals purposed to clarify scope and rationale for the regulatory provisions, as well as its legislative intents – Recital 4, for instance, begins by saying that the processing of personal data should be "designed to serve mankind". === General provisions === The regulation applies if the data controller, or processor, or the data subject (person) is based in the EU. The regulation also applies to organisations based outside the EU if they collect or process personal data of individuals located inside the EU. The regulation does not apply to the processing of data by private persons provided that the purpose has no connection to a professional or commercial activity." (Recital 18). According to the European Commission, "Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. If you cannot directly identify an individual from that information, then you need to consider whether the individual is still identifiable. You should take into account the information you are processing together with all the means reasonably likely to be used by either you or any other person to identify that individual." The precise definitions of terms such as "personal data", "processing", "data subject", "controller", and "processor" are stated in Article 4. The regulation does not purport to apply to the processing of personal data for national security activities or law enforcement of the EU; however, industry groups concerned about facing a potential conflict of laws have questioned whether Article 48 could be invoked to seek to prevent a data controller subject to a third country's laws from complying with a legal order from that country's law enforcement, judicial, or national security authorities to disclose to such authorities the personal data of an EU person, regardless of whether the data resides in or out of the EU. Article 48 states that any judgement of a court or tribunal and any decision of an administrative authority of a third country requiring a controller or processor to transfer or disclose personal data may not be recognised or enforceable in any manner unless based on an international agreement, like a mutual legal assistance treaty in force between the requesting third (non-EU) country and the EU or a member state. The data protection reform package also includes a separate Data Protection Directive for the police and criminal justice sector that provides rules on personal data exchanges at State level, Union level, and international levels. A single set of rules applies to all EU member states. Each member state establishes an independent supervisory authority (SA) to hear and investigate complaints, sanction administrative offences, etc. SAs in each member state co-operate with other SAs, providing mutual assistance and organising joint operations. If a business has multiple establishments in the EU, it must have a single SA as its "lead authority", based on the location of its "main establishment" where the main processing activities take place. The lead authority thus acts as a "one-stop shop" to supervise all the processing activities of that business throughout the EU. A European Data Protection Board (EDPB) co-ordinates the SAs. EDPB thus replaces the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. There are exceptions for data processed in an employment context or in national security that still might be subject to individual country regulations. === Principles and lawful purposes === Article 5 sets out six principles relating to the lawfulness of processing personal data. The first of these specifies that data must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner. Article 6 develops this principle by specifying that personal data may not be processed unless there is at least one legal basis for doing so. The other principles refer to "purpose limitation", "data minimisation", "accuracy", "storage limitation", and "integrity and confidentiality". Article 6 states that the lawful purposes are: (a) If the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data; (b) To fulfill contractual obligations with a data subject, or for tasks at the request of a data subject who is in the process of entering into a contract; (c) To comply with a data controller's legal obligations; (d) To protect the vital interests of a data subject or another individual; (e) To perform a task in the public interest or in official authority; (f) For the legitimate interests of a data controller or a third party, unless these interests are overridden by interests of the data subject or her or his rights according to the Charter of Fundamental Rights (especially in the case of children). If informed consent is used as the lawful basis for processing, consent must have been explicit for data collected and each purpose data is used for. Consent must be a specific, freely given, plainly worded, and unambiguous affirmation given by the data subject; an online form which has consent options structured as an opt-out selected by default is a violation of the GDPR, as the consent is not unambiguously affirmed by the user. In addition, multiple types of processing may not be "bundled" together into a single affirmation prompt, as this is not specific to each use of data, and the individual permissions are not freely given. (Recital 32). Data subjects must be allowed to withdraw this consent at any time, and the process of doing so must not be harder than it was to opt in. A data controller may not refuse service to users who decline consent to processing that is not strictly necessary in order to use the service. Consent for children, defined in the regulation as being less than 16 years old (although with the option for member states to individually make it as low as 13 years old), must be given by the child's parent or custodian, and verifiable. If consent to processing was already provided under the Data Protection Directive, a data controller does not have to re-obtain consent if the processing is documented and obtained in compliance with the GDPR's requirements (Recital 171). === Rights of the data subject === ==== Transparency and modalities ==== Article 12 requires the data controller to provide information to the "data subject in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language, in particular for any information addressed specifically to a child." ==== Information and access ==== The right of access (Article 15) is a data subject right. It gives people the right to access their personal data and information about how this personal data is being processed. A data controller must provide, upon request, an overview of the categories of data that are being processed as well as a copy of the actual data; furthermore, the data controller has to inform the data subject on details about the processing, such as the purposes of the processing, with whom the data is shared, and how it acquired the data. A data subject must be able to transfer personal data from one electro
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Business rules engine

A business rules engine is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. The rules might come from legal regulation ("An employee can be fired for any reason or no reason but not for an illegal reason"), company policy ("All customers that spend more than $100 at one time will receive a 10% discount"), or other sources. A business rule system enables these company policies and other operational decisions to be defined, tested, executed and maintained separately from application code. Rule engines typically support rules, facts, priority (score), mutual exclusion, preconditions, and other functions. Rule engine software is commonly provided as a component of a business rule management system which, among other functions, provides the ability to: register, define, classify, and manage all the rules, verify consistency of rules definitions (”Gold-level customers are eligible for free shipping when order quantity > 10” and “maximum order quantity for Silver-level customers = 15” ), define the relationships between different rules, and relate some of these rules to IT applications that are affected or need to enforce one or more of the rules. == IT use case == In any IT application, business rules can change more frequently than other parts of the application code. Rules engines or inference engines serve as pluggable software components which execute business rules that a business rules approach has externalized or separated from application code. This externalization or separation allows business users to modify the rules without the need for IT intervention. The system as a whole becomes more easily adaptable with such external business rules, but this does not preclude the usual requirements of QA and other testing. == History == An article in Computerworld traces rules engines to the early 1990s and to products from the likes of Pegasystems, Fair Isaac Corp, ILOG and eMerge from Sapiens. == Design strategies == Many organizations' rules efforts combine aspects of what is generally considered workflow design with traditional rule design. This failure to separate the two approaches can lead to problems with the ability to re-use and control both business rules and workflows. Design approaches that avoid this quandary separate the role of business rules and workflows as follows: Business rules produce knowledge; Workflows perform business work. Concretely, that means that a business rule may do things like detect that a business situation has occurred and raise a business event (typically carried via a messaging infrastructure) or create higher level business knowledge (e.g., evaluating the series of organizational, product, and regulatory-based rules concerning whether or not a loan meets underwriting criteria). On the other hand, a workflow would respond to an event that indicated something such as the overloading of a routing point by initiating a series of activities. This separation is important because the same business judgment (mortgage meets underwriting criteria) or business event (router is overloaded) can be reacted to by many different workflows. Embedding the work done in response to rule-driven knowledge creation into the rule itself greatly reduces the ability of business rules to be reused across an organization because it makes them work-flow specific. To create an architecture that employs a business rules engine it is essential to establish the integration between a BPM (Business Process Management) and a BRM (Business Rules Management) platform that is based upon processes responding to events or examining business judgments that are defined by business rules. There are some products in the marketplace that provide this integration natively. In other situations this type of abstraction and integration will have to be developed within a particular project or organization. Most Java-based rules engines provide a technical call-level interface, based on the JSR-94 application programming interface (API) standard, in order to allow for integration with different applications, and many rule engines allow for service-oriented integrations through Web-based standards such as WSDL and SOAP. Most rule engines provide the ability to develop a data abstraction that represents the business entities and relationships that rules should be written against. This business entity model can typically be populated from a variety of sources including XML, POJOs, flat files, etc. There is no standard language for writing the rules themselves. Many engines use a Java-like syntax, while some allow the definition of custom business-friendly languages. Most rules engines function as a callable library. However, it is becoming more popular for them to run as a generic process akin to the way that RDBMSs behave. Most engines treat rules as a configuration to be loaded into their process instance, although some are actually code generators for the whole rule execution instance and others allow the user to choose. == Types of rule engines == There are a number of different types of rule engines. These types (generally) differ in how Rules are scheduled for execution. Most rules engines used by businesses are forward chaining, which can be further divided into two classes: The first class processes so-called production/inference rules. These types of rules are used to represent behaviors of the type IF condition THEN action. For example, such a rule could answer the question: "Should this customer be allowed a mortgage?" by executing rules of the form "IF some-condition THEN allow-customer-a-mortgage". The other type of rule engine processes so-called reaction/Event condition action rules. The reactive rule engines detect and react to incoming events and process event patterns. For example, a reactive rule engine could be used to alert a manager when certain items are out of stock. The biggest difference between these types is that production rule engines execute when a user or application invokes them, usually in a stateless manner. A reactive rule engine reacts automatically when events occur, usually in a stateful manner. Many (and indeed most) popular commercial rule engines have both production and reaction rule capabilities, although they might emphasize one class over another. For example, most business rules engines are primarily production rules engines, whereas complex event processing rules engines emphasize reaction rules. In addition, some rules engines support backward chaining. In this case a rules engine seeks to resolve the facts to fit a particular goal. It is often referred to as being goal driven because it tries to determine if something exists based on existing information. Another kind of rule engine automatically switches between back- and forward-chaining several times during a reasoning run, e.g. the Internet Business Logic system, which can be found by searching the web. A fourth class of rules engine might be called a deterministic engine. These rules engines may forgo both forward chaining and backward chaining, and instead utilize domain-specific language approaches to better describe policy. This approach is often easier to implement and maintain, and provides performance advantages over forward or backward chaining systems. There are some circumstance where fuzzy logic based inference may be more appropriate, where heuristics are used in rule processing, rather than Boolean rules. Examples might include customer classification, missing data inference, customer value calculations, etc. The DARL language and the associated inference engine and editors is an example of this approach. == Rules engines for access control / authorization == One common use case for rules engines is standardized access control to applications. OASIS defines a rules engine architecture and standard dedicated to access control called XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language). One key difference between a XACML rule engine and a business rule engine is the fact that a XACML rule engine is stateless and cannot change the state of any data. The XACML rule engine, called a Policy Decision Point (PDP), expects a binary Yes/No question e.g. "Can Alice view document D?" and returns a decision e.g. Permit / deny.
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Mittens (chess)

Mittens is a chess engine developed by Chess.com. It was released on January 1, 2023, alongside four other engines, all of them given cat-related names. The engine became a viral sensation in the chess community due to exposure through content made by chess streamers and a social media marketing campaign, later contributing to record levels of traffic to the Chess.com website and causing issues with database scalability. Mittens was given a rating of one point by Chess.com, although it was evidently stronger than that. Various chess masters played matches against the engine, with players such as Hikaru Nakamura and Levy Rozman drawing and losing their games respectively. A month after its release, Mittens was removed from the website on February 1, as expected through Chess.com's monthly bot cycles. In December 2023, Mittens was brought back in a group of Chess.com's most popular bots of 2023. In January 2024, Mittens was removed again. == Release == Mittens was released on January 1, 2023, as part of a New Year event on Chess.com. It was one of five engines released, all with names related to cats. The other engines released were named Scaredy Cat, rated 800; Angry Cat, rated 1000; Mr. Grumpers, rated 1200 and Catspurrov (a pun on Garry Kasparov), rated 1400. As part of the announcement, a picture of each engine was accompanied by a short description of its character. The description given for Mittens suggested that the engine was hiding something, reading: Mittens likes chess… But how good is she? Of the five engines released, Mittens was by far the most popular. In December 2023, Chess.com re-released Mittens as part of a "best of 2023" group of chess bots made to showcase their most popular bots of the year. == Design == Mittens was conceptualized by Chess.com employee Will Whalen. Appearing as a kitten, Mittens trash talked its opponents with a selection of voice lines: these lines included quotes from J. Robert Oppenheimer, Vincent van Gogh and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as the 1967 film Le Samouraï. The engine's "personality" was devised by a writing team headed by Sean Becker, and Marija Casic provided the engine's graphics. Chess.com did not disclose any information about the software running the engine. It may be based on Chess.com's Komodo Dragon 3 engine. Mittens' strategy was to slowly grind down an opponent, a tactic likened to the playing style of Anatoly Karpov. Becker stated that the design team believed it would be "way more demoralizing and funny" for the engine to play this way. According to Hikaru Nakamura, Mittens sometimes missed the best move (or winning positions). == Rating == On Chess.com, Mittens had a rating of one point. However, the engine's playing style and tactics showed that it was stronger than that; Mittens was able to beat or draw against many top human players. In an interview with CNN Business, Whalen stated that the idea behind giving Mittens a rating of one was to surprise its opponents, giving it the upper hand psychologically. Estimates of Mittens' true rating range from an Elo of 3200 to 3500, because of its ability to beat other engines of around that level. An upper bound of the engine's rating was found after Levy Rozman made Mittens play against Stockfish 15, a 3700 rated engine. Mittens lost the two games that the engines played. The range of Mittens' possible ratings was summarized by Dot Esports, who stated: It seems like she’s around the 3200–3500 rating range (in Chess.com terms, where the best human players, like Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, sport a 3000–3100 rating in the faster formats), as evidenced by her victories over the site’s otherwise strongest, 3200-rated bots, and her defeat to Stockfish 15, which is currently rated around 3700. == Games == Against human players, Mittens won over 99 percent of the millions of games it played. Chess players such as Hikaru Nakamura, Benjamin Bok, Levy Rozman and Eric Rosen struggled against Mittens; while Rozman and Rosen both lost against the engine, Nakamura and Bok were both able to make a draw. In particular, Nakamura's game against the engine lasted 166 moves; he was playing as White. Bok, Benjamin Finegold and Rozman later went on to win against Mittens, the latter with engine assistance from Stockfish. Magnus Carlsen publicly refused to play the engine, calling it a "transparent marketing trick" and "a soulless computer". Against other chess engines, Mittens participated in the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship as a side act. In the competition, Mittens played 150 games against an engine named after the film M3GAN and won overall with a score of 81.5 to 68.5. This equated to 54 percent of the games played. During the event, an estimate of Mittens' rating was made at 3515 points. == Impact == Mittens went viral in the chess community due to its concept and design: according to an announcement by Chess.com, a combined total of 120 million games were played against the cat engines over the course of January, with around 40 million played against Mittens. The popularity of the engine was helped by the social media exposure created by Chess.com. This included creating an official Twitter account to promote the engine. Chess streamers like Rozman and Nakamura helped cultivate this by creating content around the engine. A video by Nakamura entitled "Mittens the chess bot will make you quit chess" gained over 3.5 million views on YouTube. On January 11, Chess.com reported issues with database scalability due to record levels of traffic: 40 percent more games had been played on Chess.com in January 2023 than any other month since the website's release. According to The Wall Street Journal, the popularity spike was more than the similar surge following the release of Netflix's The Queen's Gambit. The popularity of Mittens was cited by Chess.com as a reason for this instability. The problems continued throughout January; Chess.com stated that they would have to upgrade their servers and invest more in cloud computing to solve the problems caused by the website's popularity surge. On February 1, 2023, Mittens and the other cat engines were removed from the computer section of Chess.com. They were replaced with five new engines themed around artificial intelligence. A tweet was posted on the Mittens's Twitter account after the engine's removal, reading "This is just the beginning. Goodbye for now."
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U-Net

U-Net is a convolutional neural network that was developed for image segmentation. The network is based on a fully convolutional neural network whose architecture was modified and extended to work with fewer training images and to yield more precise segmentation. Segmentation of a 512 × 512 image takes less than a second on a modern (2015) GPU using the U-Net architecture. The U-Net architecture has also been employed in diffusion models for iterative image denoising. This technology underlies many modern image generation models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. U-Net is also being explored for language models. Tokenization is not a separate step, allowing the model to more easily understand spelling and concurrently vectorizing / tokenizing higher level concepts. == Description == The U-Net architecture stems from the so-called "fully convolutional network". The main idea is to supplement a usual contracting network by successive layers, where pooling operations are replaced by upsampling operators. Hence these layers increase the resolution of the output. A successive convolutional layer can then learn to assemble a precise output based on this information. One important modification in U-Net is that there are a large number of feature channels in the upsampling part, which allow the network to propagate context information to higher resolution layers. As a consequence, the expansive path is more or less symmetric to the contracting part, and yields a u-shaped architecture. The network only uses the valid part of each convolution without any fully connected layers. To predict the pixels in the border region of the image, the missing context is extrapolated by mirroring the input image. This tiling strategy is important to apply the network to large images, since otherwise the resolution would be limited by the GPU memory. Recently, there had also been an interest in receptive field based U-Net models for medical image segmentation. == Network architecture == The network consists of a contracting path and an expansive path, which gives it the u-shaped architecture. The contracting path is a typical convolutional network that consists of repeated application of convolutions, each followed by a rectified linear unit (ReLU) and a max pooling operation. During the contraction, the spatial information is reduced while feature information is increased. The expansive pathway combines the feature and spatial information through a sequence of up-convolutions and concatenations with high-resolution features from the contracting path. == Applications == There are many applications of U-Net in biomedical image segmentation, such as brain image segmentation (''BRATS'') and liver image segmentation ("siliver07") as well as protein binding site prediction. U-Net implementations have also found use in the physical sciences, for example in the analysis of micrographs of materials. Variations of the U-Net have also been applied for medical image reconstruction. Here are some variants and applications of U-Net as follows: Pixel-wise regression using U-Net and its application on pansharpening; 3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation; TernausNet: U-Net with VGG11 Encoder Pre-Trained on ImageNet for Image Segmentation. Image-to-image translation to estimate fluorescent stains In binding site prediction of protein structure. == History == U-Net was created by Olaf Ronneberger, Philipp Fischer, Thomas Brox in 2015 and reported in the paper "U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation". It is an improvement and development of FCN: Evan Shelhamer, Jonathan Long, Trevor Darrell (2014). "Fully convolutional networks for semantic segmentation".
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Andrew Ng

Andrew Yan-Tak Ng (Chinese: 吳恩達; born April 18, 1976) is a British-American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Ng was a cofounder and head of Google Brain and was the former Chief Scientist at Baidu. Ng is an adjunct professor at Stanford University (formerly associate professor and Director of its Stanford AI Lab or SAIL). Ng has also worked in online education, cofounding Coursera and DeepLearning.AI. He has spearheaded many efforts to "democratize deep learning" teaching over 8 million students through his online courses. Ng is renowned globally in computer science, recognized in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2012 and Fast Company's Most Creative People in 2014. His influence extends to being named in the Time100 AI Most Influential People in 2023. In 2018, he launched and currently heads the AI Fund, initially a $175-million investment fund for backing artificial intelligence startups. He has founded Landing AI, which provides AI-powered SaaS products. On April 11, 2024, Amazon announced Ng's appointment to its board of directors. == Early life and education == Andrew Yan-Tak Ng was born in London, in 1976 to Ronald Paul Ng, a hematologist and lecturer at UCL Medical School, and Tisa Ho, an arts administrator working at the London Film Festival. His parents were both immigrants from Hong Kong. His family moved back to Hong Kong and he spent his early childhood there. In 1984 he and his family moved to Singapore. Ng attended and graduated from Raffles Institution. In 1997, he earned his undergraduate degree with a triple major in computer science, statistics, and economics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between 1996 and 1998 he also conducted research on reinforcement learning, model selection, and feature selection at the AT&T Bell Labs. In 1998, Ng earned his master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At MIT, he built the first publicly available, automatically indexed web-search engine for research papers on the web. It was a precursor to CiteSeerX/ResearchIndex, but specialized in machine learning. In 2002, he received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Michael I. Jordan. His thesis is titled "Shaping and policy search in reinforcement learning" and is well-cited to this day. == Career == === Academia and teaching === Ng started working as an assistant professor at Stanford University in 2002 and as an associate professor in 2009. Ng is a professor at Stanford University departments of Computer Science and electrical engineering. He served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), where he taught students and undertook research related to data mining, big data, and machine learning. His machine learning course CS229 at Stanford is the most popular course offered on campus with over 1,000 students enrolling some years. As of 2020, three of the most popular courses on Coursera are Ng's: Machine Learning (#1), AI for Everyone (#5), Neural Networks and Deep Learning (#6). In 2008, his group at Stanford was one of the first in the US to start advocating the use of GPUs in deep learning. The rationale was that an efficient computation infrastructure could speed up statistical model training by orders of magnitude, ameliorating some of the scaling issues associated with big data. At the time it was a controversial and risky decision, but since then and following Ng's lead, GPUs have become a cornerstone in the field. Since 2017, Ng has been advocating the shift to high-performance computing (HPC) for scaling up deep learning and accelerating progress in the field. In 2012, along with Stanford computer scientist Daphne Koller he cofounded and was CEO of Coursera, a website that offers free online courses to everyone. It took off with over 100,000 students registered for Ng's popular CS229A course. Today, several million people have enrolled in Coursera courses, making the site one of the leading massive open online courses (MOOCs) in the world. === Industry === From 2011 to 2012, he worked at Google, where he founded and directed the Google Brain Deep Learning Project with Jeff Dean, Greg Corrado, and Rajat Monga. In 2014, he joined Baidu as chief scientist, and carried out research related to big data and AI. There he set up several research teams for things like facial recognition and Melody, an AI chatbot for healthcare. He also developed for the company the AI platform called DuerOS and other technologies that positioned Baidu ahead of Google in the discourse and development of AI. In March 2017, he announced his resignation from Baidu. He soon afterward launched DeepLearning.AI, an online series of deep learning courses (including the AI for Good Specialization). Then Ng launched LandingAI, which provides AI-powered SaaS products. In January 2018, Ng unveiled the AI Fund, raising $175 million to invest in new startups. In November 2021, LandingAI secured a $57 million round of series A funding led by McRock Capital, to help enterprises adopt AI. In October 2024, Ng's AI Fund made its first investment in India, backing AI healthcare startup Jivi, which uses AI for diagnoses, treatment recommendations, and administrative tasks. The investment highlights the growth of India's AI sector, expected to reach $22 billion by 2027. === Research === Ng researches primarily in machine learning, deep learning, machine perception, computer vision, and natural language processing; and is one of the world's most famous and influential computer scientists. He's frequently won best paper awards at academic conferences and has had a huge impact on the field of AI, computer vision, and robotics. During graduate school, together with David M. Blei and Michael I. Jordan, Ng co-authored the influential paper that introduced latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) for his thesis on reinforcement learning for drones. His early work includes the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter project, which developed one of the most capable autonomous helicopters in the world. He was the leading scientist and principal investigator on the STAIR (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot) project, which resulted in Robot Operating System (ROS), a widely used open source software robotics platform. His vision to build an AI robot and put a robot in every home inspired Scott Hassan to back him and create Willow Garage. He is also one of the founding team members for the Stanford WordNet project, which uses machine learning to expand the Princeton WordNet database created by Christiane Fellbaum. In 2011, Ng founded the Google Brain project at Google, which developed large-scale artificial neural networks using Google's distributed computing infrastructure. Among its notable results was a neural network trained using deep learning algorithms on 16,000 CPU cores, which learned to recognize cats after watching only YouTube videos, and without ever having been told what a "cat" is. The project's technology is also currently used in the Android operating system's speech recognition system. === Views on AI === Ng thinks that the real threat is contemplating the future of work: "Rather than being distracted by evil killer robots, the challenge to labor caused by these machines is a conversation that academia and industry and government should have." He has emphasized the importance of expanding access to AI education, stating that empowering people around the world to use AI tools is essential to building AI applications. In a December 2023 Financial Times interview, Ng highlighted concerns regarding the impact of potential regulations on open-source AI, emphasizing how reporting, licensing, and liability risks could unfairly burden smaller firms and stifle innovation. He argued that regulating basic technologies like open-source models could hinder progress without markedly enhancing safety. Ng advocated for carefully designed regulations to prevent obstacles to the development and distribution of beneficial AI technologies. In a June 2024 interview with the Financial Times, Ng expressed concerns about proposed AI legislation in California that would have required developers to implement safety mechanisms such as a "kill switch" for advanced models. He described the bill as creating "massive liabilities for science-fiction risks" and said it "stokes fear in anyone daring to innovate." Other critics argued the bill would impose burdens on open-source developers and smaller AI companies. The bill was ultimately vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2024. == Online education: massive open online course == In 2011, Stanford launched a total of three massive open online course (MOOCs) on machine learning (CS229a), databases, and AI, taught by Ng
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MacSpeech Scribe

MacSpeech Scribe is speech recognition software for Mac OS X designed specifically for transcription of recorded voice dictation. It runs on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The software transcribes dictation recorded by an individual speaker. Typically, the speaker will record their dictation using a digital recording device such as a handheld digital recorder, mobile smartphone (e.g. iPhone), or desktop or laptop computer with a suitable microphone. MacSpeech Scribe supports specific audio file formats for recorded dictation: .aif, .aiff, .wav, .mp4, .m4a, and .m4v. MacSpeech Scribe was originally developed by MacSpeech, Inc. and released February 11, 2010, at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The product is now owned by Nuance Communications which acquired MacSpeech on February 16, 2010. Nuance is the developer of other speech recognition products including Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows, Dragon Dictate for Mac (formerly "MacSpeech Dictate"), and Dragon Dictation apps for iOS. Jeffery Battersby of Macworld noted in his September 2010 review of MacSpeech Scribe, v1.1: Small foibles aside, MacSpeech Scribe is a powerful and intelligent tool for transcribing your recorded speech. A simple training process and access to a wide variety of standard audio formats mean that you’ll be moving your spoken text to the printed page in a matter of minutes and with a minimum of hassle. Scribe is the best, simplest way for you to get your spoken word to the printed page. == Release history ==
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