AI For Students Studying

AI For Students Studying — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

Meta AI

Meta AI is a research division of Meta (formerly Facebook) that develops artificial intelligence and augmented reality technologies. == History == Meta AI was founded in 2013 as Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR). It has workspaces in Menlo Park, London, New York City, Paris, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Tel Aviv, and Montreal as of 2025. In 2016, FAIR partnered with Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft in creating the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. Meta AI was directed by Yann LeCun until 2018, when Jérôme Pesenti succeeded the role. Pesenti is formerly the CTO of IBM's big data group. FAIR's research includes self-supervised learning, generative adversarial networks, document classification and translation, and computer vision. FAIR released Torch deep-learning modules as well as PyTorch in 2017, an open-source machine learning framework, which was subsequently used in several deep learning technologies, such as Tesla's autopilot and Uber's Pyro. That same year, a pair of chatbots were falsely rumored to be discontinued for developing a language that was unintelligible to humans. FAIR clarified that the research had been shut down because they had accomplished their initial goal to understand how languages are generated by their models, rather than out of fear. FAIR was renamed Meta AI following the rebranding that changed Facebook, Inc. to Meta Platforms Inc. On October 1, 2025, Facebook announced "We will soon use your interactions with AI at Meta to personalize the content and ads you see". == Virtual assistant == Meta AI is also the name of the virtual assistant developed by the team, now integrated as a chatbot into Meta's social networking products. It is also available as a subscription-based stand-alone app. The virtual assistant was pre-installed on the second generation of Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses, and can incorporate inputs from the glasses' cameras after an update. It is also available on Quest 2 and newer HMDs. Since May 2024, the chatbot has summarized news from various outlets without linking directly to original articles, including in Canada, where news links are banned on its platforms. This use of news content without compensation and attribution has raised ethical and legal concerns, especially as Meta continues to reduce news visibility on its platforms. == Current research == === Natural language processing and chatbot === Natural language processing is the ability for machines to understand and generate natural language. The team is also researching unsupervised machine translation and multilingual chatbots. ==== Galactica ==== Galactica is a large language model (LLM) designed for generating scientific text. It was available for three days from 15 November 2022, before being withdrawn for generating racist and inaccurate content. ==== Llama ==== Llama is an LLM released in February 2023. As of January 2026, the most recent release is the Llama 4. === Hardware === Meta used CPUs and in-house custom chips before 2022; they switched to Nvidia GPUs since then. MTIA v1, one of their early chips, is designed for the company's content recommendation algorithms. It was fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm process technology and consumed 25W, capable of 51.2 TFlops FP16. == Controversy == The French media outlet Mediapart reports that in 2022, Facebook's parent company illegally used works accumulated by the pirate site LibGen to train its artificial intelligence.
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Model Context Protocol

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard and open-source framework introduced by Anthropic in November 2024 to standardize the way artificial intelligence (AI) systems like large language models (LLMs) integrate and share data with external tools, systems, and data sources. MCP provides a standardized interface for reading files, executing functions, and handling contextual prompts. Following its announcement, the protocol was adopted by major AI providers, including OpenAI and Google DeepMind. == Background == MCP was announced by Anthropic in November 2024 as an open standard for connecting AI assistants to data systems such as content repositories, business management tools, and development environments. The protocol was created at Anthropic by engineers David Soria Parra and Justin Spahr-Summers. It aims to address the challenge of information silos and legacy systems. Before MCP, developers often had to build custom connectors for each data source or tool, resulting in what Anthropic described as an "N×M" data integration problem. Earlier stop-gap approaches—such as OpenAI's 2023 "function-calling" API and the ChatGPT plug-in framework—solved similar problems but required vendor-specific connectors. MCP re-uses the message-flow ideas of the Language Server Protocol (LSP) and is transported over JSON-RPC 2.0. In December 2025, Anthropic donated the MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, co-founded by Anthropic, Block and OpenAI, with support from other companies. == Features == The protocol was released with software development kits (SDKs) in programming languages including Python, TypeScript, C# and Java. Anthropic maintains an open-source repository of reference MCP server implementations and SDKs. MCP defines a standardized framework for integrating AI systems with external data sources and tools. It includes specifications for data ingestion and transformation, contextual metadata tagging, and AI interoperability across different platforms. The protocol also supports bidirectional connections between data sources and AI tools. MCP enables applications such as querying structured databases with plain language in the field of natural language data access. The protocol is used in AI-assisted software development tools. Integrated development environments (IDEs), coding platforms such as Replit, and code intelligence tools like Sourcegraph have adopted MCP to grant AI coding assistants real-time access to project context. MCP Apps is an official extension to the Model Context Protocol built on mcp-ui. While the base MCP specification is restricted to text and structured data, MCP Apps standardizes the delivery of interactive user interfaces—such as dashboards, forms, and data visualizations—from MCP servers to host applications like Claude and ChatGPT. == Adoption == In March 2025, OpenAI officially adopted the MCP, after having integrated the standard across its products, including the ChatGPT desktop app. In September 2025, OpenAI added support for MCP to ChatGPT apps. This allows for third-party access inside ChatGPT. MCP can be integrated with Microsoft Semantic Kernel, and Azure OpenAI. MCP servers can be deployed to Cloudflare. In April 2026, the AAIF held the MCP Dev Summit North America in New York City, drawing approximately 1,200 attendees. == Reception == The Verge reported that MCP addresses a growing demand for AI agents that are contextually aware and capable of pulling from diverse sources. In April 2025, security researchers released an analysis that concluded there are multiple outstanding security issues with MCP, including prompt injection, tool permissions that allow for combining tools to exfiltrate data, and lookalike tools that can silently replace trusted ones. MCP has been likened to OpenAPI, a similar specification that aims to describe APIs.
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Blocks world

The blocks world is a planning domain in artificial intelligence. It consists of a set of wooden blocks of various shapes and colors sitting on a table. The goal is to build one or more vertical stacks of blocks. Only one block may be moved at a time: it may either be placed on the table or placed atop another block. Because of this, any blocks that are, at a given time, under another block cannot be moved. Moreover, some kinds of blocks cannot have other blocks stacked on top of them. The simplicity of this toy world lends itself readily to classical symbolic artificial intelligence approaches, in which the world is modeled as a set of abstract symbols which may be reasoned about. == Motivation == Artificial Intelligence can be researched in theory and with practical applications. The problem with most practical applications is that the engineers don't know how to program an AI system. Instead of rejecting the challenge at all the idea is to invent an easy to solve domain which is called a toy problem. Toy problems were invented with the aim to program an AI which can solve it. The blocks world domain is an example of a toy problem. Its major advantage over more realistic AI applications is that many algorithms and software programs are available which can handle the situation. This allows comparing different theories against each other. In its basic form, the blocks world problem consists of cubes of the same size which have all the color black. A mechanical robot arm has to pick and place the cubes. More complicated derivatives of the problem consist of cubes of different sizes, shapes and colors. From an algorithmic perspective, blocks world is an NP-hard search and planning problem. The task is to bring the system from an initial state into a goal state. Automated planning and scheduling problems are usually described in the Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) notation which is an AI planning language for symbolic manipulation tasks. If something was formulated in the PDDL notation, it is called a domain. Therefore, the task of stacking blocks is a blocks world domain which stands in contrast to other planning problems like the dock worker robot domain and the monkey and banana problem. == Theses/projects which took place in a blocks world == Terry Winograd's SHRDLU Patrick Winston's Learning Structural Descriptions from Examples and Copy Demo Gerald Jay Sussman's Sussman anomaly Decision problem (Gupta and Nau, 1992): Given a starting Blocks World, an ending Blocks World, and an integer L > 0, is there a way to move the blocks to change the starting position to the ending position with L or less steps? This decision problem is NP-hard.
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Theaitre

Theaitre (stylized as THEaiTRE) is an interdisciplinary research project investigating to what extent artificial intelligence is able to generate theatre play scripts. The first theatre play produced within the project, AI: When a Robot Writes a Play, premiered online on February 26, 2021. == Goal == Following similar previous projects such as Sunspring, a short sci-fi movie with an automatically generated script, the THEaiTRE project investigates whether current language generation approaches are mature enough to generate a theatre play script that could be successfully performed in front of an audience. The project falls within the area of generative art, famously represented e.g. by the portrait of Edmond de Belamy which was generated by an artificial neural network. In this field, artists are trying to use automated techniques to create "art", questioning the modern definition of art itself. More broadly, the project aims at promoting cooperation rather than competition of humans and artificial intelligence as the more beneficial approach for both. The first theatre play created within the project, titled AI: When a Robot Writes a Play, was presented in February 2021 at the 100th anniversary of the premiere of the R.U.R. theatre play by the Czech author Karel Čapek to celebrate the invention of the word "robot". While R.U.R. was a play written by a human about robots (and humans), THEaiTRE tried to reverse this idea by presenting a play written by a "robot" (artificial intelligence) about humans (and robots). The script of the play was published online, with marked parts of the text which were written manually or manually post-edited. The analysis shows that 90% of the script is automatically generated, with 10% manually written or manually post-edited. The project also plans to produce a second play in 2022, addressing some of the many shortcomings of the approach used to generate the first play, as well as attempting to further minimize the amount of human influence on the script. == Approach == At the core of the project is the GPT-2 language model by OpenAI with various adjustments motivated by the task of generating theatre play scripts, for which the model is not particularly trained. The GPT-2 model is used in the usual way, providing it with a start of a document and prompting it to generate a continuation of the document. Specifically, the input for GPT-2 in this project is typically a short description of the scene setting, followed by a few lines to introduce the characters and start the dialogue. The model then generates 10 continuation lines, and hands control to the user, who can then either ask the model to continue generating, or make various edits before letting the model to generate further, deleting some parts of the script or adding new lines into the script. The adjustments include restricting the generator to only produce lines pertaining to characters appearing in the input prompt, limiting the repetitiveness of the generated text, and employing automatic summarization of the input prompt and the generated text to overcome the limitation of the GPT-2 model which only attends to the last 1,024 subword tokens. The limitations of the model include, among other, a lack of distinctiveness and self-consistency of the characters, an inability to generate the script for the whole play (scripts for individual scenes are generated independently), and errors due to the employment of automated machine translation, as GPT-2 generates English texts but the final play script is being produced in Czech language. The source codes of the project are available under the MIT licence. The project has also published some sample outputs. == Team == The project is a cooperation of the following experts, all based in Prague, Czech Republic: computational linguists from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University theatre experts from the Švanda Theatre and from the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague hackers from CEE Hacks The project is financially supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic.
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Vismon

Vismon was the Bell Labs system which displayed authors' faces on one of their internal e-mail systems. The name was a pun on the sysmon program used at Bell to show the load on computer systems. It can also be interpreted as "visual monitor". The system inspired Rich Burridge to develop the similar but more widespread faces system, which spread with Unix distributions in the 1980s. This in turn inspired Steve Kinzler to develop the Picons, or personal icons, which have the goal of offering symbols and other images, as well as faces, to represent individuals and institutions in email messages. Other systems such as the faces available on the LAN email functions of the NeXTSTEP platform also seem to have been influenced by the original Vismon capabilities. The faces program in Plan 9 is the direct descendant of this system. Vismon was the work of Rob Pike and Dave Presotto. It was based on some early experiments by Luca Cardelli. Many other scientists and engineers of the Computing Science Research Center of the Murray Hill facility were also involved. All had been spurred by the introduction in 1983 of the new Blit graphics terminal developed by Pike and Bart Locanthi and marketed by Teletype Corporation of Skokie, Illinois as the DMD 5620. Pike was eager, along with his colleagues, to exploit the new graphic capabilities. Pike and company went around their Center, convincing everybody, from directors and administrative assistants to engineers and scientists, to pose as they got out a 4×5 view camera with a Polaroid back and took black-and-white photos (Polaroid type 52) of their faces. Their efforts yielded nearly 100 faces, which they digitised with a scanner from graphics colleagues. They wrote several programs to transform the faces, store them and serve them on several machines at the lab. As time went by, they added faces from outside their Center and outside Bell Labs. This database also led to the pico image editor (originally named zunk) which was used for image transformations, many of them with colleagues as the preferred target. The first programs built around vismon were used to announce incoming mail in a dedicated window, using the 48 by 48 pixel faces. Later on the faces were also used to decorate line printer banners.
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Vague set

In mathematics, vague sets are an extension of fuzzy sets. In a fuzzy set, each object is assigned a single value in the interval [0,1] reflecting its grade of membership. This single value does not allow a separation of evidence for membership and evidence against membership. Gau et al. proposed the notion of vague sets, where each object is characterized by two different membership functions: a true membership function and a false membership function. This kind of reasoning is also called interval membership, as opposed to point membership in the context of fuzzy sets. == Mathematical definition == A vague set V {\displaystyle V} is characterized by its true membership function t v ( x ) {\displaystyle t_{v}(x)} its false membership function f v ( x ) {\displaystyle f_{v}(x)} with 0 ≤ t v ( x ) + f v ( x ) ≤ 1 {\displaystyle 0\leq t_{v}(x)+f_{v}(x)\leq 1} The grade of membership for x is not a crisp value anymore, but can be located in [ t v ( x ) , 1 − f v ( x ) ] {\displaystyle [t_{v}(x),1-f_{v}(x)]} . This interval can be interpreted as an extension to the fuzzy membership function. The vague set degenerates to a fuzzy set, if 1 − f v ( x ) = t v ( x ) {\displaystyle 1-f_{v}(x)=t_{v}(x)} for all x. The uncertainty of x is the difference between the upper and lower bounds of the membership interval; it can be computed as ( 1 − f v ( x ) ) − t v ( x ) {\displaystyle (1-f_{v}(x))-t_{v}(x)} .
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Midjourney

Midjourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service created and hosted by the San Francisco–based "independent research lab" Midjourney, Inc. Midjourney generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts, similar to OpenAI's DALL-E and Stability AI's Stable Diffusion. It is one of the technologies of the AI boom. The tool was launched into open beta on July 12, 2022. The Midjourney team is led by David Holz, who co-founded Leap Motion. Holz told The Register in August 2022 that the company was already profitable. Users generate images with Midjourney using Discord bot commands or the official website. == History == Midjourney, Inc. was founded in San Francisco, California, by David Holz, previously a co-founder of Leap Motion. The Midjourney image generation platform entered open beta on July 12, 2022. On March 14, 2022, the Midjourney Discord server launched with a request to post high-quality photographs to Twitter and Reddit for systems training. === Model versions === The company has been working on improving its algorithms, releasing new model versions every few months. Version 2 of their algorithm was launched in April 2022, and version 3 on July 25. On November 5, 2022, the alpha iteration of version 4 was released to users. Starting from the 4th version, MJ models were trained on Google TPUs. On March 15, 2023, the alpha iteration of version 5 was released. The 5.1 model is more opinionated than version 5, applying more of its own stylization to images, while the 5.1 RAW model adds improvements while working better with more literal prompts. The version 5.2 included a new "aesthetics system", and the ability to "zoom out" by generating surroundings to an existing image. On December 21, 2023, the alpha iteration of version 6 was released. The model was trained from scratch over a nine month period. Support was added for better text rendition and a more literal interpretation of prompts. == Functionality == Midjourney is accessible through a Discord bot or by accessing their website. Users can use Midjourney through Discord either through their official Discord server, by directly messaging the bot, or by inviting the bot to a third-party server. To generate images, users use the /imagine command and type in a prompt; the bot then returns a set of four images, which users are given the option to upscale. To generate images on the website, users initially needed to have generated at least 1,000 images through the bot; this limitation has since been removed. === Vary (Region) + remix feature === Midjourney released a Vary (Region) feature on September 5, 2023, as part of MidJourney V5.2. This feature allows users to select a specific area of an image and apply variations only to that region while keeping the rest of the image unchanged. === Midjourney web interface === Midjourney introduced its web interface to make its tools more accessible, moving beyond its initial reliance on Discord. This web-based platform was launched in August 2024 alongside the release of Midjourney version 6.1. The web editor consolidates tools such as image editing, panning, zooming, region variation, and inpainting into a single interface. The introduction of the web interface also syncs conversations between Midjourney's Discord channels and web rooms, further enhancing collaboration across both platforms. This shift was in response to growing competition from other AI image generation platforms like Adobe Firefly and Google’s Imagen, which had already launched as native web apps with integration into popular design tools. === Image Weight === This feature lets users control how much influence an uploaded image has on the final output. By adjusting the "image weight" parameter, users can prioritize either the content of the prompt or the characteristics of the image. For instance, setting a higher weight will ensure that the generated result closely follows the image's structure and details, while a lower weight allows the text prompt to have more influence over the final output. === Style Reference === With Style Reference, users can upload an image to use as a stylistic guide for their creation. This tool enables MidJourney to extract the style—whether it is the color palette, texture, or overall atmosphere—from the reference image and apply it to a newly generated image. The feature allows users to fine-tune the aesthetics of their creations by integrating specific artistic styles or moods. === Character Reference === The Character Reference feature allows for a more targeted approach in defining characters. Users can upload an image of a character, and the system uses that image as a reference to generate similar characters in the output. This feature is particularly useful in maintaining consistency in appearance for characters across different images. == Uses == Midjourney's founder, David Holz, told The Register that artists use Midjourney for rapid prototyping of artistic concepts to show to clients before starting work themselves. The advertising industry quickly adopted AI tools such as Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion to create original content and brainstorm ideas. Architects have described using the software to generate mood boards for the early stages of projects, as an alternative to searching Google Images. === Notable usage and controversy === The program was used by the British magazine The Economist to create the front cover for an issue in June 2022. In Italy, the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera published a comic created with Midjourney by writer Vanni Santoni in August 2022. Charlie Warzel used Midjourney to generate two images of Alex Jones for Warzel's newsletter in The Atlantic. The use of an AI-generated cover was criticised by people who felt it was taking jobs from artists. Warzel called his action a mistake in an article about his decision to use generated images. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver included a 10-minute segment on Midjourney in an episode broadcast in August 2022. A Midjourney image called Théâtre D'opéra Spatial won first place in the digital art competition at the 2022 Colorado State Fair. Jason Allen, who wrote the prompt that led Midjourney to generate the image, printed the image onto a canvas and entered it into the competition using the name Jason M. Allen via Midjourney. Other digital artists were upset by the news. Allen was unapologetic, insisting that he followed the competition's rules. The two category judges were unaware that Midjourney used AI to generate images, although they later said that had they known this, they would have awarded Allen the top prize anyway. In December 2022, Midjourney was used to generate the images for an AI-generated children's book that was created over a weekend. Titled Alice and Sparkle, the book features a young girl who builds a robot that becomes self-aware. The creator, Ammaar Reeshi, used Midjourney to generate a large number of images, from which he chose 13 for the book. Both the product and process drew criticism. One artist wrote that "the main problem... is that it was trained off of artists' work. It's our creations, our distinct styles that we created, that we did not consent to being used." In 2023, the realism of AI-based text-to-image generators, such as Midjourney, DALL-E, or Stable Diffusion, reached such a high level that it led to a significant wave of viral AI-generated photos. Widespread attention was gained by a Midjourney-generated photo of Pope Francis wearing a white puffer coat, the fictional arrest of Donald Trump, and a hoax of an attack on the Pentagon, as well as the usage in professional creative arts. Research has suggested that the images Midjourney generates can be biased. For example, even neutral prompts in one study returned unequal results on the aspects of gender, skin color, and location. A study by researchers at the nonprofit group Center for Countering Digital Hate found the tool to be easy to use to generate racist and conspiratorial images. In October 2023, Rest of World reported that Midjourney tends to generate images based on national stereotypes. In 2024, a Frontiers journal published a paper which contained gibberish figures generated with Midjourney, one of which was a diagram of a rat with large testicles and a large penis towering over himself. The paper was retracted a day after the images went viral on Twitter. ==== Content moderation and censorship in Midjourney ==== Prior to May 2023, Midjourney implemented a moderation mechanism predicated on a banned word system. This method prohibited the use of language associated with explicit content, such as sexual or pornographic themes, as well as extreme violence. Moreover, the system also banned certain individual words, including those of religious and political figures, such as Allah or General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping. This practice occasionally stirred controversy due to perceiv
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Libby Heaney

Libby Heaney is a British artist and quantum physicist known for her pioneering work on AI and quantum computing. She works on the impact of future technologies and is widely known to be the first artist to use quantum computing as a functioning artistic medium. Her work has been featured internationally, including in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Modern and the Science Gallery. == Early life and scientific career == Heaney is from Tamworth, Staffordshire. She lived in Amington, and went to Greenacres Primary School and Woodhouse High School, now called Landau Forte Academy Amington. She took her GCSEs in 1999. She studied physics at Imperial College London, graduating in 2005 with first class honours. Libby pursued a successful career in quantum physics, completing a PhD thesis on mode entanglement in ultra-cold atomic gases at the University of Leeds, and pursued her own research as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and at the National University of Singapore. In 2008, Heaney was awarded the Institute of Physics Very Early Career Woman in Physics Award (now Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal and Prize). == Artistic career == In 2013 Heaney returned to the UK and completed a master's degree at the University of the Arts London. She studied arts and science at Central Saint Martins and graduated in 2015. She then became a lecturer at the Royal College of Art, teaching Information Experience Design. In 2016, she created Lady Chatterley's Tinderbot which presented Tinder conversations between real users and AI bots programmed using Lady Chatterley's Lover. Lady Chatterley's Tinderbot was covered by BBC News, TheJournal.ie and the Irish Examiner and was exhibited internationally. In 2017, Heaney was commissioned by Sky Arts and the Barbican Centre to design Britbot, an internet bot built using artificial intelligence and the citizenship book Life in the UK: a guide for new residents. The book, a manual for the citizenship test, has been described by Heaney as being "largely a white male privileged version of British history and culture". The bot spoke to the public about what it meant to be British and learnt from their responses to become an ever changing, plural version of Britishness. She was awarded an Arts Council England grant to widen participation of the Britbot to social media. Heaney has exhibited Britbot at the Victoria and Albert Museum, at CogX, the Sheffield Documentary Festival the Edinburgh TV festival, and Art Ai in Leicester. She has been creating with quantum computing since 2019, and has created artworks using quantum computing for Light Art Space (LAS) in Berlin, Somerset House and arebyte in London. Using quantum code, storytelling, and immersive installations and performances, Libby Heaney's works such as Ent- and slimeqore explore and warn against the double-edged potential of quantum computing and its exploitation by private companies. In 2022, Ent- received the Lumen Prize immersive environment award. == Major works == === Ent- and The Evolution of Ent-: QX (2022) === In 2022, Libby Heaney was commissioned by Light Art Space to create Ent-, a 360 immersive installation that revisits Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights through quantum. The work uses quantum computing as both a medium and a paradigm through which to conceive human and non-human relations. Ent- was exhibited at LAS, Ars Electronica, and arebyte gallery in London. The work was also modified to fit a full dome projection at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, projected onto a public facade in Seoul, and turned into a playable version for an exhibition at Nahmad Contemporary in New York. In 2022, Ent- was a winner in the Art Science Category of the Falling Walls prize and received the Lumen Prize immersive environment award. The Evolution of Ent-:QX, first displayed at arebyte gallery in London, builds on Ent- and imagines a fictional quantum computing company (QX) that appropriates, parodies and subverts the language of big tech in order to educate the viewer on current profit-oriented uses of quantum computing as well as propose new ways to think about and use the technology. In 2023, Ent- was acquired and displayed by the 0xCollection, a new media arts institution based in Basel, in their inaugural exhibition in Prague. === Touch is response-ability (2020) === Touch is response-ability is an instagram performance and touch screen installation where participants activate animations by flicking through instagram stories. The performance investigates representations of the female body in art history and through computer vision to see how stereotypes are socially constructed and maintained. Images of the body are passed through a quantum algorithm, and as the users interact with them they progressively become fragmented and dissolve beyond recognition. The work was originally commissioned by Hervisions at LUX in 2020 and performed on the LUX instagram account. It was also exhibited at Etopia Zaragoza in 2021 and at Art SG with Gazelli Art House in 2023. === Lady Chatterley's Tinderbot (2016) === In Lady Chatterley's Tinderbot, Libby Heaney programmed a bot to engage in conversations on Tinder by using lines from the 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence. The work was first shown as an interactive installation in 2016 at the Dublin Science Gallery, allowing visitors to swipe left or right to navigate through various conversations. Lady Chatterley's Tinderbot was also exhibited at Sonar+D in Barcelona (2017), the Telefonica Fundacion in Lima (2017), the Lowry in Salford (2018), RMIT gallery in Melbourne (2021), Microwave Festival in Hong Kong (2022) and was shortlisted for the HEK-Basel Net-based art award in 2018. == Selected exhibitions == 2023 - Synesthetic Immersion, 0xCollection, Prague 2023 - slimeQrawl, Shoreditch Arts Club, London 2023 - ...and that's only (half) the story, PLUS ONE Gallery, Antwerp 2023–Present Futures Festival, Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow 2023 - Realtime: Lilypads: Mediating Exponential Systems, NXT Museum, Amsterdam 2023 - My Rhino is not a Myth, Art Encounters Biennial, Timisoara 2023 - Ent-er the Garden of Forking Paths, Gazelli Art House, London 2023 - Energeia, Etopia, Zaragoza 2022 - Every Kind of Wind: Calder and the 21st Century, Nahmad Contemporary, New York 2022 - remiQXing still, Fiumano Clase, London 2022 - the Evolution of Ent-: QX, arebyte, London 2022 - Ent-, Light Art Space x Schering Stiftung, Berlin 2022 - Among the Machines, Zabludowicz Collection, London 2022 - BioMedia, ZKM, Karlsruhe 2021 - CASCADE, Southbank Centre, London 2021 - Agency is the Ability to Act, Holden Gallery, Manchester 2021 - BIAS, Science Gallery, Dublin 2021 - Ars Electronica, Linz 2021 - AI & Music, S+T+ARTS & Sonar Festival, CCCB, Barcelona 2020 - Real Time Constraints, arebyte, London 2019 - Euro(re)visions, Goethe Institut, London 2019 - Higher Resolutions with Hyphen Labs, Tate Modern, London 2019 - Open Fest with Sky Arts, Barbican, London 2018 - Digital Design Weekend, V&A, London 2018 - FAKE, Science Gallery, Dublin 2017 - Ars Electronica, Linz 2017 - Entangled: Quantum Computer Art, Royal College of Art, London 2017 - Humans Need Not Apply, Science Gallery, Dublin == Awards and honours == Her awards include: 2022 - Lumen Prize, BCS Immersive Environment Award (for Ent-) 2022 - Mozilla Foundation Creative Media Award, USA 2022 - nominated for the S+T+ARTS prize 2021 - Adaptation Award, Artquest, London 2021 - British Council Amplify Collaboration Award 2018 - Arts Council England, National Lottery Project Grant 2018 - HeK Basel Net Based Art Award (shortlisted for Tinderbot)
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Stride (software)

Stride was a cloud-based team business communication and collaboration tool, launched by Atlassian on 7 September 2017 to replace the cloud-based version of HipChat. Stride software was available to download onto computers running Windows, Mac or Linux, as well as Android, iOS smartphones, and tablets. Stride was bought by Atlassian's competitor Slack Technologies and was discontinued on February 15, 2019. The features of Stride include chat rooms, one-on-one messaging, file sharing, 5 GB of file storage, group voice and video calling, built-in collaboration tools, and up to 25,000 of searchable message history. Premium features include unlimited file storage, users, group chat rooms, file sharing and storage, apps, and history retention. The premium version, priced at $3/user/month, also includes advanced meeting functionality like group screen sharing, remote desktop control, and dial-in/dial-out capabilities. Stride offered integrations with Atlassian's other products as well as other third-party applications listed in the Atlassian Marketplace, such as GitHub, Giphy, Stand-Bot and Google Calendar. Stride offered additional features beyond messaging to improve efficiency and productivity. It aimed to reduce collaboration noise by introducing a "focus" mode, and eliminates the divisions between text chat, voice meetings, and videoconferencing, by simplifying transitioning between these modes in the same channel. On July 26, 2018, Atlassian announced that HipChat and Stride would be discontinued February 15, 2019, and that it had reached a deal to sell their intellectual property to Slack. Slack paid an undisclosed amount over three years to assume the user bases of the services, while Atlassian took a minority investment in Slack. The companies also announced a commitment to work on integration of Slack with Atlassian services.
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Belief–desire–intention software model

The belief–desire–intention software model (BDI) is a software model developed for programming intelligent agents. Superficially characterized by the implementation of an agent's beliefs, desires and intentions, it actually uses these concepts to solve a particular problem in agent programming. In essence, it provides a mechanism for separating the activity of selecting a plan (from a plan library or an external planner application) from the execution of currently active plans. Consequently, BDI agents are able to balance the time spent on deliberating about plans (choosing what to do) and executing those plans (doing it). A third activity, creating the plans in the first place (planning), is not within the scope of the model, and is left to the system designer and programmer. == Overview == In order to achieve this separation, the BDI software model implements the principal aspects of Michael Bratman's theory of human practical reasoning (also referred to as Belief-Desire-Intention, or BDI). That is to say, it implements the notions of belief, desire and (in particular) intention, in a manner inspired by Bratman. For Bratman, desire and intention are both pro-attitudes (mental attitudes concerned with action). He identifies commitment as the distinguishing factor between desire and intention, noting that it leads to (1) temporal persistence in plans and (2) further plans being made on the basis of those to which it is already committed. The BDI software model partially addresses these issues. Temporal persistence, in the sense of explicit reference to time, is not explored. The hierarchical nature of plans is more easily implemented: a plan consists of a number of steps, some of which may invoke other plans. The hierarchical definition of plans itself implies a kind of temporal persistence, since the overarching plan remains in effect while subsidiary plans are being executed. An important aspect of the BDI software model (in terms of its research relevance) is the existence of logical models through which it is possible to define and reason about BDI agents. Research in this area has led, for example, to the axiomatization of some BDI implementations, as well as to formal logical descriptions such as Anand Rao and Michael Georgeff's BDICTL. The latter combines a multiple-modal logic (with modalities representing beliefs, desires and intentions) with the temporal logic CTL. More recently, Michael Wooldridge has extended BDICTL to define LORA (the Logic Of Rational Agents), by incorporating an action logic. In principle, LORA allows reasoning not only about individual agents, but also about communication and other interaction in a multi-agent system. The BDI software model is closely associated with intelligent agents, but does not, of itself, ensure all the characteristics associated with such agents. For example, it allows agents to have private beliefs, but does not force them to be private. It also has nothing to say about agent communication. Ultimately, the BDI software model is an attempt to solve a problem that has more to do with plans and planning (the choice and execution thereof) than it has to do with the programming of intelligent agents. This approach has recently been proposed by Steven Umbrello and Roman Yampolskiy as a means of designing autonomous vehicles for human values. == BDI agents == A BDI agent is a particular type of bounded rational software agent, imbued with particular mental attitudes, viz: Beliefs, Desires and Intentions (BDI). === Architecture === This section defines the idealized architectural components of a BDI system. Beliefs: Beliefs represent the informational state of the agent–its beliefs about the world (including itself and other agents). Beliefs can also include inference rules, allowing forward chaining to lead to new beliefs. Using the term belief rather than knowledge recognizes that what an agent believes may not necessarily be true (and in fact may change in the future). Beliefset: Beliefs are stored in database (sometimes called a belief base or a belief set), although that is an implementation decision. Desires: Desires represent the motivational state of the agent. They represent objectives or situations that the agent would like to accomplish or bring about. Examples of desires might be: find the best price, go to the party or become rich. Goals: A goal is a desire that has been adopted for active pursuit by the agent. Usage of the term goals adds the further restriction that the set of active desires must be consistent. For example, one should not have concurrent goals to go to a party and to stay at home – even though they could both be desirable. Intentions: Intentions represent the deliberative state of the agent – what the agent has chosen to do. Intentions are desires to which the agent has to some extent committed. In implemented systems, this means the agent has begun executing a plan. Plans: Plans are sequences of actions (recipes or knowledge areas) that an agent can perform to achieve one or more of its intentions. Plans may include other plans: my plan to go for a drive may include a plan to find my car keys. This reflects that in Bratman's model, plans are initially only partially conceived, with details being filled in as they progress. Events: These are triggers for reactive activity by the agent. An event may update beliefs, trigger plans or modify goals. Events may be generated externally and received by sensors or integrated systems. Additionally, events may be generated internally to trigger decoupled updates or plans of activity. BDI was also extended with an obligations component, giving rise to the BOID agent architecture to incorporate obligations, norms and commitments of agents that act within a social environment. === BDI interpreter === This section defines an idealized BDI interpreter that provides the basis of SRI's PRS lineage of BDI systems: initialize-state repeat options: option-generator (event-queue) selected-options: deliberate(options) update-intentions(selected-options) execute() get-new-external-events() drop-unsuccessful-attitudes() drop-impossible-attitudes() end repeat === Limitations and criticisms === The BDI software model is one example of a reasoning architecture for a single rational agent, and one concern in a broader multi-agent system. This section bounds the scope of concerns for the BDI software model, highlighting known limitations of the architecture. Learning: BDI agents lack any specific mechanisms within the architecture to learn from past behavior and adapt to new situations. Three attitudes: Classical decision theorists and planning research questions the necessity of having all three attitudes, distributed AI research questions whether the three attitudes are sufficient. Logics: The multi-modal logics that underlie BDI (that do not have complete axiomatizations and are not efficiently computable) have little relevance in practice. Multiple agents: In addition to not explicitly supporting learning, the framework may not be appropriate to learning behavior. Further, the BDI model does not explicitly describe mechanisms for interaction with other agents and integration into a multi-agent system. Explicit goals: Most BDI implementations do not have an explicit representation of goals. Lookahead: The architecture does not have (by design) any lookahead deliberation or forward planning. This may not be desirable because adopted plans may use up limited resources, actions may not be reversible, task execution may take longer than forward planning, and actions may have undesirable side effects if unsuccessful. == BDI agent implementations == === 'Pure' BDI === Procedural Reasoning System (PRS) IRMA (not implemented but can be considered as PRS with non-reconsideration) UM-PRS OpenPRS Distributed Multi-Agent Reasoning System (dMARS) AgentSpeak(L) – see Jason below AgentSpeak(RT) Agent Real-Time System (ARTS) (ARTS) JAM JACK Intelligent Agents JADEX (open source project) JaKtA JASON GORITE SPARK 3APL 2APL GOAL agent programming language CogniTAO (Think-As-One) Living Systems Process Suite PROFETA Gwendolen (Part of the Model Checking Agent Programming Languages Framework) === Extensions and hybrid systems === JACK Teams CogniTAO (Think-As-One) Living Systems Process Suite Brahms JaCaMo
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For a Breath I Tarry

"For a Breath I Tarry" is a 1966 post-apocalyptic novelette by American writer Roger Zelazny, which was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1967. Set in a future long after the self-extinction of humanity, the novelette recounts the tale of Frost, a sentient machine. Although humans have caused their own extinction, the sentient machines that they created continue the work of rebuilding a shattered Earth. Along the way, the story explores the differences between humanity and machines, the former experiencing the world qualitatively, while the latter doing so quantitatively. This difference is illustrated through philosophical conversations between Frost and another machine named Mordel. Frost's goal of becoming human, along with literary allusions, drives the plot and sets the tone of the novelette. These allusions include the first chapter of the Book of Job, in both situation and language, since verses are both quoted directly and paraphrased. In addition, the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis are echoed. Finally, Frost and Mordel enter into a Faustian bargain, though with better results than in the original story. The other major character is the Beta Machine, Frost's peer in the Southern Hemisphere. (Frost controls the Northern Hemisphere.) The novelette hints that though being a machine, Beta has a feminine personality. After Frost has succeeded in his millennium-long quest to become human (via recovered DNA), Beta agrees to join him in becoming human—suggesting the possibility of rebirth for the human race. The novelette has appeared in collections of Zelazny's works and in anthologies. The title is from a phrase in the poet A. E. Housman's collection A Shropshire Lad.
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Mobile Fortify

Mobile Fortify is a mobile app used by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on their government-issued phones. The app allows agents to take a photo in order to gather biometrics, including contactless fingerprints and faceprints, for the purpose of identifying an individual and their potential immigration status. The app was created by NEC. == History == In June 2025, use of Mobile Fortify by ICE was uncovered through leaked emails and the user manual, reported by 404 Media. The app is internally developed, and details of the parent company and developer were initially unknown. In January 2026, the DHS's 2025 AI Use Case Inventory revealed the vendor as NEC Corporation, an international conglomerate with subsidiaries in Argentina, Australia, China, India and Malaysia. Later that month, several senators demanded transparency around the app and its origins, and that ICE stop using it. A second letter was sent again in November, after hearing no response to the previous letter from ICE. == Technology == Unlike other facial recognition software, Fortify uses federally linked databases. By contrast, Clearview AI uses public social media databases for biometric scanning. Federal databases include DHS's automated biometric identification system (IDENT), containing more than 270 million biometric records, and Customs and Border Protection's Traveler Verification Service. The State Department's visa and passport photo database, the FBI's National Crime Information Center, National Law Enforcement Telecommunications Systems, and CBP's TECS and Seized Assets and Case Tracing System (SEACATS). == Oversight == Several senators urged ICE to stop using the app for fear of infringing on fourth amendment and first amendment rights, and requested details on who developed the app, when it was deployed, whether the app was tested for accuracy, and policies and practices governing its use. In June 2025, they sent an open letter to Todd Lyons, ICE acting director, signed by senators Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Ed Markey, Bernie Sanders, Adam Schiff, Tina Smith, Elizabeth Warren, and Ron Wyden. On November 3, a second letter was sent to the ICE by senators, after not receiving answers to questions from the previous letter deadlined for October 2. == Criticism == Mobile Fortify, and ICE's use of similar biometric identification technologies (such as Mobile Identify, an app similar to Mobile Fortify to be used by local or regional law enforcement to assist in immigration enforcement ) has faced scrutiny from a variety of digital rights organizations, politicians, and news outlets. The criticism is already considered to potentially be a reason why the similar Mobile Identify app was pulled from the Google Play Store. Facial recognition technologies are known to produce false-positives and generally unreliable results, especially on those with darker skin tones. ICE has already previously mistakenly arrested a U.S. citizen under the belief he was illegally in the country, and later stated that he "could be deported based on biometric confirmation of his identity" prior to his release. U.S. representative Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee has previously commented that "ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person's status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien," and that "Mobile Fortify is a dangerous tool in the hands of ICE, and it puts American citizens at risk of detention and even deportation," On January 19, 2026, 404 Media reported on a case where a woman, identified in court documents as "MJMA", was scanned by Mobile Fortify twice in the same interaction, and two entirely different names were provided by the app. According to the Innovation Law Lab, whose attorneys are representing MJMA, both of the names were incorrect. ICE has stated that they will not allow people to decline to be scanned by Mobile Fortify, and that photos taken, even those of U.S. citizens, will be stored for 15 years, something that has been criticized primarily because ICE has not performed a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for Mobile Fortify, the right to decline other forms of biometric verification to the U.S. government is often available under other circumstances, and the 15 year window is viewed as unnecessarily large.
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Integreat

Integreat (former project name: Refguide+) is an open source mobile app that provides local information and services tailored to refugees and migrants coming to Germany. The content is maintained by local organizations, such as local governments or integration officers, and made available in locally relevant languages. It was developed by Tür an Tür - Digitalfabrik gGmbH (formerly Tür an Tür - Digital Factory gGmbH) in Augsburg together with a team of researchers and students from the Technical University of Munich. == History == In 1997, the Augsburg association "Tür an Tür", which has been working for refugees since 1992, published the brochure "First Steps", which answers local everyday questions. Since addresses and contact persons change quickly, some information is already outdated after a few weeks. Students of business informatics at the Technical University of Munich therefore developed the app Integreat within eight months together with the association and the social department of the city of Augsburg. The app was then also used by other cities and districts within months. As of February 3, 2022, information is available at 72 locations, including Munich, Dortmund, Nuremberg and Augsburg. == Mode of action == Refugees need information on areas such as registration, contact persons, health care, education, family, work and everyday life. Integreat seeks to provide refugees with this information by allowing them to select their geographic location and receive locally relevant information. This information is available offline once the app is opened so it can be used without an internet connection. In addition, the content is translated into the native languages of refugees and migrants to facilitate access. The content is licensed with a CC BY 4.0 license to facilitate collaboration and translation between content creators and dissemination of the content. Integreat is now being used for a broader migrant audience and says it can also support professionals, volunteers, and counseling centers. == Comparable mobile apps == Other mobile apps that are likewise intended to provide initial orientation for refugees include the app Ankommen, a joint project of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the Goethe-Institut, the Federal Employment Agency and the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, which is intended as a companion for the first few weeks in Germany, and the Welcome App, a company-sponsored non-profit initiative for information about Germany and asylum procedures with a regional focus, and a book by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) and Verlag Herder with a corresponding app Deutschland - Erste Informationen für Flüchtlinge (Germany - First Information for Refugees) as a companion for Arabic-speaking refugees in Germany.
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Supreme Commander (video game)

Supreme Commander (sometimes SupCom) is a 2007 real-time strategy video game designed by Chris Taylor and developed by his company, Gas Powered Games. The game is considered to be a spiritual successor, not a direct sequel, to Taylor's 1997 game Total Annihilation. First announced in the August 2005 edition of PC Gamer magazine, the game was released in Europe on February 16, 2007, and in North America on February 20. The standalone expansion Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance was released on November 6 of the same year. The sequel, Supreme Commander 2, was released in 2010. Nowadays, the original Supreme Commander is played through the community client called Forged Alliance Forever; the game has been further developed and balanced, and offers a wide variety of community mods. The gameplay of Supreme Commander focuses on using a giant bipedal mech called an Armored Command Unit (ACU), the so-called "Supreme Commander", to build a base, upgrading units to reach higher technology tiers, and conquering opponents. The player can command one of three factions: the Aeon Illuminate, the Cybran Nation, or the United Earth Federation (UEF). The expansion game added the Seraphim faction. Supreme Commander was highly anticipated in pre-release previews, and was well received by critics, with a Metacritic average of 86 out of 100. == Gameplay == Supreme Commander, like its spiritual predecessors, Total Annihilation and Spring, begins with the player solely possessing a single, irreplaceable construction unit called the "Armored Command Unit," or ACU, the titular Supreme Commander. Normally the loss of this unit results in the loss of the game (Skirmish missions can be set for a variety of victory conditions). These mech suits are designed to be transported through quantum gateways across the galaxy and contain all the materials and blueprints necessary to create an army from a planet's native resources in hours. All standard units except Commanders and summoned Support Commanders (sACU) are self-sufficient robots. All units and structures belong to one of four technology tiers, or "Tech" levels, each tier being stronger and/or more efficient than the previous. Certain lower-tier structures can be upgraded into higher ones without having to rebuild them. The first tier is available at the start of the game and consists of small, relatively weak units and structures. The second tier expands the player's abilities greatly, especially in terms of stationary weapons and shielding, and introduces upgraded versions of tier one units. The third tier level has very powerful assault units designed to overcome the fortifications of the most entrenched player. The fourth tier is a limited range of "experimental" technology. These are usually massive units which take a lot of time and energy to produce, but provide a significant tactical advantage. Supreme Commander features a varied skirmish AI. The typical Easy' and Normal modes are present, but the Hard difficulty level has four possible variants. Horde AI will swarm the player with hordes of lower level units, Tech AI will upgrade its units as fast as possible and assault the player with advanced units, the Balanced AI attempts to find a balance between the two, and the Supreme AI decides which of the three hard strategies is best for the map. The single player campaign consists of eighteen missions, six for each faction. The player is an inexperienced Commander who plays a key role in their faction's campaign to bring the "Infinite War" to an end. Despite the low number of campaign missions, each mission can potentially last hours. At the start of a mission, objectives are assigned for the player to complete. Once the player accomplishes them, the map is expanded, sometimes doubling or tripling in size, and new objectives are assigned. As the mission is commonly divided into three segments, the player will often have to overcome several enemy positions to achieve victory. === Resource management === Because humans have developed replication technology, making advanced use of rapid prototyping and nanotechnology, only two types of resources are required to wage war: Energy and Mass. Energy is obtained by constructing power generators on any solid surface (except fuel generators, which can only be built on fuel deposits), while Mass is obtained either by placing mass extractors on limited mass deposit spots (the most efficient method, although it requires map control) or by building mass fabricators to convert energy into mass. Constructor units can gather energy by "reclaiming" it from organic debris such as trees and mass from rocks and wrecked units. Each player has a certain amount of resource storage, which can be expanded by the construction of storage structures. This gives the player reserves in times of shortage or allows them to stockpile resources. If the resource generation exceeds the player's capacity, the material is wasted. On the contrary, if the storages are depleted and the demand of one of the resources exceeds the production, then all the productions speed is reduced. In addition, if an energy deficit occurs, shields will stop working. An adjacency system allows certain structures to benefit from being built directly adjacent to others. Energy-consuming structures will use less energy when built adjacent to power generators and power generators will produce more energy when built adjacent to power storage structures. The same applies to their mass-producing equivalents. Likewise, factories will consume less energy and mass when built adjacent to power generators and mass fabricators/extractors, respectively. However, by placing structures in close proximity, they become more vulnerable to collateral damage if an adjacent structure is destroyed. Furthermore, most resource generation structures can cause chain reactions when destroyed (especially Tier III structures, which produce large amounts of resources but often have large detonations that can wipe out a nearby army). === Warfare === Supreme Commander uses a "strategic zoom" system that allows the player to seamlessly zoom from a detailed close up view of an individual unit all the way out to a view of the entire map, at which point it resembles a fullscreen version of the minimap denoting individual units with icons. The camera also has a free movement mode and can be slaved to track a selected unit and there is a split screen mode which also supports multiple monitors. This system allows Supreme Commander to use vast maps up to 80 km x 80 km, with players potentially controlling a thousand units each. Units in Supreme Commander are built to scale as they would be in the real world. For example, battleships dwarf submarines. Late into the game, the larger "experimental" units, such as the Cybran Monkeylord, an enormous spider-shaped assault unit, can actually crush smaller enemy units by stepping on them. Because of the wide range of planets colonized by humanity in the setting, the theatres of war range from desert to arctic, and all battlespaces are employed. Technologies emerging in modern warfare are frequently employed in Supreme Commander. For example, stealth technology and both tactical and strategic missile and missile defense systems can be used. Supreme Commander introduced several innovations designed to reduce the amount of micromanagement inherent in many RTS games. Engineers units have the command "assist", that will help follow other engineers and help them finish their orders or improve production rate of factories. In addition, engineers with the order "patrol" will repair units, buildings and recycle wrecks in their along their patrol route. Holding the shift key causes any orders given to a unit (or group of units) to be queued. In this manner a unit may be ordered to attack several targets in succession, or to make best speed to a given point on the map and then attack towards a specified location engaging any hostiles it encounters along the way. After orders have been issued, holding the shift key causes all issued orders to be displayed on the map where they can be subsequently modified to accommodate a change of plan. Further, when a unit is ordered to attack a target, the player can issue an order to perform a coordinated attack to another unit. This order coordinates the arrival time of the units at the target automatically by adjusting the speed of the units involved. As in other RTS games, air transports can be used to convey units to specified destinations, in Supreme Commander though by shift queuing orders a transport containing several units can be ordered to drop specific units at subsequent waypoints. An air transport can also be ordered to create a ferry route, an airbridge wherein any land units ordered to the start of the ferry route will be conveyed by the air transport to the specified destination. The output from a production factory can be routed to a ferry route causing all units co
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Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising

Hostile Waters, released as Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising in America, is a hybrid vehicle and strategy game developed and published by Rage Software for Microsoft Windows. It was inspired by Carrier Command (Realtime Games, 1988). It has won several awards and one unofficial award from Rock Paper Shotgun as a "lost classic" or "The best game you've never played". == Plot == Hostile Waters takes place in a Utopian future where war has been abolished. In the year 2012, a revolutionary war takes place between the corrupt and power-hungry politicians, leaders and businessmen (described as the "Old Guard") and the people. The Old Guard were defeated, with only a few of their leaders escaping. By 2032, the world has been rebuilt as a utopia, with the help of nano-technological assemblers, which are used in "creation engines" to create matter from energy and waste, for free. The newly united world is governed from a capital city known as Central. Missile attacks are suddenly launched against major cities all over the world from an unknown location. This is eventually discovered to be an island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. A response to the missile attacks was a special forces team sent in to investigate the area for preliminary investigations. The Ministry of Intelligence (MinIntel) loses contact with it shortly thereafter. The world government authorises a reactivation of the Antaeus program, a series of warships able to create any weapon of their choosing using their on-board nano-technological creation engine. Two of these were left on the seabed in the case of an emergency, capable of being re-activated and refloating itself. On board are a series of "soulcatcher" chips, a classified 1990s military program researched into for the storage of human brain functions on a silicon chip. The soulcatcher technology was used to store the minds of every crew member ever assigned to an Antaeus vessel. It is soon discovered that one of the cruisers does not respond to the awakening signal. The other cruiser, however, is refloated and re-activated, with heavy damage to vital ship components. A course is plotted for a nearby disused wet-dock. As the Antaeus progresses from the wet-dock, unusual biological life-forms are discovered amongst the enemy bases on the islands. The identity of the aggressor firing the missiles is confirmed as the leftovers of the old, pre-Central forces, known as the Cabal. Outnumbering Central's army a thousand to one, they are fighting with thousands of troops and weapons that they hid away when it was apparent that the war was lost. The Antaeus is deployed into the chicane to stop the Cabal's operations there. It's later discovered that along with their superior numbers, they have also biologically engineered a species of organic machines, designed in the popular likeness of extraterrestrials, which they intend to use to create the fear of an alien invasion, to facilitate their taking over the world and the removal of the public use of creation engines. The Cabal later lose control of the species, which eventually turns on its masters, destroying them. The species starts spreading, modifying the planetary climate and geographical features in an attempt to exterminate humanity and make the planet more hospitable to itself. Having exterminated its creators, the species resolves to cleanse humanity as a whole from the planet using a massive 'disassembler cannon', only to be stopped by the Antaeus. The species subsequently attempts to flee into the cosmos and colonise the surrounding planets and stars, by launching a massive number of 'culture stones' (information devices that also double as creation engines) into space from an enormous, artificially-grown organic "island", the final staging point. Central's only option is to bind the Antaeus' creation engine and the disassembler cannon stolen from the aliens together to create a makeshift bomb, and detonate it at the central "column" containing the culture stones. The plan succeeds, and the Antaeus is sacrificed to save the world. The final cinematic show the organic disassembler cannon and the Antaeus' creation engine moving closer together and fusing, creating something new. A post-credits scene also shows that two of the species' culture stones have managed to get into space. == Gameplay == Each Mission takes place on and or near a fortified enemy island containing various forms of anti-air and ground defence, with scattered unit-production complexes powered by oil-derricks and fuel containers (which are dependent on the oil-derricks) that the player can destroy to keep the enemy from replacing destroyed forces. Vehicles are built on the Antaeus and, if desired, land vehicles can be delivered to a location by the air-lifting "magpie". Units are created by providing Antaeus with a number of resources which are obtained at the beginning of the level and debris which are taken from destroyed enemy units and structures. Transport helicopters such as the "Pegasus" can fly to an object and airlift it to the ship-board recycling system with little resources required. The carrier can analyse objects it disassembles at the rear of the Antaeus cruiser, and several of the game's vehicles and items are unlocked by "sampling" them in this fashion. The game has a number of vehicles that are progressively unlocked as the missions progress. Vehicles contain a number of slots for equipment and a selection of different types of weapons to use in the vehicle. A variety of vehicle equipment combinations can be designed. Vehicles have an individual damage multiplier such that different vehicles with the same weapon will do different damage. In addition to this, each soul-chip personality specializes in one unit along with specific equipment, which, if equipped will gain them a bonus in efficiency. == Development == The game was developed by 12 people. == Reception == The game received "favourable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Carla Harker of NextGen said, "You'll feel like a real battlefield general when you take to the field in Antaeus Rising." Jake The Snake of GamePro said, "If the usual game categories leave you unscathed, get bloodied in these Hostile Waters."
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