AI Generator Quillbot

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Qloo

Qloo (pronounced "clue") is a company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand taste and cultural correlations. It provides companies with an application programming interface (API). It received funding from Leonardo DiCaprio, Elton John, Barry Sternlicht, Pierre Lagrange and others. Qloo establishes consumer preference correlations via machine learning across data spanning cultural domains including music, film, television, dining, nightlife, fashion, books, and travel. The recommender system uses AI to predict correlations for further applications. == History == Qloo was founded in 2012 by chief executive officer Alex Elias and chief operating officer Jay Alger. Qloo initially launched an app designed for consumers, allowing them to understand their own tastes and receive personalized recommendations. The company amassed several million users and built a large catalog of cultural entities and corresponding user sentiment. In 2012, Qloo raised $1.4 million in seed funding from investors including Cedric the Entertainer, and venture capital firm Kindler Capital. Qloo had a public beta release in November 2012 after its initial funding. In 2013, the company raised an additional $1.6 million from Cross Creek Pictures founding partner Tommy Thompson, and Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury, founders of Maktoob, an Internet services company purchased by Yahoo! for $164 million in 2009. On November 14, 2013, a website and an iPhone app were announced. The company later released an Android app, and tablet versions, in mid-2014. In 2015, Twitter approached Qloo about powering personalized social feeds and targeted eCommerce ads on the platform based on what users were posting. Qloo developed an enterprise-grade API to support Twitter’s needs. Twitter ended up pivoting to enable brands to use the social platform for customer service and support, but Qloo was able to sell access to its cultural intelligence via API to many other enterprise clients, marking the official transition from a B2C company to a B2B company. In 2016, Qloo secured $4.5 million in venture capital investment. The $4.5 million was split between a number of investors, including Barry Sternlicht, Pierre Lagrange, and Leonardo DiCaprio. In July 2017, Qloo raised $6.5 million in funding rounds from AXA Strategic Ventures, and Elton John. Following the investment, the founders stated in an interview with Tech Crunch that they would use the investment to expand Qloo's database. They hoped the move would secure larger contracts with corporate clients. At the time, clients already included Fortune 500 companies such as Twitter, PepsiCo, and BMW. In 2019, the company announced that it had acquired cultural recommendation service TasteDive, with Alex Elias becoming chairman of TasteDive. In September 2019, Qloo was named among the Top 14 Artificial Intelligence APIs by ProgrammableWeb. In 2022, Qloo raised $15M in Series B funding from Eldridge and AXA Venture Partners, enabling the privacy-centric AI leader to expand its team of world-class data scientists, enrich its technology, and build on its sales channels in order to continue to offer premier insights into global consumer taste for Fortune 500 companies across the globe. Qloo was recognized as the "Best Decision Intelligence Company" at the 2023 AI Breakthrough Awards. Also in 2023, the company was awarded a Top Performer Award by SourceForge. As of 2024, Qloo is a three-time Inc. 5000 honoree: No. 360 (2022), No. 344 (2021), No. 187 (2020). Qloo raised $25 million Series C round on February 21, 2024. The round was led by AI Ventures with participation from AXA Venture Partners, Eldridge, and Moderne Ventures, allowing Qloo to address new commercial surface areas for Taste AI, including on-device learning and foundational models leveraging Qloo, as well as introduce self-service platform to make consumer and taste analytics available to small and mid-sized enterprises and individuals. Qloo also announced pursuing opportunistic M&A using its balance sheet along the lines of the TasteDive acquisition completed, which expanded Qloo's first-party data moat and corpus of cultural learning. This latest financing brought the total amount raised since the company's founding in 2012 to over $56 million. == Services and features == Qloo calls itself a cultural AI platform to provide real-time correlation data across domains of culture and entertainment including: film, music, television, dining, nightlife, fashion, books, and travel. Each category contains subcategories. Qloo’s knowledge of a user's taste in one category can be utilized to offer suggestions in other categories. Users then rate the suggestions, providing it with feedback for future suggestions. Qloo has partnerships with companies such as Expedia and iTunes. == Technology == Qloo’s Taste AI technology uses machine learning to decode and predict consumers’ interests, maintaining user anonymity. It is powered by 3.7 billion lifestyle entities (brands, music, film, TV, dining, nightlife, fashion, books, travel, and more) and trillions of anonymized consumer behavioral signals. Through AI, Qloo identifies patterns in these data signals, making predictions about how much interest a person or group has in a concept or thing. Central to Qloo’s technology are algorithms designed to detect and mitigate biases within datasets and models, allowing Qloo to assess the fairness of its AI systems with a focus on attributes such as age, gender, and race, enabling the company to fine-tune its AI models to align with their ethical standards. They also use visualization tools to probe the behavior of their AI models for conducting counterfactual analyses and for comparing the performances of the AI models across diverse demographic segments. Qloo’s Taste AI doesn’t collect or use any Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Instead, it derives recommendations for audience segments based on co-occurrences between lifestyle entities and anonymized behavioral signals. == Applications == Starbucks uses Qloo to create in-store music playlists tailored to specific neighborhoods. Hershey’s uses Qloo to customize the content of assorted candy bags. Michelin uses Qloo to serve recommendations in its Michelin Guide app. Netflix leverages Qloo’s technology to enhance merchandising by identifying actors who resonate with certain demographics. Qloo also works with PepsiCo, Samsung, The New York Mets, BuzzFeed, and Ticketmaster, Universal Music Group, and OOH advertising company JCDecaux.
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Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted

Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is a 2025 tower defense video game developed by PopCap Seattle, The Lost Pixels, and published by Electronic Arts. It is a remaster of the 2009 game Plants vs. Zombies, introducing upscaled graphics and new additional content. Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted was released for video game consoles and personal computers on October 23, 2025. It received generally positive reviews from critics, but was criticized by the original game's development team for including fabricated concept art and for mishandling the soundtrack. == Gameplay == Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted follows the same gameplay of the original Plants vs. Zombies game with very minor changes. It is a lane-based tower defense game where the player has to defend their home from incoming zombies. The player can place various plants by spending "sun", the game's currency during levels. Sun icons can be collected from the sky during daytime and from sun-producing plants such as sunflowers. Some plants can attack zombies while some can act as defense. If all zombies are defeated in a level, the player wins. If a zombie reaches the left side of the line, a lawn mower—or other similar, relevant object—will activate and clear the row of any zombies, but if the lawn mower has already been used, and another zombie crosses, the game is over. === Replanted features === Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted contains up to 4K upscaled graphics and widescreen support, in comparison to the original game's static 800x600 resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio. Replanted now has full controller support and features local multiplayer modes ported from the original game's seventh generation console ports: co-op, where two players play together with assigned roles; and Versus, where one plays as the plants and the other as the zombies. No online multiplayer is planned, however support for Steam Remote Play was later added in a patch as an alternative for Windows users. Replanted also contains quality-of-life features. Gameplay can now be sped up by the player's will, with a max speed increase of 2.5x. Sun icons can now be mass collected using the "Sun Magnet." On Windows, players can quick-select plants from their seed bank using the number keys as hotkeys. Replanted also introduces two new additional game modes. "Cloudy Day" is a set of non-linear levels in the Adventure campaign. These levels only allow Sunflowers as sun-producing plants. During these levels, the amount of sun dropped from the sky and produced by plants are lowered. At certain times, rain clouds will move over the lawn. While these clouds are present, sun will stop appearing from the sky and from Sunflowers. However, all plants will cost around half their original price and have significantly faster recharge times. "R.I.P. Mode" is a harder difficulty of the Adventure campaign, but the player is forced back to the beginning if they lose a single level. Replanted additionally features "bonus levels" included as non-linear levels in the Adventure campaign. These include 10 new minigames that were previously unused in the original game. In a later update, Replanted added "Survival: Endless" levels to all five areas of the game instead of just the daytime pool. == Development == The existence of a Plants vs. Zombies remaster was revealed in an interview with Janet Robin from The String Revolution, who they did a vinyl collaboration with the franchise in 2025 with Iam8bit. Janet stated that EA commissioned them to record an acoustic composition of the track "Crazy Dave" to be used for an "anniversary edition" of the game. The song would be additionally be a tribute to the song "Bad Guy", which artist Billie Eilish has stated to be somewhat similar to the track. Plants vs. Zombies Replanted was officially announced in a Nintendo Direct presentation in late July 2025. As an incentive, people who pre-ordered the game are given an in-game retro-styled skin of the Peashooter. Replanted was showcased at PAX West on August 25, 2025. A dev diary for Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted was uploaded to YouTube on October 17, 2025. The video features Nick Reinhart, Jake Neri, and Matt Townsend. A developer panel for the game was available during TwitchCon 2025. == Release == Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted was released for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and personal computers on October 23, 2025. It was leaked onto the internet on October 17, 2025. Players discovered multiple software bugs, and multiple assets alleged to be upscaled by generative artificial intelligence were found, leading to backlash. Numerous bugs were fixed in a day-one patch on October 23, 2025. == Reception == === Critical response === The versions of Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted for Windows, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2 received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic, while the Xbox Series X version received "mixed or average" reviews. According to OpenCritic, 57% of critics recommended it. IGN's Alessandro Fillari called it "a good way to get re-acquainted with one of the quirkiest puzzle-strategy games of the 2000s", while acknowledging its questionable decisions. Shacknews' David Craddock said it was his favorite version of Plants vs. Zombies, stating, "it packs everything fans loved about the original game, plus lots more" while justifying its US$20 price. The Verge described Replanted as "a time capsule from a simpler, happier time". Kyle Hilliard from Game Informer praised its faithfulness, complimenting the new animations and character designs that did not alter its memorability. Noah Hunter for Final Weapon described the remake as solid, though criticized the lack of certain features and containing bugs that gate it from being excellent. Ben Lyons from Gamereactor stated Replanted is the same as the original overall, despite believing the £18 price is not justified. === Original developers === Rich Werner, the original game's character designer, claims that some concept art contained in the game, speculated to be for Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare (2014), did not originate from the original's development. Werner also stated that concept art for the Disco Zombie is fabricated; the design for the Disco Zombie was created after the estate of Michael Jackson requested the original Dancing Zombie, who resembles Michael Jackson from his Thriller music video, be removed from the game. On October 19, 2026, composer Laura Shigihara expressed her dissatisfaction with the lack of dynamic music in the game. Dynamic music would later be implemented in a later patch. In an interview featuring Rich Werner and user interface designer Matt Holmberg on April 29, 2026, Werner revealed that he and Shigihara were contacted by EA to make a music video to market Replanted. However, after the game was leaked, Werner's response on social media led EA to cancel the collaboration.
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Argument Web

The Argument Web is a large-scale Web of interconnected arguments created by individuals as they express their opinions and interact with the opinions of others. The Argument Web aims to make online debate intuitive for participants such as mediators, students, academics, broadcasters and bloggers, to create a Web infrastructure that allows for the storage, automatic retrieval and analysis of linked argument data, and to improve the quality of online argument and debate. The Argument Web can be described as a portion of a larger Semantic Web. == AIFdb == AIFdb is a database implementation or ‘reification’ of the Argument Interchange Format (AIF), which allows for the storage and retrieval of AIF compliant argument structures. This database solution was provided as a foundation for an open, integrated Argument Web. It offers an extensive range of web services for interacting with stored argument data, while also offering search and argument visualisation features that are all consistent with the formal ontology of AIF. At a basic level, the AIFdb web services allow for the insertion and querying of basic components of an AIF argument, such as nodes, edges and schemes. Building upon this basis, it also facilitates more complex interactions with these AIF argument structures. Such complex queries could make it possible, for example, to determine all the statements made by a particular person in support a given I-Node. While, at its highest level of interaction, AIFdb can handle the import and export of many standard file formats, including SVG, DOT, RDF/XML and other formats of argument theory tools, like Carneades, Rationale and Araucaria. == Argument blogging == ArguBlogging is software which allows its users to select portions of hypertext on webpages in their Web browsers and to agree or disagree with the selected content, posting their arguments to their blogs with linked argument data. It is implemented as a bookmarklet, adding functionality to Web browsers and interoperating with blogging platforms such as Blogger and Tumblr.
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The Eye of Mexico

The Eye of Mexico (Spanish: El Ojo de México) is an outdoor sculpture in Mexico City. It is located in Ampliación Granada, Miguel Hidalgo, at the mixed-use development Neuchâtel Polanco, developed by the Canadian real estate company Ivanhoé Cambridge. The artwork was created by the Turkish artist Ferdi Alıcı and it was selected from among 350 proposals from artists from 35 countries. The project for The Eye of Mexico was developed by MIRA, a real estate investment and development company, and MASSIVart, a creative consulting agency. According to MIRA, upon its inauguration it became the first artwork in Latin America to use artificial intelligence (AI). The sculpture can read environmental and urban data using AI algorithms and transform the results into videos related to arts, science and technology. The ring was inaugurated on 20 May 2022 and it is 10 meters (33 ft) high and 3 meters (9.8 ft) wide.
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Sprite multiplexing

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

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

Project Debater is an IBM artificial intelligence project, designed to participate in a full live debate with expert human debaters. It follows on from the Watson project which played Jeopardy! == Development == Project Debater was developed at IBM's lab in Haifa, Israel. The project was proposed by Noam Slonim in 2011 as the IBM Research next Grand Challenge, following Deep Blue and the victory of Watson in Jeopardy! It was exposed for the first time in a closed media event at June 18, 2018, in San Francisco, under the leadership of Ranit Aharonov and Slonim, both from the IBM Research lab in Haifa, Israel. The AI technology debated two human debaters, Noa Ovadia, who was the 2016 Israeli debate champion and Dan Zafrir. The two debated on the topics "We should subsidize space exploration" and "Should we increase the use of telemedicine." A demonstration of Project Debater also aired on the Discovery Channel in June 2018 debating the question of whether sports gambling should be legalized. == Live Debate == On February 11, 2019, Project Debater was revealed to the world in a live debate in San Francisco. Nonpartisan media group Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates hosted the debate which was moderated by journalist John Donvan. The debate took place between Project Debater and Harish Natarajan, who holds the world record in number of debate competition victories. The motion was “We should subsidize preschools.” == That's Debatable Television Show == Project Debater was featured in a television series called “That’s Debatable” presented by Intelligence Squared U.S. Debates and Bloomberg Media. For each episode of “That’s Debatable,” Project Debater provided insight into three distinct debate topics on the redistribution of wealth, modern monetary theory, and a US-China space race. More than 5,000 arguments were submitted online from around the world across the three topics, which were then analyzed and distilled into key points that were highlighted on the television show and discussed by human debaters. == Artificial Intelligence Capabilities == To develop Project Debater, the IBM Research team had to endow the system with the following AI capabilities: Data-driven speech writing and delivery: Project Debater is the first demonstration of a computer that can digest massive corpora, and given a short description of a controversial topic, write a well-structured speech, and deliver it with clarity and purpose, while even incorporating humor where appropriate. Listening comprehension: the ability to identify the key concepts and claims hidden within long continuous spoken language. Four minutes of persuasive speech: the guarantee of producing four minutes of persuasive speech. Modeling human dilemmas: modeling the world of human controversy and dilemmas in a unique knowledge representation, enabling the system to suggest principled arguments as needed. An article on the project was published in Nature in March 2021.
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Fuzzy differential equation

Fuzzy differential equation are general concept of ordinary differential equation in mathematics defined as differential inclusion for non-uniform upper hemicontinuity convex set with compactness in fuzzy set. d x ( t ) / d t = F ( t , x ( t ) , α ) , {\displaystyle dx(t)/dt=F(t,x(t),\alpha ),} for all α ∈ [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle \alpha \in [0,1]} . == First order fuzzy differential equation == A first order fuzzy differential equation with real constant or variable coefficients x ′ ( t ) + p ( t ) x ( t ) = f ( t ) {\displaystyle x'(t)+p(t)x(t)=f(t)} where p ( t ) {\displaystyle p(t)} is a real continuous function and f ( t ) : [ t 0 , ∞ ) → R F {\displaystyle f(t)\colon [t_{0},\infty )\rightarrow R_{F}} is a fuzzy continuous function y ( t 0 ) = y 0 {\displaystyle y(t_{0})=y_{0}} such that y 0 ∈ R F {\displaystyle y_{0}\in R_{F}} . == Linear systems of fuzzy differential equations == A system of equations of the form x ( t ) n ′ = a n 1 ( t ) x 1 ( t ) + . . . . . . + a n n ( t ) x n ( t ) + f n ( t ) {\displaystyle x(t)'_{n}=a_{n}1(t)x_{1}(t)+......+a_{n}n(t)x_{n}(t)+f_{n}(t)} where a i j {\displaystyle a_{i}j} are real functions and f i {\displaystyle f_{i}} are fuzzy functions x n ′ ( t ) = ∑ i = 0 1 a i j x i . {\displaystyle x'_{n}(t)=\sum _{i=0}^{1}a_{ij}x_{i}.} == Fuzzy partial differential equations == A fuzzy differential equation with partial differential operator is ∇ x ( t ) = F ( t , x ( t ) , α ) , {\displaystyle \nabla x(t)=F(t,x(t),\alpha ),} for all α ∈ [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle \alpha \in [0,1]} . == Fuzzy fractional differential equation == A fuzzy differential equation with fractional differential operator is d n x ( t ) d t n = F ( t , x ( t ) , α ) , {\displaystyle {\frac {d^{n}x(t)}{dt^{n}}}=F(t,x(t),\alpha ),} for all α ∈ [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle \alpha \in [0,1]} where n {\displaystyle n} is a rational number.
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OrCam device

OrCam devices such as OrCam MyEye are portable, artificial vision devices that allow visually impaired people to understand text and identify objects through audio feedback, describing what they are unable to see. Reuters described an important part of how it works as "a wireless smartcamera" which, when attached outside eyeglass frames, can read and verbalize text, and also supermarket barcodes. This information is converted to spoken words and entered "into the user’s ear." Face-recognition is also part of OrCam's feature set. == Devices == OrCam Technologies Ltd has created three devices; OrCam MyEye 2.0, OrCam MyEye 1, and OrCam MyReader. OrCam My Eye 2.0: OrCam debuted the second-generation model, the OrCam MyEye 2.0 in December 2017. About the size of a finger, the MyEye 2.0 is battery-powered, and has been compressed into a self-contained device. The device snaps onto any eyeglass frame magnetically. Orcam 2.0 is small and light (22.5 grams/0.8 ounces) with functionality to restore independence to the visually impaired. It comes in two versions. The basic model can read text, and a more advanced one adds features such as face recognition and barcode reading. As of July 2023, the retail cost is between $4000 and $6000 (USD). == Clinical Studies == JAMA Ophthalmology: In 2016 JAMA Ophthalmology conducted a study involving 12 legally blind participants to evaluate the usefulness of a portable artificial vision device (OrCam) for patients with low vision. The results showed that the OrCam device improved the patient's ability to perform tasks simulating those of daily living, such as reading a message on an electronic device, a newspaper article or a menu. Wills Eye: Wills Eye was a clinical study designed to measure the impact of the OrCam device on the quality of life of patients with End-stage Glaucoma. The conclusion was that OrCam, a novel artificial vision device using a mini-camera mounted on eyeglasses, allowed legally blind patients with end-stage glaucoma to read independently, subsequently improving their quality of life. == Employee testing == The New York Times described how a pre-release OrCam device was used by a Coloboma-impaired employee of the device's developer in 2013 for grocery shopping. It was the small size of the prototype rather than the functionality that gave her added mobility in an Israeli store's aisles. Added life-enhancement was described: "to both recognize and speak .. bus numbers .. traffic lights." == Social aspects == In contrast to an early version of Google Glass, which "failed ... because .. Glass wearers were ..mocked", early OrCam devices used designs that "clip unobtrusively on your shirt or perhaps your belt." In addition, it does not record sounds or images, what was called "the privacy puzzle that stumped Google. One 2018 technology reviewer wrote that he wished it had a headphone jack "so it would be less disruptive in places where others are working." An attempt was made to use bone conduction. == USA introduction == In 2018 a team headed by New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind introduced use of OrCam devices to ten individuals screened for what he termed "new Israeli technology that really makes a difference to the blind." Although not the first USA success, it was more focused than a publicly funded project that was authorized in 2016 by a California government agency. Also in 2016 the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind demonstrated its use. == Technology == In the area of hardware, miniaturization has been quite important, but one major area, software, was mentioned by Assemblyman Hikind, and reported by The Times of Israel is the "AI-driven algorithms" that "reports .. how many people are in a room. In addition to reading printed text, it can also aid in "seeing" what is on a television or computer screen. Although OrCam can't help with handwritten information, it can reuse information, the basis of recognizing "US currency, and even faces." === Features === While early language support was for English, French, German, Hebrew and Spanish, others now available include Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish. == History == OrCam Technologies Ltd was founded in 2010 by Professor Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram. Before co-founding OrCam, the two in 1999 co-founded Mobileye, an Israeli company that develops vision-based advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) providing warnings for collision prevention and mitigation, which was acquired by Intel for $15.3 billion in 2017. OrCam launched OrCam MyEye in 2013 after years of development and testing, and began selling it commercially in 2015. In its early years, the company raised $22 million, $6 million of which came from Intel Capital. By 2014, Intel, which was also investing in Google Glass, had invested $15 million in Orcam. In March 2017, OrCam had raised $41 million in capital, making it worth $600 million. === Marketing === One outcome of initial marketing in the USA was that they "reached a deal with the California Department of Rehabilitation, ...qualifying blind and visually impaired state residents." == OrCam Technologies Ltd == OrCam Technologies Ltd. is the Israeli-based company producing these OrCam devices, which are wearable artificial intelligence space. The company develops and manufactures assistive technology devices for individuals who are visually impaired, partially sighted, blind, print disabilities, or have other disabilities. OrCam headquarters is located in Jerusalem, operating under the company name OrCam Technologies Ltd. OrCam has over 150 employees, is headquartered in Jerusalem, and has offices in New York, Toronto, and London. == Awards == 2018 Last Gadget Standing Winner 2018 CES Innovation Awards Honoree in Accessible Tech 2017 NAIDEX Innovation Award 2016 Louise Braille Corporate Recognition Award 2016 Silmo-d-Or Award
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Neural architecture search

Neural architecture search (NAS) is a technique for automating the design of artificial neural networks (ANN), a widely used model in the field of machine learning. NAS has been used to design networks that are on par with or outperform hand-designed architectures. Methods for NAS can be categorized according to the search space, search strategy and performance estimation strategy used: The search space defines the type(s) of ANN that can be designed and optimized. The search strategy defines the approach used to explore the search space. The performance estimation strategy evaluates the performance of a possible ANN from its design (without constructing and training it). NAS is closely related to hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning and is a subfield of automated machine learning (AutoML). == Reinforcement learning == Reinforcement learning (RL) can underpin a NAS search strategy. Barret Zoph and Quoc Viet Le applied NAS with RL targeting the CIFAR-10 dataset and achieved a network architecture that rivals the best manually-designed architecture for accuracy, with an error rate of 3.65, 0.09 percent better and 1.05x faster than a related hand-designed model. On the Penn Treebank dataset, that model composed a recurrent cell that outperforms LSTM, reaching a test set perplexity of 62.4, or 3.6 perplexity better than the prior leading system. On the PTB character language modeling task it achieved bits per character of 1.214. Learning a model architecture directly on a large dataset can be a lengthy process. NASNet addressed this issue by transferring a building block designed for a small dataset to a larger dataset. The design was constrained to use two types of convolutional cells to return feature maps that serve two main functions when convoluting an input feature map: normal cells that return maps of the same extent (height and width) and reduction cells in which the returned feature map height and width is reduced by a factor of two. For the reduction cell, the initial operation applied to the cell's inputs uses a stride of two (to reduce the height and width). The learned aspect of the design included elements such as which lower layer(s) each higher layer took as input, the transformations applied at that layer and to merge multiple outputs at each layer. In the studied example, the best convolutional layer (or "cell") was designed for the CIFAR-10 dataset and then applied to the ImageNet dataset by stacking copies of this cell, each with its own parameters. The approach yielded accuracy of 82.7% top-1 and 96.2% top-5. This exceeded the best human-invented architectures at a cost of 9 billion fewer FLOPS—a reduction of 28%. The system continued to exceed the manually-designed alternative at varying computation levels. The image features learned from image classification can be transferred to other computer vision problems. E.g., for object detection, the learned cells integrated with the Faster-RCNN framework improved performance by 4.0% on the COCO dataset. In the so-called Efficient Neural Architecture Search (ENAS), a controller discovers architectures by learning to search for an optimal subgraph within a large graph. The controller is trained with policy gradient to select a subgraph that maximizes the validation set's expected reward. The model corresponding to the subgraph is trained to minimize a canonical cross entropy loss. Multiple child models share parameters, ENAS requires fewer GPU-hours than other approaches and 1000-fold less than "standard" NAS. On CIFAR-10, the ENAS design achieved a test error of 2.89%, comparable to NASNet. On Penn Treebank, the ENAS design reached test perplexity of 55.8. == Evolution == An alternative approach to NAS is based on evolutionary algorithms, which has been employed by several groups. An Evolutionary Algorithm for Neural Architecture Search generally performs the following procedure. First a pool consisting of different candidate architectures along with their validation scores (fitness) is initialised. At each step the architectures in the candidate pool are mutated (e.g.: 3x3 convolution instead of a 5x5 convolution). Next the new architectures are trained from scratch for a few epochs and their validation scores are obtained. This is followed by replacing the lowest scoring architectures in the candidate pool with the better, newer architectures. This procedure is repeated multiple times and thus the candidate pool is refined over time. Mutations in the context of evolving ANNs are operations such as adding or removing a layer, which include changing the type of a layer (e.g., from convolution to pooling), changing the hyperparameters of a layer, or changing the training hyperparameters. On CIFAR-10 and ImageNet, evolution and RL performed comparably, while both slightly outperformed random search. == Bayesian optimization == Bayesian Optimization (BO), which has proven to be an efficient method for hyperparameter optimization, can also be applied to NAS. In this context, the objective function maps an architecture to its validation error after being trained for a number of epochs. At each iteration, BO uses a surrogate to model this objective function based on previously obtained architectures and their validation errors. One then chooses the next architecture to evaluate by maximizing an acquisition function, such as expected improvement, which provides a balance between exploration and exploitation. Acquisition function maximization and objective function evaluation are often computationally expensive for NAS, and make the application of BO challenging in this context. Recently, BANANAS has achieved promising results in this direction by introducing a high-performing instantiation of BO coupled to a neural predictor. == Hill-climbing == Another group used a hill climbing procedure that applies network morphisms, followed by short cosine-annealing optimization runs. The approach yielded competitive results, requiring resources on the same order of magnitude as training a single network. E.g., on CIFAR-10, the method designed and trained a network with an error rate below 5% in 12 hours on a single GPU. == Multi-objective search == While most approaches solely focus on finding architecture with maximal predictive performance, for most practical applications other objectives are relevant, such as memory consumption, model size or inference time (i.e., the time required to obtain a prediction). Because of that, researchers created a multi-objective search. LEMONADE is an evolutionary algorithm that adopted Lamarckism to efficiently optimize multiple objectives. In every generation, child networks are generated to improve the Pareto frontier with respect to the current population of ANNs. Neural Architect is claimed to be a resource-aware multi-objective RL-based NAS with network embedding and performance prediction. Network embedding encodes an existing network to a trainable embedding vector. Based on the embedding, a controller network generates transformations of the target network. A multi-objective reward function considers network accuracy, computational resource and training time. The reward is predicted by multiple performance simulation networks that are pre-trained or co-trained with the controller network. The controller network is trained via policy gradient. Following a modification, the resulting candidate network is evaluated by both an accuracy network and a training time network. The results are combined by a reward engine that passes its output back to the controller network. == One-shot models == RL or evolution-based NAS require thousands of GPU-days of searching/training to achieve state-of-the-art computer vision results as described in the NASNet, mNASNet and MobileNetV3 papers. To reduce computational cost, many recent NAS methods rely on the weight-sharing idea. In this approach, a single overparameterized supernetwork (also known as the one-shot model) is defined. A supernetwork is a very large Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) whose subgraphs are different candidate neural networks. Thus, in a supernetwork, the weights are shared among a large number of different sub-architectures that have edges in common, each of which is considered as a path within the supernet. The essential idea is to train one supernetwork that spans many options for the final design rather than generating and training thousands of networks independently. In addition to the learned parameters, a set of architecture parameters are learnt to depict preference for one module over another. Such methods reduce the required computational resources to only a few GPU days. More recent works further combine this weight-sharing paradigm, with a continuous relaxation of the search space, which enables the use of gradient-based optimization methods. These approaches are generally referred to as differentiable NAS and have proven very efficient in exploring the search space of ne
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Opposition to AI data centers

Since 2024, dozens of local community-led protest campaigns have emerged in opposition to AI data centers. == Motivations == Organized opposition to AI data centers has been driven by concerns about energy use, energy costs, noise pollution, air pollution, and water waste. Opposition sentiment is widespread with a Gallup poll conducted in March 2026 showing that 70% of respondents oppose the construction of new AI data centers in their neighborhood. == Impact == In 2025, local opposition to AI data centers led to the delay or cancellation of projects totalling US$156 billion. == Specific protests and outcomes in the United States == According to Data Center Watch, there are has been a wave of dozens of protests against AI data centers since 2022. Below is a non-exhaustive list of some notable examples. === Goodyear and Buckeye, Arizona: Tract AI Data Center Proposal === In Goodyear and Buckeye, Arizona, a $14 billion project by developer Tract was withdrawn after local authorities blocked necessary rezoning in response to pressure from resident organizers. Opponest stiff resistance due to concerns over building heights, noise pollution, and the potential strain on local utilities. However, the company announced a revised project near the Buckeye airport in August 2024, with the backing of local officials and the mayor. === Peculiar, Missouri: Diode Ventures Harper Road Technology Park Proposal === In Peculiar, Missouri, residents from the group "Peaceful Peculiar" organized to stop a data center proposal from Diode Ventures called Harper Road Technology Park. Citing concerns around noise and light pollution, health, environmental impacts, jobs, property values, and energy use, organizers attended local planning and zoning meetings in large numbers and lobbied councilors to reject the proposal. Ultimately, the city council unanimously rejected the proposal in September 2024. === Chesterton, Indiana: Provident Realty Advisors Proposal === In Chesterton, Indiana, the Texas-based company Provident Reality Advisors applied for a $1.3 billion construction of a data center complex on the Brassie Golf Club property. Provident Realty Advisors wanted to purchase the 200 acres owned by PPM Chesterton LLC in 2024 order to build a data center complex, with eight buildings and an end user of a hyperscaler. The Town Council of Chesterton released a statement saying that they would never support this project, at least not at the scale and location it was planned for. They cited fears of added noise for locals, electrical or water management concerns, the intrusiveness of a data center built next to houses, and more. Provident released a statement shortly after rescinding their plan, because it was clear than the town of Chesterton would not support them. === Cascade Locks, Oregon: Roundhouse Digital Infrastructure Proposal === Startup data center developer Roundhouse Digital Infrastructure had planned to build out a 10-megawatt data center using a vacant industrial building and nearby 10-acre site in the Port of Cascade Locks, Oregon. After significant organized community opposition, the project was abandoned. === Forth Worth, Texas: WUSF 5 Rock Creek East Proposal === In September 2024, the City Council of Fort Worth, Texas approved a zoning change that would allow construction of a data center. In responses, neighbors mounted opposition citing concerns about traffic, light pollution, energy consumption, water use, and noise issues if the data center were to be built. In response to extensive public comments opposing a tax break for the data center, a city councilor withdrew his motion to approve the tax break. As of April, 2026, the future of the project is still uncertain. === Santa Clara, California: GI Partners Proposal === GI partners sought to build a new AI data center in Santa Clara, California, which is already home to many data centers, by acquiring a conditional permit use that would have allowed the developer to knock down a property and replace it with a data center. To obtain this permit they were required to go before members of the Planning Commission. Ultimately, the project was delayed with the Planning Commission requiring GI partners to do more public outreach. === Virginia === ==== Richmond: DC Blox Proposal ==== After residents organized to lobby the municipal government to block the proposal to avoid noise pollution and higher energy use, commissioners denied the company's permit. ==== Catlett Station: Headwaters Site Proposal ==== In Catlett, Virginia, developer Headwaters proposed construction of a data center complex just north of the town in 2020. In response, a residents' organization called "Protect Catlett" was formed to oppose the project. Arguments against the data center involved its impacts on water and power availability, its noise as a residential disturbance, and its destruction of historic and community heritage buildings. Arguments in favor cited job creation and $20 million in local tax revenue if the project were to go through. Protect Catlett utilized town halls and public comments to mobilize opposition to the project. They also dedicated time to educating other residents about the project's negative impacts and canvassing door-to-door in order to garner even more opposition to the project. Ultimately, after fervent opposition from most town residents, the project was canceled by the town and the developer. ==== Culpeper County: Culpeper Acquisitions Proposal ==== Culpeper Acquisitions, LLC, proposed a massive $12 billion data center project in Culpeper County, Virginia, designed to feature 4.6 million square feet of space across nine multi-story buildings. Coalition to Save Culpeper (C2SC) is an activist organization formed to resist the development of the project. C2SC has been active on many fronts including, messaging on social media, reaching out to local officials, and organizing meetings to bring community members with aligned interests together. Ultimately, the project was delayed due to unanimous denial by the Culpeper County Planning Commission on June 12, 2024, which was driven by intense opposition from C2SC. C2SC was successful in their mission largely because they were able to get so many people from the community behind it, and put enough pressure on local officials to take action. ==== Midlothian: Province Group Proposal ==== In late October 2025, the Powhatan County Board of Supervisors in Virginia voted unanimously to approve the $3 billion data center, despite the county's Planning Commission having unanimously recommended denial several days earlier. The reasoning behind their support for the center is that it will generate substantial tax revenue, reducing the county's reliance on residential property taxes. This appeal of lowering residential property taxes is the major selling point for the center's development. The developer, California-based Province Group, incentivized the Board by being agreeable to its conditions for building the center. The center is still on track for development, but faces local resistance, though little information is available on specific groups opposing it. ==== Warrenton: Amazon Proposal ==== Citizens for Farquier County (CFFC) advocates to "preserve the natural, historic and agricultural resources" of their county. Historically, this has meant opposing the building of a dam or lights in front of fast food stores. This group has recently mobilized in opposition of a plan to build data centers for Amazon. They first filed a suit to stop the construction in 2023 and it has been in litigation ever since. The case hinges on opposition to a 2021 zoning amendment which allowed data centers to be built in town. CFFC's lawyer, Dale Mullen, argues that this amendment violates state law, which requires such amendments to state their "public purpose". They argue that the permit for the Amazon data center was "void from the beginning". The CFFC also organized to vote out town council members who approved the first data center and were up for reelection, replacing them with candidates who opposed the data center. In May 2025, after attending town council meetings to speak out against the data center, the planning commission voted 4–1 to remove the zoning amendment allowing data center construction in town, citing public opposition. Currently, CFFC is advocating along with Piedmont Environmental Group, for phasing out data center tax breaks at the state level. ==== France: Marseille opposition ==== In France, local opposition materialised in response to proposed data centre developments, especially in and around the city of Marseille. Opposition came from activists, such as "Clouds Were Under Our Feet" group, residents ,and local politicians. Issues raised related to energy use, environmental impact, and limited local benefits (such as the creation of a few jobs only). == Legislation in the United States == Legal limits and moratoriums on the construction of new d
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Anytime algorithm

In computer science, an anytime algorithm is an algorithm that can return a valid solution to a problem even if it is interrupted before it ends. The algorithm is expected to find better and better solutions the longer it keeps running. Most algorithms run to completion: they provide a single answer after performing some fixed amount of computation. In some cases, however, the user may wish to terminate the algorithm prior to completion. The amount of computation required may be substantial, for example, and computational resources might need to be reallocated. Most algorithms either run to completion or they provide no useful solution information. Anytime algorithms, however, are able to return a partial answer, whose quality depends on the amount of computation they were able to perform. The answer generated by anytime algorithms is an approximation of the correct answer. == Names == An anytime algorithm may be also called an "interruptible algorithm". They are different from contract algorithms, which must declare a time in advance; in an anytime algorithm, a process can just announce that it is terminating. == Goals == The goal of anytime algorithms are to give intelligent systems the ability to make results of better quality in return for turn-around time. They are also supposed to be flexible in time and resources. They are important because artificial intelligence or AI algorithms can take a long time to complete results. This algorithm is designed to complete in a shorter amount of time. Also, these are intended to have a better understanding that the system is dependent and restricted to its agents and how they work cooperatively. An example is the Newton–Raphson iteration applied to finding the square root of a number. Another example that uses anytime algorithms is trajectory problems when you're aiming for a target; the object is moving through space while waiting for the algorithm to finish and even an approximate answer can significantly improve its accuracy if given early. What makes anytime algorithms unique is their ability to return many possible outcomes for any given input. An anytime algorithm uses many well defined quality measures to monitor progress in problem solving and distributed computing resources. It keeps searching for the best possible answer with the amount of time that it is given. It may not run until completion and may improve the answer if it is allowed to run longer. This is often used for large decision set problems. This would generally not provide useful information unless it is allowed to finish. While this may sound similar to dynamic programming, the difference is that it is fine-tuned through random adjustments, rather than sequential. Anytime algorithms are designed so that it can be told to stop at any time and would return the best result it has found so far. This is why it is called an interruptible algorithm. Certain anytime algorithms also maintain the last result, so that if they are given more time, they can continue from where they left off to obtain an even better result. == Decision trees == When the decider has to act, there must be some ambiguity. Also, there must be some idea about how to solve this ambiguity. This idea must be translatable to a state to action diagram. == Performance profile == The performance profile estimates the quality of the results based on the input and the amount of time that is allotted to the algorithm. The better the estimate, the sooner the result would be found. Some systems have a larger database that gives the probability that the output is the expected output. One algorithm can have several performance profiles. Most of the time performance profiles are constructed using mathematical statistics using representative cases. For example, in the traveling salesman problem, the performance profile was generated using a user-defined special program to generate the necessary statistics. In this example, the performance profile is the mapping of time to the expected results. This quality can be measured in several ways: certainty: where probability of correctness determines quality accuracy: where error bound determines quality specificity: where the amount of particulars determine quality == Algorithm prerequisites == Initial behavior: While some algorithms start with immediate guesses, others take a more calculated approach and have a start up period before making any guesses. Growth direction: How the quality of the program's "output" or result, varies as a function of the amount of time ("run time") Growth rate: Amount of increase with each step. Does it change constantly, such as in a bubble sort or does it change unpredictably? End condition: The amount of runtime needed
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Nuance Communications

Nuance Communications, Inc. was an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software. Nuance merged with its competitor in the commercial large-scale speech application business, ScanSoft, in October 2005. ScanSoft was a Xerox spin-off that was bought in 1999 by Visioneer, a hardware and software scanner company, which adopted ScanSoft as the new merged company name. The original ScanSoft had its roots in Kurzweil Computer Products. In April 2021, Microsoft announced it would buy Nuance Communications. The deal is an all-cash transaction of $19.7 billion, including company debt, or $56 per share. The acquisition was completed in March 2022. == History == The Speech Technology and Research (STAR) Laboratory at SRI International began the journey that, in 1994, resulted in a spin-off company; Corona Corporation (later renamed to Nuance Communications ). Nuance Communications (NUAN) went public on the Nasdaq Stock Market in 1995. Nuance focused on commercializing advanced speech recognition technologies. Nuance was an early spinoff of SRI's Speech Technology and Research (STAR) Laboratory, a world leader in audio processing, speech and speaker analytics and spoken language research. The technology that served as the foundation of Nuance's speech recognition solution started at the STAR Lab and helped launch Nuance more than 20 years ago. In 1995, The SRI Language Modeling Toolkit (SRILM) was developed. This provides the tools to build and apply statistical language models (LMs), primarily for use in speech recognition, statistical tagging and segmentation, and machine translation. In terms of commercialization of natural automated speech recognition, SRI's natural language speech recognition software was the first to be deployed by a major corporation. In 1996, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., used Nuance's speech recognition technology to allow customers to receive stock quotes over the telephone. One of the key features of the ‘Schwab Discount Brokerage system’, was the ability to recognize English words even when spoken by customers with accents. In 1997, Nuance Communications developed the first large scale commercial dialog system for United Parcel Services (UPS). UPS used the voice recognition platform to handle very large numbers of inquiries about package status. The company that would later merge with Nuance Communications started life as Visioneer, incorporated in 1992. In 1999, Visioneer acquired ScanSoft, Inc. (SSFT), and the combined company became known as ScanSoft. In September 2005, ScanSoft Inc. acquired and merged with Nuance Communications (NUAN), a natural language DOD-project spinoff from SRI International. The resulting company adopted the Nuance name. During the prior decade, the two companies competed in the commercial large-scale speech application business. === Data breach === Between 2014 and 2017, Nuance exposed over 45,000 patient records. == Solutions == Customer service virtual assistants Speech recognition — for people Speech recognition — for business Speech recognition — for physicians Accessibility Power PDF Managed Print Services Transcription === ScanSoft origins === In 1974, Raymond Kurzweil founded Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. to develop the first omni-font optical character-recognition system – a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. In 1980, Kurzweil sold his company to Xerox. The company became known as Xerox Imaging Systems (XIS), and later ScanSoft. In March 1992, a new company called Visioneer, Inc. was founded to develop scanner hardware and software products, such as a sheetfed scanner called PaperMax and the document management software PaperPort. Visioneer eventually sold its hardware division to Primax Electronics, Ltd. in January 1999. Two months later, in March, Visioneer acquired ScanSoft from Xerox to form a new public company with ScanSoft as the new company-wide name. Prior to 2001, ScanSoft focused primarily on desktop imaging software such as TextBridge, PaperPort and OmniPage. Beginning with the December 2001 acquisition of Lernout & Hauspie assets, the company moved into the speech recognition business and began to compete with Nuance. Lernout & Hauspie had acquired speech recognition company Dragon Systems in June 2001, shortly before becoming bankrupt in October. Scansoft acquired speech recognition company SpeechWorks in 2003. === Partnership with Siri and Apple Inc. === In 2013, Nuance confirmed that its natural language processing algorithms supported Apple's Siri voice assistant. === Focus on health care === In 2019, Nuance spun off its automotive division as the company Cerence, allowing it to focus on health care applications. === Acquisition by Microsoft === On April 12, 2021, Microsoft announced that it would buy Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion, or $56 a share, a 22% increase over the previous closing price. Nuance's CEO, Mark Benjamin, stayed with the company. This was Microsoft's second-biggest acquisition up to that point, after its purchase of LinkedIn for $24 billion (~$30.7 billion in 2024) in 2016. Shortly after the deal, the Competition and Markets Authority, a UK regulatory body, stated it was looking into the deal on the basis of antitrust concerns. In December 2021, it was reported that the deal would be approved by the European Union. The acquisition was completed on March 4, 2022. In May 2023, Nuance announced an unspecified number of layoffs.
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Anna Ridler

Anna Ridler (born 1985) is an artist who works with machine learning, handmade archives and moving image. She builds her own datasets to expose the labour and ideology embedded in the systems that organise knowledge. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, M+ and ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and has been exhibited widely at cultural institutions including Tate Modern, Barbican Centre, Centre Pompidou, The Photographers' Gallery, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, MIT Museum, Kunsthaus Graz, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Ars Electronica. == Biography == Born in London in 1985, Ridler spent her childhood raised between Atlanta, Georgia and the United Kingdom. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Language from Oxford University in 2007 and a Master of Arts in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art in 2017. == Art practice == Ridler's practice uses technology, and in particular machine learning, to investigate how naming, classification and financial speculation determine what can be seen and what is erased. A core element of Ridler's work lies in the creation of handmade data sets through a laborious process of selecting and classifying images and text. By creating her own data sets, Ridler is able to uncover and expose underlying themes and concepts while also inverting the usual process of scraping pre-classified images found in large databases on the Internet. She began working with machine learning as an artistic material in 2017, at a moment when the technology required building every dataset by hand; that constraint became the foundation of the practice. Her interests are in drawing, machine learning, data collection, storytelling and technology. == Work == Some of Ridler's most notable works to date fall within her ‘tulip series’ which explores the hysteria around tulip mania and compares it to the speculation and bubbles surrounding cryptocurrencies. The series is expressed in three forms: a photographic dataset in Myriad (Tulips), 2018; two iterations of machine generated videos in Mosaic Virus (2018) and Mosaic Virus (2019); and a website with an accompanied functioning decentralized application in Bloemenveiling (2019). === Myriad (Tulips) (2018) === I wanted to draw together ideas around capitalism, value, and the tangible and intangible nature of speculation, and collapse from two very different yet surprisingly similar moments in history. Myriad (Tulips) (2018) is an installation of ten thousand hand-labeled photographs forming a dataset of unique tulips. The ten thousand, or myriad of, photographs were taken by Ridler over the course of three months, roughly the length of a tulip season, spent in Utrecht. Each photograph is carefully affixed one by one with magnets to a specially painted black wall in a laborious process to form a seemingly precise grid. Myriad (Tulips) (2018) has been exhibited in AI: More than Human, Barbican Centre, London, UK (May 16 - August 26, 2019); Error—The Art of Imperfection, Ars Electronica Export, Berlin, Germany (November 17, 2018 – March 3, 2019); Peer to Peer, Shanghai Centre of Photography, Shanghai, China (December 8 - February 9, 2020). The work was featured in Bloomberg, It’s Nice That, and Hyperallergic. For Myriad (Tulips), Ridler was nominated for a Beazley Design of the Year award for her presentation of an alternative perspective on how to engage with artificial intelligence; demonstrating a departure from ownership and control of major corporations to a more personalized process of constructing and conceptualizing from the ground-up. === Mosaic Virus (2018, 2019) === Mosaic Virus (2018) is a single screen video installation displaying a grid of continually evolving tulips in bloom. For Mosaic Virus (2019) Ridler used three screens. The appearance of the tulips is controlled by artificial intelligence using fluctuations in the price of bitcoin. The stripes on the tulips' petals reflect the value of the cryptocurrency. Ridler draws parallels with the tulip mania of the 17th century; representing the hysteria and speculation around crypto-currencies. The work takes its name from the mosaic virus which caused stripes in tulip petals, subsequently increasing their desirability and leading to speculative prices. Ridler trained a general adversarial network (GAN) on the set of ten thousand photographs of individual tulips from her work Myriad (Tulips). She used a technique called spectral normalization to improve the output. The work was exhibited in Error—The Art of Imperfection, Ars Electronica Export, Berlin, Germany (November 17, 2018 – March 3, 2019). === Bloemenveiling (2019) === Bloemenveiling (2019) is an auction of artificial-intelligence-generated tulips on the blockchain in the form of a functioning decentralized application: http://bloemenveiling.bid. Ridler collaborated with senior research scientist at DeepMind, David Pfau to investigate whether blockchain could be used as a means of finding poetic substance within it. The piece interrogates the way technology drives human desire and economic dynamics by creating artificial scarcity. In the work, short moving image pieces of tulips created by generative adversarial networks are sold at auction using smart contracts on the Ethereum network. Each time a tulip is sold, thousands of computers around the world all work to verify the transaction, checking each other's work against each other. While the artificial intelligence behind the moving image pieces has the potential to generate infinite flowers, the enormous distributed network is used, at great environmental cost, to introduce scarcity to an otherwise limitless resource. Bloemenveiling was exhibited in Entangled Realities, HEK Basel, Basel, Switzerland in 2019. == Solo exhibitions == Anna Ridler, Circadian Bloom, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, (2023) Anna Ridler, Time Blooms, Buk Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, (2025) Anna Ridler, Trace Remains, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne, (2026) Anna Ridler, Laws of Ordered Form, The Photographers' Gallery, London (2020); The Abstraction of Nature, Aksioma, Ljubljana (2020) == Awards and recognition == European Union EMAP Fellow (2018) DARE Art Prize (2018–2019) Featured in Thames & Hudson, Digital Art (1960s–Now) Featured in British Art: The Last 15 Years ABS Digital Artist of the Year (2025)
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Defuzzification

Defuzzification is the process of producing a quantifiable result in crisp logic, given fuzzy sets and corresponding membership degrees. It is the process that maps a fuzzy set to a crisp set. It is typically needed in fuzzy control systems. These systems will have a number of rules that transform a number of variables into a fuzzy result, that is, the result is described in terms of membership in fuzzy sets. For example, rules designed to decide how much pressure to apply might result in "Decrease Pressure (15%), Maintain Pressure (34%), Increase Pressure (72%)". Defuzzification is interpreting the membership degrees of the fuzzy sets into a specific decision or real value. The simplest but least useful defuzzification method is to choose the set with the highest membership, in this case, "Increase Pressure" since it has a 72% membership, and ignore the others, and convert this 72% to some number. The problem with this approach is that it loses information. The rules that called for decreasing or maintaining pressure might as well have not been there in this case. A common and useful defuzzification technique is center of gravity. First, the results of the rules must be added together in some way. The most typical fuzzy set membership function has the graph of a triangle. Now, if this triangle were to be cut in a straight horizontal line somewhere between the top and the bottom, and the top portion were to be removed, the remaining portion forms a trapezoid. The first step of defuzzification typically "chops off" parts of the graphs to form trapezoids (or other shapes if the initial shapes were not triangles). For example, if the output has "Decrease Pressure (15%)", then this triangle will be cut 15% the way up from the bottom. In the most common technique, all of these trapezoids are then superimposed one upon another, forming a single geometric shape. Then, the centroid of this shape, called the fuzzy centroid, is calculated. The x coordinate of the centroid is the defuzzified value. == Methods == There are many different methods of defuzzification available, including the following: AI (adaptive integration) BADD (basic defuzzification distributions) BOA (bisector of area) CDD (constraint decision defuzzification) COA (center of area) COG (center of gravity) ECOA (extended center of area) EQM (extended quality method) FCD (fuzzy clustering defuzzification) FM (fuzzy mean) FOM (first of maximum) GLSD (generalized level set defuzzification) ICOG (indexed center of gravity) IV (influence value) LOM (last of maximum) MeOM (mean of maxima) MOM (middle of maximum) QM (quality method) RCOM (random choice of maximum) SLIDE (semi-linear defuzzification) WFM (weighted fuzzy mean) The maxima methods are good candidates for fuzzy reasoning systems. The distribution methods and the area methods exhibit the property of continuity that makes them suitable for fuzzy controllers.
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