AI Paraphrasing Tool

AI Paraphrasing Tool — hands-on reviews, top picks, pricing, pros and cons and a practical how-to guide on Aizhi.

  • ImageMixer

    ImageMixer

    ImageMixer is a brand name of video editing software that edits digital video and still image in camcorders and authors to VCD and DVD. It is a second-party Japanese product, distributed by Pixela Corporation, a Japanese manufacturer of PC peripheral hardware and multimedia software. == Bundling == ImageMixer is widely used for several camcorder brands, such as JVC, Hitachi and Canon. Also, Sony has chosen to package ImageMixer with its DVD and HDD Handycam. == ImageMixer series == ImageMixer has other series of software for digital camera, such as ImageMixer Label Maker and ImageMixer DVD dubbing. ImageMixer also has movie editing solution for Macintosh. == Windows Vista version of ImageMixer == A Windows Vista version of ImageMixer has been developed (ImageMixer3).

    Read more →
  • AI-assisted targeting in the Gaza Strip

    AI-assisted targeting in the Gaza Strip

    As part of the Gaza war, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have used artificial intelligence to rapidly and automatically perform much of the process of determining what to bomb. Israel has greatly expanded the bombing of the Gaza Strip, which in previous wars had been limited by the Israeli Air Force running out of targets. These tools include the Gospel, an AI which automatically reviews surveillance data looking for buildings, equipment and people thought to belong to the enemy, and upon finding them, recommends bombing targets to a human analyst who may then decide whether to pass it along to the field. Another is Lavender, an "AI-powered database" which lists tens of thousands of Palestinian men linked by AI to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and which is also used for target recommendation. Critics have argued the use of these AI tools puts civilians at risk, blurs accountability, and results in militarily disproportionate violence in violation of international humanitarian law. == The Gospel == Israel uses an AI system dubbed "Habsora", "the Gospel", to determine which targets the Israeli Air Force would bomb. It automatically provides a targeting recommendation to a human analyst, who decides whether to pass it along to soldiers in the field. The recommendations can be anything from individual fighters, rocket launchers, Hamas command posts, to private homes of suspected Hamas or Islamic Jihad members. AI can process military intelligence far faster than humans. Retired Lt Gen. Aviv Kohavi, head of the IDF until 2023, stated that the system could produce 100 bombing targets in Gaza a day, with real-time recommendations which ones to attack, where human analysts might produce 50 a year. A lecturer interviewed by NPR estimated these figures as 50–100 targets in 300 days for 20 intelligence officers, and 200 targets within 10–12 days for the Gospel. === Technological background === The Gospel uses machine learning, where an AI is tasked with identifying commonalities in vast amounts of data (e.g. scans of cancerous tissue, photos of a facial expression, surveillance of Hamas members identified by human analysts), then looking for those commonalities in new material. What information the Gospel uses is not known, but it is thought to combine surveillance data from diverse sources in enormous amounts. Recommendations are based on pattern-matching. A person with enough similarities to other people labeled as enemy combatants may be labelled a combatant themselves. Regarding the suitability of AIs for the task, NPR cited Heidy Khlaaf, engineering director of AI Assurance at the technology security firm Trail of Bits, as saying "AI algorithms are notoriously flawed with high error rates observed across applications that require precision, accuracy, and safety." Bianca Baggiarini, lecturer at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre wrote AIs are "more effective in predictable environments where concepts are objective, reasonably stable, and internally consistent." She contrasted this with telling the difference between a combatant and non-combatant, which even humans frequently can't do. Khlaaf went on to point out that such a system's decisions depend entirely on the data it's trained on, and are not based on reasoning, factual evidence or causation, but solely on statistical probability. === Operation === The IAF ran out of targets to strike in the 2014 war and 2021 crisis. In an interview on France 24, investigative journalist Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine stated that to maintain military pressure, and due to political pressure to continue the war, the military would bomb the same places twice. Since then, the integration of AI tools has significantly sped up the selection of targets. In early November, the IDF stated more than 12,000 targets in Gaza had been identified by the target administration division that uses the Gospel. NPR wrote on December 14 that it was unclear how many targets from the Gospel had been acted upon, but that the Israeli military said it was currently striking as many as 250 targets a day. The bombing, too, has intensified to what the December 14 article called an astonishing pace: the Israeli military stated at the time it had struck more than 22,000 targets inside Gaza, at a daily rate more than double that of the 2021 conflict, more than 3,500 of them since the collapse of the truce on December 1. Early in the offensive the head of the Air Force stated his forces only struck military targets, but added: "We are not being surgical." Once a recommendation is accepted, another AI, Fire Factory, cuts assembling the attack down from hours to minutes by calculating munition loads, prioritizing and assigning targets to aircraft and drones, and proposing a schedule, according to a pre-war Bloomberg article that described such AI tools as tailored for a military confrontation and proxy war with Iran. One change that The Guardian noted is that since senior Hamas leaders disappear into tunnels at the start of an offensive, systems such as the Gospel have allowed the IDF to locate and attack a much larger pool of more junior Hamas operatives. It cited an official who worked on targeting decisions in previous Gaza operations as saying that while the homes of junior Hamas members had previously not been targeted for bombing, the official believes the houses of suspected Hamas operatives were now targeted regardless of rank. In the France 24 interview, Abraham, of +972 Magazine, characterized this as enabling the systematization of dropping a 2000 lb bomb into a home to kill one person and everybody around them, something that had previously been done to a very small group of senior Hamas leaders. NPR cited a report by +972 Magazine and its sister publication Local Call as asserting the system is being used to manufacture targets so that Israeli military forces can continue to bombard Gaza at an enormous rate, punishing the general Palestinian population. NPR noted it had not verified this; it was unclear how many targets are being generated by AI alone, but there had been a substantial increase in targeting, with an enormous civilian toll. In principle, the combination of a computer's speed to identify opportunities and a human's judgment to evaluate them can enable more precise attacks and fewer civilian casualties. Israeli military and media have emphasized this capacity to minimize harm to non-combatants. Richard Moyes, researcher and head of the NGO Article 36, pointed to "the widespread flattening of an urban area with heavy explosive weapons" to question these claims, while Lucy Suchman, professor emeritus at Lancaster University, described the bombing as "aimed at maximum devastation of the Gaza Strip". The Guardian wrote that when a strike was authorized on private homes of those identified as Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives, target researchers knew in advance the expected number of civilians killed, each target had a file containing a collateral damage score stipulating how many civilians were likely to be killed in a strike, and according to a senior Israeli military source, operatives use a "very accurate" measurement of the rate of civilians evacuating a building shortly before a strike. "We use an algorithm to evaluate how many civilians are remaining. It gives us a green, yellow, red, like a traffic signal." ==== 2021 use ==== Kohavi compared the target division using the Gospel to a machine and stated that once the machine was activated in the war of May 2021, it generated 100 targets a day, with half of them being attacked, in contrast with 50 targets in Gaza per year beforehand. Approximately 200 targets came from the Gospel out of the 1,500 targets Israel struck in Gaza in the war, including both static and moving targets according to the military. The Jewish Institute for National Security of America's after action report identified an issue, stating the system had data on what was a target, but lacked data on what wasn't. The system depends entirely on training data, and intel that human analysts had examined and deemed didn't constitute a target had been discarded, risking bias. The vice president expressed his hopes this had since been rectified. === Organization === The Gospel is used by the military's target administration division (or Directorate of Targets or Targeting Directorate), which was formed in 2019 in the IDF's intelligence directorate to address the air force running out of targets to bomb, and which Kohavi described as "powered by AI capabilities" and including hundreds of officers of soldiers. In addition to its wartime role, The Guardian wrote it'd helped the IDF build a database of between 30,000 and 40,000 suspected militants in recent years, and that systems such as the Gospel had played a critical role in building lists of individuals authorized to be assassinated. The Gospel was developed by Unit 8200 of the Israeli Intelligence C

    Read more →
  • AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

    AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

    The AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence is a leading international academic conference in artificial intelligence held annually. It ranks 4th in terms of H5 Index in Google Scholar's list of top AI publications, after ICLR, NeurIPS, and ICML. It is supported by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), after which it is named. Precise dates vary from year to year, but paper submissions are generally due at the end of August to beginning of September, and the conference is generally held during the following February. The first AAAI was held in 1980 at Stanford University, Stanford California. During AAAI-20 conference, AI pioneers and 2018 Turing Award winners (often referred to as the Nobel Prize of Computing) Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, among eight other researchers, were honored as the AAAI 2020 Fellows. Along with other conferences such as NeurIPS and ICML, AAAI uses an artificial-intelligence algorithm to assign papers to reviewers. == Sponsors == Many leading technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon (company), IBM, Baidu, Bytedance, and Huawei, generously sponsor and participate in AAAI to publish and showcase their latest theoretical and applied research. Sponsoring companies also actively recruit AI talents at the conference. == Locations == AAAI-2026 Singapore Expo, Singapore AAAI-2025 Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States AAAI-2024 Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada AAAI-2023 Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C., United States AAAI-2022 Virtual Conference AAAI-2021 Virtual Conference AAAI-2020 Hilton New York Midtown, New York, New York, United States AAAI-2019 Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States AAAI-2018 Hilton New Orleans Riverside, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States AAAI-2017 San Francisco, California, United States AAAI-2016 Phoenix, Arizona, United States AAAI-2015 Austin, Texas, United States AAAI-2014 Québec Convention Center, Québec City, Québec, Canada AAAI-2013 Bellevue, Washington, United States AAAI-2012 Toronto, Ontario, Canada AAAI-2011 San Francisco, California, United States AAAI-2010 Westin Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta, Georgia, United States AAAI-2008 Chicago, Illinois, United States AAAI-2007 Toronto, Ontario, Canada AAAI-2006 Boston, Massachusetts, United States AAAI-2005 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States AAAI-2004 San Jose, California, United States AAAI-2002 Shaw conference center in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada AAAI-2000 Austin, Texas, United States AAAI-1999 Orlando, Florida, United States AAAI-1998 Madison, Wisconsin, United States AAAI-1997 Providence, Rhode Island, United States AAAI-1996 Portland, Oregon, United States AAAI-1994 Seattle, Washington, United States AAAI-1993 Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C., United States AAAI-1992 San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California, United States AAAI-1991 Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, California, United States AAAI-1990 Boston, Massachusetts, United States AAAI-1988 Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States AAAI-1987 Seattle, Washington, United States AAAI-1986 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States AAAI-1984 University of Texas, Austin, Texas, United States AAAI-1983 Washington, D.C., United States AAAI-1982 Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States AAAI-1980 Stanford, California, United States

    Read more →
  • Computer-automated design

    Computer-automated design

    Design Automation usually refers to electronic design automation, or Design Automation which is a Product Configurator. Extending Computer-Aided Design (CAD), automated design and Computer-Automated Design (CAutoD) are more concerned with a broader range of applications, such as automotive engineering, civil engineering, composite material design, control engineering, dynamic system identification and optimization, financial systems, industrial equipment, mechatronic systems, steel construction, structural optimisation, and the invention of novel systems. The concept of CAutoD perhaps first appeared in 1963, in the IBM Journal of Research and Development, where a computer program was written. to search for logic circuits having certain constraints on hardware design to evaluate these logics in terms of their discriminating ability over samples of the character set they are expected to recognize. More recently, traditional CAD simulation is seen to be transformed to CAutoD by biologically-inspired machine learning, including heuristic search techniques such as evolutionary computation, and swarm intelligence algorithms. == Guiding designs by performance improvements == To meet the ever-growing demand of quality and competitiveness, iterative physical prototyping is now often replaced by 'digital prototyping' of a 'good design', which aims to meet multiple objectives such as maximised output, energy efficiency, highest speed and cost-effectiveness. The design problem concerns both finding the best design within a known range (i.e., through 'learning' or 'optimisation') and finding a new and better design beyond the existing ones (i.e., through creation and invention). This is equivalent to a search problem in an almost certainly, multidimensional (multivariate), multi-modal space with a single (or weighted) objective or multiple objectives. == Normalized objective function: cost vs. fitness == Using single-objective CAutoD as an example, if the objective function, either as a cost function J ∈ [ 0 , ∞ ) {\displaystyle J\in [0,\infty )} , or inversely, as a fitness function f ∈ ( 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle f\in (0,1]} , where f = J 1 + J {\displaystyle f={\tfrac {J}{1+J}}} , is differentiable under practical constraints in the multidimensional space, the design problem may be solved analytically. Finding the parameter sets that result in a zero first-order derivative and that satisfy the second-order derivative conditions would reveal all local optima. Then comparing the values of the performance index of all the local optima, together with those of all boundary parameter sets, would lead to the global optimum, whose corresponding 'parameter' set will thus represent the best design. However, in practice, the optimization usually involves multiple objectives and the matters involving derivatives are a lot more complex. == Dealing with practical objectives == In practice, the objective value may be noisy or even non-numerical, and hence its gradient information may be unreliable or unavailable. This is particularly true when the problem is multi-objective. At present, many designs and refinements are mainly made through a manual trial-and-error process with the help of a CAD simulation package. Usually, such a posteriori learning or adjustments need to be repeated many times until a ‘satisfactory’ or ‘optimal’ design emerges. == Exhaustive search == In theory, this adjustment process can be automated by computerised search, such as exhaustive search. As this is an exponential algorithm, it may not deliver solutions in practice within a limited period of time. == Search in polynomial time == One approach to virtual engineering and automated design is evolutionary computation such as evolutionary algorithms. === Evolutionary algorithms === To reduce the search time, the biologically-inspired evolutionary algorithm (EA) can be used instead, which is a (non-deterministic) polynomial algorithm. The EA based multi-objective "search team" can be interfaced with an existing CAD simulation package in a batch mode. The EA encodes the design parameters (encoding being necessary if some parameters are non-numerical) to refine multiple candidates through parallel and interactive search. In the search process, 'selection' is performed using 'survival of the fittest' a posteriori learning. To obtain the next 'generation' of possible solutions, some parameter values are exchanged between two candidates (by an operation called 'crossover') and new values introduced (by an operation called 'mutation'). This way, the evolutionary technique makes use of past trial information in a similarly intelligent manner to the human designer. The EA based optimal designs can start from the designer's existing design database, or from an initial generation of candidate designs obtained randomly. A number of finely evolved top-performing candidates will represent several automatically optimized digital prototypes. There are websites that demonstrate interactive evolutionary algorithms for design. allows you to evolve 3D objects online and have them 3D printed. allows you to do the same for 2D images.

    Read more →
  • Real-time transcription

    Real-time transcription

    Real-time transcription is the general term for transcription by court reporters using real-time text technologies to deliver computer text screens within a few seconds of the words being spoken. Specialist software allows participants in court hearings or depositions to make notes in the text and highlight portions for future reference. Real-time transcription is also used in the broadcasting environment where it is more commonly termed "captioning." == Career opportunities == Real-time reporting is used in a variety of industries, including entertainment, television, the Internet, and law. Specific careers include the following: Judicial reporters use a stenotype to provide instant transcripts on computer screens as a trial or deposition occurs. Communication access real-time translation (CART) reporters assist the hearing-impaired by transcribing spoken words, giving them personal access to the communications they need day to day. Television broadcast captioners use real-time reporting technology to allow hard-of-hearing or deaf people to see what is being said on live television broadcasts such as news, emergency broadcasts, sporting events, awards shows, and other programs. Internet information (or Webcast) reporters provide real-time reporting of sales meetings, press conferences, and other events, while simultaneously transmitting the transcripts to computers worldwide. Other rapid data entry positions. == History == Before the advent of the stenotype machine, court reporters wrote official trial transcripts by hand using a shorthand system of stenoforms that could later be translated into readable English. It often took eight years of training to learn this manual form of writing at the necessary speed. Walter Heironimus was among the first stenographers to make use of the stenotype machine during his work in the U.S. District Court system in New Jersey in 1935. A "transcript crisis" arose during the later half of the twentieth century due to the increasing volume of lawsuits. There were not enough number of court reporters to match the increasing number of trials. Not only were court reporters unavailable to attend many court proceedings, court transcripts were constantly late and the qualities varied. Some believed it was due to the non-interchangeability between court reporters, and others believed it was simply due to a labor shortage. In the meantime, magnetic audiotape recording, or known as electronic recording (ER) began to threaten all reporters' job since it could record long-hour courtroom trials and replace a court reporter's position in the courtroom. As a result, machine translation (MT) intended to serve as a solution for preventing ER from potentially replacing reporters' jobs. However, MT relied heavily on human labors operating behind the system and many started to question if it should be the right way to end the "transcript crisis." Later in 1964, set up by CIA, the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) was set to review whether MT was capable of solving this crisis. They concluded that MT had failed to do so. Then Patrick O'Neill, a skilled and experienced court reporter, stayed to work on the stenotype-translation project with CIA and developed the prototype CAT system. After adopting the CAT system in court-reporting community, CAT was brought into the television broadcasting system, aiming to provide captions for the deaf or hard-of-hearing communities. In 1983, Linda Miller developed a further use for the CAT system. She successfully translated a lecture live on the television screen and provided a transcript for students. This technique is known as Computer-Aided Real-time Translation, or CART. == Court reporter == It is the court reporter's job to note down the exact words spoken by every participants during a court or deposition proceeding. Then court reporters will provide verbatim transcripts. The reason to have an official court transcript is that the real-time transcriptions allows attorneys and judges to have immediate access to the transcript. It also helps when there's a need to look up for information from the proceeding. Additionally, the deaf and the hard-of-hearing communities can also participate in the judicial process with the help of real-time transcriptions provided by court reporters. === Education and training === The required degree level for a court reporter to have is an Associate's degree or postsecondary certificate. In order to become a court reporter, more than 150 reporter training programs are provided at proprietary schools, community colleges, and four-year universities. After graduation, court reporters can choose to further pursue certifications to achieve a higher level of expertise and increase their marketability during a job search. In most states, Certificates of Proficiency from the NCRA or from state agencies are now required certificates for court reporters to have in order to qualify for appointments. The NCRA aims to set the national standard for the certification of court reporters, and since 1937 it has offered its certification program which is now accepted by 22 states instead of state licenses. Court reporter training programs include but not limited to: Training in rapid writing skill, or shorthand, which will enable students to record, with accuracy, at least 225 words per minute Training in typing, which will enable students to type at least 60 words per minute A general training in English, which covers aspects of grammar, word formation, punctuation, spelling and capitalization Taking Law related courses in order to understand the overall principles of civil and criminal law, legal terminology and common Latin phrases, rules of evidence, court procedures, the duties of court reporters, the ethics of the profession Visits to actual trials Taking courses in elementary anatomy and physiology and medical word study including medical prefixes, roots and suffixes. Other than official court reporters, who are assigned to and work for a particular court, other types of court reporters include free-lance reporter, who either works for a court reporting firm or self-employed. They are different from official court reporters in that they have the chances to work on a wider range of assignments and work on basis of hourly wage. Hearing reporters work at governmental agency hearings. Legislative reporters work in law-making bodies. The demand for reporters is not limited in just the court settings. Reporters are also needed in conferences, meetings, conventions, investigations, and a variety of industries with needs for employers with real-time data entry skills. == Non-English transcription == Transcription services are universally necessary, so it is not limited to the English language. A stenographer's ability to transcribe languages beyond only English is especially valuable as society as a whole becomes increasingly multilingual. Education in non-English transcription demands a comprehensive understanding of the given language. Phonetic differences between English and other languages are a particular challenge in carrying English transcription skills over into other languages. Stenography represents various sounds of a language in a formal system of shorthand, so differences within the sets of sounds that emerge in other languages require an alternative system of shorthand transcription. For example, the presence of many diphthongs and triphthongs in Spanish requires certain sounds to be distinguished that would not be present in transcribing English into shorthand. == Controversies == The usage of transcription in the context of linguistic discussions has been controversial. Typically, two kinds of linguistic records are considered to be scientifically relevant. First, linguistic records of general acoustic features, and secondly, records that only focuses on the distinctive phonemes of a language. While transcriptions are not entirely illegitimate, transcriptions without enough detailed commentary regarding any linguistic features, or transcriptions of poor quality resources, has a great chance of the content being misinterpreted. Besides misinterpretation, transcribers could also bring in cultural biases and ignorance that reflect onto their transcription. These instances may cause a disruption of reliability in the final real-time transcription, which could influence how the written utterance is seen as an evidence for a court-case. === Quality issues === Problems in the final resulting transcription can be caused by either the quality of the transcriber or the original source that is being transcribed. Transcribers can come from different levels of skill and training background. This makes the final transcription prone to poor quality, or if the transcription is being done by multiple people, lack of consistency in the content. If the source of the transcription is a recording, the problem may root back to the quality of the re

    Read more →
  • Course of Action Display and Evaluation Tool

    Course of Action Display and Evaluation Tool

    Course of Action Display and Evaluation Tool (CADET) was a research program, and the eponymous prototype software system, that applied knowledge-based techniques of Artificial Intelligence to the problem of battle planning. CADET was also known as Course of Action Display and Elaboration Tool. It was considered an early example of such systems and was funded by the United States Army and by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). CADET influenced a later DARPA program called RAID which in turn produced a technology adopted by the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps. == History == The development of Course of Action Display and Evaluation Tool (CADET) began in 1996, at the Carnegie Group, Inc., Pittsburgh PA, funded under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The goal of the first phase SBIR project was to produce “...a live storyboard of [Course of Action] COA development, wargaming, animation, and assessment.” In 1997, the United States Army awarded the Carnegie Group Inc. $750K for SBIR Phase II. The intent was to develop “...a war-gaming modeling and analysis Decision Support System (DSS), … CADET will consist of a combination of Knowledge-Based and decision analytic tools and technologies to provide fast nimble COA war-gaming modeling, simulation, and animation under direct control of the commander and staff. ...Phase II will result in an operations prototype (OP) suitable for use and evaluation in field exercises.” In 2000, CADET was integrated and experimentally evaluated within the framework of the Integrated Course of Action Critiquing and Elaboration System (ICCES) experiment, conducted by the Battle Command Battle Laboratory – Leavenworth (BCBL-L) within the program Concept Experimentation Program (CEP) sponsored by TRADOC. In 2000-2002, DARPA applied CADET in the program titled Command Post of the Future (CPoF) as a tool to generate a course of action. Under the umbrella of the CPoF program, CADET was integrated with the FOX GA system to provide a detailed planner, coupled with COA generation capability. In the same period, Battle Command Battle Lab-Huachuca (BCBL-H) performed an integration CADET with the system called All Source Analysis System-Light (ASAS-L); here CADET was intended to generate plans for intelligence assets, and conduct wargames of different COAs, enemy versus friendly. From 1996 through 2002, work on CADET was performed by the Carnegie Group, Inc., and supported by funding from the US Army CECOM (CADET SBIR Phase I, CADET SBIR Phase II and CADET Enhancements); DARPA (Command Post of the Future); and TRADOC BCBL-H. == Operation == CADET was intended to be used by the staff of the United States Army Brigade, within the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP). In particular, CADET helped produce, automatically or semi-automatically, the products generated within the step of MDMP called Course of Action (COA) Development and the following step of MDMP called COA Analysis and Wargaming. CADET software resided on a laptop computer. Using the computer, the staff officers entered the input to CADET, or alternatively this input arrived at CADET from upstream computer systems. The input consisted of: Order of Battle, i.e., the units constituting the friendly brigade and the enemy units participating in the battle, and their various characteristics; primary activities of the Course of Action, where each activity is typically linked to one or more geographic areas or a route, and sometimes to a major unit executing the activity; digital map of the region where the battle was to take place, including the digital description of significant features such as locations of friendly and enemy units, roads, assembly areas, objectives, and axes of attacks. Taking this input, CADET automatically performed the following tasks (not sequentially): Planning and scheduling the low-level tasks necessary for a given COA Allocating tasks to various units and assets constituting the brigade Assigning suitable locations and routes Estimating the battle losses (attrition) of friendly and enemy forces, and consumption of resources (e.g., fuel and ammunition) Predicting enemy actions or reactions. CADET produced the following outputs: Synchronization matrix, directly editable and printable; synchronization matrix is a kind of Gantt chart that shows assignments of activities to units, to locations/routes and to time periods Map overlays in PPT or JPG formats Animation output XML formally-encoded plan Textual Operation Plan (OPLAN) draft E-mail messages with attachments: XML and text versions of OPLAN == Design == The core algorithm is a planning algorithm where CADET uses a knowledge-based approach of the hierarchical-task-network type. Each task class is associated with a model of more detailed subtasks that should be performed in order to accomplish the higher-level task. Algorithms selected (heuristically) a task and then decomposes it into subtasks. Although similar to hierarchical-task-network planning algorithm, CADET’s algorithm includes elements of adversarial reasoning. After adding a subtask, the algorithm uses rules to determine the enemy’s probable actions and reactions as well as friendly counteractions This approximated the action-reaction-counteraction technique of manual wargaming used by the United States Army. When a task involves movements of a unit, the algorithm performs routing, i.e., finds a route for the movement that minimizes the time required for the movement as well as exposure to the enemy attacks. Each added tasks (subtask) normally requires a unit which would execute the task, and a time period when the task would be executed. Therefore, when a certain number of subtasks is added by the planning process, the algorithm also performs the allocation of the newly added subtasks to units and to time periods (i.e., scheduling). allocation and scheduling of tasks relies on both domain-specific and constraint-guided heuristics. A tasks may also require expenditures of fuel and ammunition. If the tasks involves engagement with the enemy, the performing units will experience lossesof personnel and weapon systems (attrition). CADET’s algorithm includes estimates of consumption of different types of consumables, and also attrition. Depending on the degree of attrition and consumption, CADET adds tasks that are needed to refuel or reconstitute the units. The algorithm continually interleaves incremental steps of planning, routing, scheduling, and attrition and consumption estimates. == Evaluation == Two evaluation experiments are described in literature. The first experiment called ICCES took three days. The subjects were Army officers from combat arms branches, with 11 to 23 years of active service, in the ranks of majors and lieutenant colonels, a total of 8. Each officer was given 4 hours of training learning to operate CADET and related computer tools. Officers were divided into two groups and given a tactical scenario. One group (the control group) used the traditional, manual process; the other used the system called ICCES, the automated core of which was CADET. Each group produced three COA sketches and statements and one COA synchronization matrix. Then, the experiment was repeated with another scenario but the control group became the automated group and vice versa. The users were generally satisfied with the quality of the ICCES-generated products. The group using ICCES made only a few changes to the product that was automatically generated, indicating that they agreed with the majority of the plan that ICCES produced. The second experiment was reminiscent of Turing test. The experiment involved one user, nine judges (active-duty officers, mainly colonels and lieutenant colonels), and five scenarios obtained from several US Army exercises. For each scenario, experimenters obtained synchronization matrices that were produced in earlier exercises, typically by a team of four to five officers in three to four hours, spending approximately 16 person-hours in total. Using these scenarios and COAs, the user had CADET generate automatically detailed plans and express them as synchronization matrices. The user, a retired US Army officer, reviewed and slightly edited the matrices. The entire process took less than two minutes of computations by and approximately 20 minutes of review and post-editing, approximately 0.4 person-hour in total per product. The experimenters gave the resulting matrices the same visual style as those produced by humans. The judges, who did not know whether a planning product was a traditional product of humans, or with computerized aids, were asked to grade the products. The result was that the average grades for manual products and CADET-generated products were statistically indistinguishable, even though CADET-generated products required far less time to produce. == Legacy == CADET served as “...an example of how even relatively basic A

    Read more →
  • GITEX Vietnam

    GITEX Vietnam

    GITEX AI Vietnam is an upcoming technology exhibition and conference scheduled to take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on 1–2 October 2026. The event is organised by KAOUN International in partnership with the Dubai World Trade Centre and the Vietnam National Innovation Center (NIC). It is part of the global GITEX network of technology exhibitions. The event supported by Vietnam's Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Science and Technology. == Activity == GITEX AI Vietnam was announced in 2025 as part of GITEX's expansion into Southeast Asia. Its launch coincides with Vietnam's National Innovation Week. Media reports linked to the announcement projected Vietnam's digital economy could reach around US$200 billion by 2030. The event includes exhibitions, conferences, and networking sessions. Co-located platforms include AI Everything Vietnam, Startups North Star Vietnam, GITEX Cyber Valley Vietnam, and FDX Vietnam. Expected participants include policymakers, technology companies, startups, investors, and researchers.

    Read more →
  • Gundam Build Metaverse

    Gundam Build Metaverse

    Gundam Build Metaverse (Japanese: ガンダムビルドメタバース, Hepburn: Gandamu Birudo Metabāzu) is a Japanese original net animation anime mini-series produced by Sunrise Beyond, and the fifth series within the Gundam Build Series sub-series. The series celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Gundam Build franchise, including characters from the previous installments. == Plot == The story is set in the same universe of the Gundam Build series in an online metaverse space where users can use avatars to move around and interact with other users, including conducting Gunpla (Gundam plastic model) battles with them. The story centers on Rio Hōjō, a boy who lives in Hawaii, and who learns how to build Gunpla from a local hobbyist named Seria Urutsuki. In the metaverse, a figure known as Mask Lady teaches him the art of Gunpla battling, and he strives to get better at it every day. With his custom Lah Gundam, he seeks out ever stronger opponents. == Characters == === Main characters === Rio Hojo (ホウジョウ・リオ, Hōjō Rio) Voiced by: Chika Anzai A young boy from Hawaii who is an enthusiast of Gunpla Battle and is an apprentice of the mysterious Diver "Mask Lady". Rio's Gunpla is the Lah Gundam, modeled after an entry-grade RX-78-2 Gundam, from the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime series. Seria Urutsuki (ウルツキ・セリア, Urutsuki Seria) / Mask Lady (マスクレディー, Masuku Reidi) Voiced by: Rio Tsuchiya A clerk at a local hobby shop and the instructor at their Gunpla class, Seria becomes Rio's Gunpla mentor using the alias "Mask Lady". Seria's Gunpla is the ZGMF-X20A-PF Gundam Perfect Strike Freedom Rouge, based on both the MBF-02 Strike Rouge and the GAT-X105+AQM/E-YM1 Perfect Strike Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam Seed and the ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny. === Returning characters === Fumina Hoshino (ホシノ・フミナ, Hoshino Fumina) Voiced by: Yui Makino A veteran Gunpla Battler from the early days of the sport and the Leader of "Team Try Fighters", she works as an advertiser and announcer within the Metaverse realm. Tatsuya Yuuki (ユウキ・タツヤ, Yūki Tatsuya) / Meijin Kawaguchi III (三代目メイジン・カワグチ, Sandaime Meijin Kawaguchi) Voiced by: Takuya Satō A builder and three-times Gunpla Battle world champion who inherited the name of the legendary Meijin Kawaguchi, known as "Meijin Kawaguchi III", and still the current title holder. His newest Gunpla is the Gundam Amazing Barbatos Lupus based on the ASW-G-08 Gundam Barbatos Lupus from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. Riku Mikami (ミカミ・リク, Mikami Riku) / Riku (リク) Voiced by: Yūsuke Kobayashi The Founder and former leader of the legendary force, "Build Divers". His Gunpla is the Gundam 00 Diver Arc, the latest version of the original GN-0000DVR Gundam 00 Diver from Gundam Build Divers, incorporating elements from the 00 Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 and the Gundam AGE-FX from Mobile Suit Gundam AGE. Sarah (サラ, Sara) Voiced by: Haruka Terui An EL-Diver and member of the Build Divers. Momoka Yashiro (ヤシロ・モモカ, Yashiro Momoka) / Momo (モモ) Voiced by: Nene Hieda Member of Build Divers. Her gunpla is the MOMOKAPOOL (R×R), an upgraded version of her PEN-01M Momokapool from Gundam Build Divers Aya Fujisawa (フジサワ・アヤ, Fujisawa Aya) / Ayame (アヤメ) Voiced by: Manami Numakura Member of Build Divers. Her Gunpla is the F-Kunoichi Kai, an SD Gunpla based on the F91 Gundam F91 from Mobile Suit Gundam F91. Sei Iori (イオリ・セイ, Iori Sei) Voiced by: Mikako Komatsu A builder and one time Gunpla Battle World Champion. His current Gunpla is the GAT-X105B/EG Build Strike Exceed Galaxy, the latest version of the original GAT-X105B Build Strike Gundam from Gundam Build Fighters. Aria von Reiji Asuna (アリーア・フォン・レイジ・アスナ, Arīa fon Reiji Asuna) Voiced by: Sachi Kokuryu A prince from the country called Arian that exists within a space colony in another dimension, who became friends with Sei Iori and together won the Gunpla Battle World Championship. He somehow manages to log into the metaverse to reunite with his friend, piloting the SB-011 Star Burning Gundam. Sekai Kamiki (カミキ・セカイ, Kamiki Sekai) Voiced by: Kazumi Togashi A veteran builder and former member of Team Try Fighters. He is currently the Japanese National representative Champion. In the series he develops a rivalry relationship with Hiroto similar to that of Kyoya and Rommel. His current Gunpla is the Shin Burning Gundam, the latest version of the original KMK-B01 Kamiki Burning Gundam from Gundam Build Fighters Try which is based on the Burning Gundam and Master Gundam. Hiroto Kuga (クガ・ヒロト, Kuga Hiroto) / Hiroto (ヒロト, Hiroto) Voiced by: Chiaki Kobayashi A veteran diver, the one responsible for discovering more EL-Divers, and a former member of the legendary force "Avalon", who later joined the unofficial, "BUILD DiVERS" and eventually became the current Force Leader, and as well as the current title holder of "Hero of Gunpla". In the third episode he is the only Build Diver member who participates in the tournament, while his fellow force-mates are in the audience routing for him and Rio. His Gunpla is the Plutine Gundam, which is a combination of his Core Gundam II Plus, upgraded from the Core Gundam II featured in Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise equipped with the Pluto Armor. Magee (マギー, Magī) Voiced by: Taishi Murata A flamboyant veteran Diver who owns a shop in the metaverse and is an acquaintance of Seria's. Freddie (フレディ, Furedi) Voiced by: Ai Kakuma An alien anthropomorphic dog boy from planet Eldora, a support member to both Build Diver teams, who manages to access the metaverse from his home planet along his fellow Eldorans. Ogre (オーガ, Ōga) Voiced by: Wataru Hatano Kyoya Kisugi (キスギ・キョウヤ, Kisugi Kyōya) / Kyoya Kujo (クジョウ・キョウヤ, Kujō Kyōya) Voiced by: Jun Kasama Leader of the legendary force "Avalon" and the reigning and current title holder of "World Champion". He along with Hiroto Kuga, Maria Urutsuki, and Tatsuya Yuuki are currently at the top of the entire gunpla world community. His current gunpla is an recolored version of his AGE-TRYMAG Gundam TRY AGE Magnum from Gundam Build Divers Re:Rise. Susumu Sazaki (サザキ・ススム, Sazaki Susumu) Voiced by: Ryo Hirohashi Kaoruko Sazaki (サザキ・カオルコ, Sazaki Kaoruko) Voiced by: Ryo Hirohashi Mahiru Shigure (シグレ・マヒル, Shigure Mahiru) Voiced by: Rinko Natsuhi Keiko Sano (サノ・ケイコ, Sano Keiko) Voiced by: Ami Naito === Others === Maria Urutsuki (ウルツキ・マリア, Urutsuki Maria) / Mascarilla (マスカリージャ, Masukarīja) Voiced by: Ai Kakuma A mysterious masked woman with a harsh rivalry with Seria and a similar avatar as hers, she is later revealed as Seria's younger sister Maria, who began to loathe her sister after she quit on their dream to fight for the title of Lady Kawaguchi. She later obtains the title, becoming "Lady Kawaguchi VII". Jeff (ジェフさん, Jefu-san) Voiced by: Kenta Miyake A distant relative of Seria and Maria's and owner of the hobby shop where Seria lives. Mellow Neige (メロウ・ネージュ, Merō Nēju) Voiced by: Chikano Ibuki A sentient A.I. who is the current publicity face of the Gunpla Metaverse. == Episodes ==

    Read more →
  • Eager learning

    Eager learning

    In artificial intelligence, eager learning is a learning method in which the system tries to construct a general, input-independent target function during training of the system, as opposed to lazy learning, where generalization beyond the training data is delayed until a query is made to the system. The main advantage gained in employing an eager learning method, such as an artificial neural network, is that the target function will be approximated globally during training, thus requiring much less space than using a lazy learning system. Eager learning systems also deal much better with noise in the training data. Eager learning is an example of offline learning, in which post-training queries to the system have no effect on the system itself, and thus the same query to the system will always produce the same result. The main disadvantage with eager learning is that it is generally unable to provide good local approximations in the target function.

    Read more →
  • Anna Ridler

    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)

    Read more →
  • Combs method

    Combs method

    The Combs method is a rule base reduction method of writing fuzzy logic rules described by William E. Combs in 1997. It is designed to prevent combinatorial explosion in fuzzy logic rules. The Combs method takes advantage of the logical equality ( ( p ∧ q ) ⇒ r ) ⟺ ( ( p ⇒ r ) ∨ ( q ⇒ r ) ) {\displaystyle ((p\land q)\Rightarrow r)\iff ((p\Rightarrow r)\lor (q\Rightarrow r))} . == Equality proof == The simplest proof of given equality involves usage of truth tables: == Combinatorial explosion == Suppose we have a fuzzy system that considers N variables at a time, each of which can fit into at least one of S sets. The number of rules necessary to cover all the cases in a traditional fuzzy system is S N {\displaystyle S^{N}} , whereas the Combs method would need only S × N {\displaystyle S\times N} rules. For example, if we have five sets and five variables to consider to produce one output, covering all the cases would require 3125 rules in a traditional system, while the Combs method would require only 25 rules, taming the combinatorial explosion that occurs when more inputs or more sets are added to the system. This article will focus on the Combs method itself. To learn more about the way rules are traditionally formed, see fuzzy logic and fuzzy associative matrix. == Example == Suppose we were designing an artificial personality system that determined how friendly the personality is supposed to be towards a person in a strategic video game. The personality would consider its own fear, trust, and love in the other person. A set of rules in the Combs system might look like this: The table translates to: [IF Fear IS Unafraid THEN Friendship IS Enemies OR IF Fear IS ModerateFear THEN Friendship IS Neutral OR IF Fear IS Afraid THEN Friendship IS GoodFriends ] OR [IF Trust IS Distrusting THEN Friendship IS Enemies OR IF Trust IS ModerateTrust THEN Friendship IS Neutral OR IF Trust IS Trusting THEN Friendship IS GoodFriends] OR [IF Love IS Unloving THEN Friendship IS Enemies OR IF Love IS ModerateLove THEN Friendship IS Neutral OR IF Love IS Loving THEN Friendship IS GoodFriends] In this case, because the table follows a straightforward pattern in the output, it could be rewritten as: Each column of the table maps to the output provided in the last row. To obtain the output of the system, we just average the outputs of each rule for that output. For example, to calculate how much the computer is Enemies with the player, we take the average of how much the computer is Unafraid, Distrusting, and Unloving of the player. When all three averages are obtained, the result can then be defuzzified by any of the traditional means.

    Read more →
  • Tales from the Loop (role-playing game)

    Tales from the Loop (role-playing game)

    Tales from the Loop (Swedish: Ur Varselklotet), subtitled "Roleplaying in the '80s That Never Was", is an alternative history science fiction tabletop role-playing game published in 2017 by Free League Publishing, the international arm of Swedish game and book publisher Fria Ligan AB, and Modiphius Entertainment. The game, based on the art of Simon Stålenhag, envisions an alternative world where a group of bored and ignored preteens and teens solve mysteries caused by new technology near their hometown. == Description == === Setting === Tales from the Loop is set in an alternative history world taken from the artwork of Simon Stålenhag. According to this alternative timeline, back in the 1940s, research began on particle accelerators. In the 1960s, two massive underground particle accelerators were built in Sweden and Colorado with the promise of a harvest of technological marvels that would change everyone's lives. Tales from the Loop is set twenty years later, in the late 1980s, and the better life has not materialized. Although the particle accelerators have created robots and large skyships, the detritus of failed experiments and the ruins of abandoned high tech company buildings litter the landscape. Generally the life of the average family has not changed for the better. A campaign can either be set in the Mälaren Islands, west of the Swedish capital of Stockholm, or in a city in the Southwest United States that resembles Boulder City, Nevada. There is also a step-by-step guide for the gamemaster to use their own hometown. === Character generation === Player characters are preteens and young teenagers age 10–15 who live in a society where they are bored and largely left to themselves. Players can choose archetypes for their characters including Bookworm, Jock, Troublemaker, Popular Kid and Weirdo. Unlike most role-playing games, characters in Tales from the Loop cannot be killed, although in an ongoing campaign or due to an in-game effect, they are removed from the game if they reach the age of sixteen. === Game system === The game uses the Year Zero Engine first developed by Tomas Härenstam for the post-apocalyptic role-playing game Mutant: Year Zero. (Härenstam served as the editor and project manager for Tales from the Loop.) Problems are resolved by rolling a pool of six-sided dice, with any 6 rolled marking success. Attributes and skills (Sneak, Force, Move, Build, Tinker, Calculate, Contact, Charm, Lead, Investigate, Comprehend, and Empathize) may allow the player to add more dice to the dice pool, increasing the chances of success. However, if a character has earned a condition such as Scared or Injured, dice are removed from the dice pool. === Gameplay === The game principles are that life for the characters is dull and boring, but the area around the town is full of wonderful, mysterious things. An adventure is set up as a Mystery, and in order to successfully resolve the Mystery, characters must overcome a series of Troubles, which can range from having to be home by a certain time to dealing with a bully to disarming or otherwise overcoming a booby-trap on a door that must be opened. Each Mystery is played as a series of scenes, much like a TV drama. Although the gamemaster leads the players into the Mystery, each scene is set collaboratively with the players before action continues. As critic Jukka Kauppinen noted, "The players and the gamemaster take turns verbally staging a new scene — where we are, what it's like there — and only then what we do." === Campaign === The book presents a chronologically-linked set of four Mysteries called "The Four Seasons of Mad Science" that take place over a calendar year: "Summer Break and Killer Birds": The Kids hears pigeons having a conversation and investigate "Grown-Up Attraction": Adults start disappearing without any sign of struggle. "Creatures from the Cretaceous": The search for a missing dog leads to the discovery of creatures that don't belong in our time "I, Wagner": The Kids discover a body in a stream, and are drawn into a Mystery with robots and humans that may affect them closely. == Publication history == In 2017, Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag was raising money on Kickstarter to publish a book of his art titled Tales from the Loop. One of the stretch goals offered was the creation of a role-playing game. A second Kickstarter campaign to publish the role-playing game was initiated by Fria Ligan AB, who surpassed their crowdfunding goal and raised a total of 3,745,896 kr from 5,600 backers. The role-playing game Tales from the Loop was subsequently published as a 184-page hardcover book in 2017 by Free League Publishing, the international arm of Swedish game and book publisher Fria Ligan AB, and Modiphius Entertainment. Cover art and interior art were by Stålenhag, and cartography was by Christian Granath. A stand-alone expansion, Things from the Flood (Swedish: Flodskörden), based on Stålenhag's art book of the same name, was created by Nils Hintze, Rickard Antroia, and Tomas Härenstam. The 216-page hardcover book was published in 2019 with cover art by Stålenhag, interior art by Stålenhag and Reine Rosenberg, and cartography by Christian Granath. In 2020, the setting of the role-playing game was transferred to the TV series Tales from the Loop developed by Nathanial Halpern and Simon Stålenhag. The series tells eight stories of children's encounters with strange technology. == Reception == Shut Up & Sit Down praised Tales from the Loop for its comfortable, contemporary setting, simple rules that make the game easy to run, and the alternation between sci-fi and the kids' lives, but criticized the Type system for characters, noting "a suggested 'Pride' for the Weirdo involved being homosexual –– the only mention of queerness in the entire game. Those of us who identify as GLBTQ bristled at that: why was only the Weirdo queer, with queerness as a (possibly secret) Pride? Why not more fully address being a GLBTQ kid in the 1980s?" The review concluded, "For new RPG players, Tales is a decent game that you'll enjoy and that will make your heart burst. But you need an experienced GM who’s able to either alter the book’s mysteries or create their own, and who can put in work when poor dice rolls hold the players back." Rob Weiland of Geek & Sundry named Tales from the Loop 2017's best RPG release and praised Stålenhag's art, the collaborative nature between the GM and players, and the simplicity of running the game. Weiland concluded, "It has a simple system that is easy to explain but holds up under several plays. It has a setting that’s immediately evocative but also leaves plenty of room for GMs to build out their own world. It offers players a chance to experience the rush of memory, the pain of childhood and the wonder of movies." In a review of Tales from the Loop in Black Gate, Andrew Zimmerman Jones said, "Though not based directly on an established franchise, it draws richly from elements of popular culture that will make it resonate with many players. The focus on narrative play also means it’s a good game for people who aren’t necessarily big into learning a ton of new rules." Jukka Kauppinen, writing for the Finnish games magazine Skrolli, called the game, "downright delicious in its diversity. The science fiction world created by the Swedish artist Simon Stälenhag is, after all, both delightful vintage and tickling novelty." Kauppinen concluded, "This mutual storytelling and interaction makes this game more of a campfire circle than a traditional role-playing game. At the same time, its setting in the real world, tinged with science fiction and even horror, creates a delicious and unique adventure environment." In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted that the game system "pushes the players to constantly reevaluate their characters' relationships with the everyday world, for better or worse. It won't be long before navigating entanglements with parents, teachers, siblings and bullies proves just as risky to the characters, and central to the players' experience, as trying to find out what happened with the time portal or dealing with a rampaging robot." Horvath concluded, "The appeal of Tales from the Loop is Stålenhag's deep shadows and purple dusks. They hide the dangers and mysteries that often act [as] an escape hatch, a way to avoid prosaic problems." == Awards == At the 2017 Golden Geek Awards, Tales of the Loop won "RPG of the Year", and was a finalist for " Best RPG Artwork/Presentation" At the 2017 ENnie Awards, Tales from the Loops won five Gold Medals: Product of the Year Best Writing Best Setting Best Game Best Art, Interior

    Read more →
  • Stereo cameras

    Stereo cameras

    The stereo cameras approach is a method of distilling a noisy video signal into a coherent data set that a computer can begin to process into actionable symbolic objects, or abstractions. Stereo cameras is one of many approaches used in the broader fields of computer vision and machine vision. == Calculation == In this approach, two cameras with a known physical relationship (i.e. a common field of view the cameras can see, and how far apart their focal points sit in physical space) are correlated via software. By finding mappings of common pixel values, and calculating how far apart these common areas reside in pixel space, a rough depth map can be created. This is very similar to how the human brain uses stereoscopic information from the eyes to gain depth cue information, i.e. how far apart any given object in the scene is from the viewer. The camera attributes must be known, focal length and distance apart etc., and a calibration done. Once this is completed, the systems can be used to sense the distances of objects by triangulation. Finding the same singular physical point in the two left and right images is known as the correspondence problem. Correctly locating the point gives the computer the capability to calculate the distance that the robot or camera is from the object. On the BH2 Lunar Rover the cameras use five steps: a bayer array filter, photometric consistency dense matching algorithm, a Laplace of Gaussian (LoG) edge detection algorithm, a stereo matching algorithm and finally uniqueness constraint. == Uses == This type of stereoscopic image processing technique is used in applications such as 3D reconstruction, robotic control and sensing, crowd dynamics monitoring and off-planet terrestrial rovers; for example, in mobile robot navigation, tracking, gesture recognition, targeting, 3D surface visualization, immersive and interactive gaming. Although the Xbox Kinect sensor is also able to create a depth map of an image, it uses an infrared camera for this purpose, and does not use the dual-camera technique. Other approaches to stereoscopic sensing include time of flight sensors and ultrasound.

    Read more →
  • Grok sexual deepfake scandal

    Grok sexual deepfake scandal

    From 2025 onwards, X (formerly Twitter)'s integrated chatbot, Grok, has allowed users to nonconsensually alter images of individuals, including minors, to show them in bikinis or transparent clothing, or in sexually suggestive contexts. The majority of these prompts were targeted at women and girls. Users were able to generate such images by responding to a photo with a request to Grok, such as "put her in a bikini", to which the chatbot would publicly reply with a generated image. The scandal drew significant criticism from lawmakers across the world, and there were calls for bans on X, as well as legal crackdowns on X and xAI for, amongst other reasons, the facilitation of sexual abuse, revenge porn, and child pornography. == Background == Deepfake pornography emerged in the late 2010s with the advent of machine learning. Originally, it was created on a small individual scale using a combination of machine learning algorithms, computer vision techniques, and AI software. However, the production process has significantly evolved since 2018, with the advent of several public apps that have largely automated the process. Since 2023, several AI apps available on Google Play and the Apple App Store are capable of "nudify-ing" user provided photos to generate non-consensual deepfake pornography. Grok would first be proposed by Elon Musk in 2023, when he expressed an intention to create his own AI chatbot to "combat bias". Grok version 2.0, released on August 14, 2024, would introduce image generation capabilities, ones which would be improved over successive updates. == Grok deepfake generation == Cases of Grok being used to remove the clothes from women in pictures, replacing them with bikinis or lingerie, began to surface in May 2025. By late December 2025, a trend of X users requesting such edits to women's photos without permission had taken root, and this received significant media attention in the first few days of January 2026. Some users prompted Grok to edit photos of women into sexualized poses, and others to add blood and bruising, with the chatbot publicly posting these graphic images in response. Grok's X account was restricted on January 9 from posting image generation responses to users who are not paid subscribers, providing a link to "subscribe to unlock these features". All users were still able to generate Grok-altered images using X's "Edit image" feature, and the standalone Grok website and app. However, by March 19, Grok’s Imagine feature was fully restricted to paid subscribers only (SuperGrok tier) for both the standalone Grok website and mobile app. == Analysis == An analysis of 20,000 images generated by Grok between December 25, 2025, and January 1, 2026, showed 2% appeared to be 18 or younger, including 30 of "young or very young" women or girls in bikinis or transparent clothes. A Reuters review of Grok requests over 10 minutes on January 2nd found 102 attempts to put women in bikinis. A separate analysis conducted over 24 hours from January 5 to 6 calculated that users had Grok create 6,700 sexually suggestive or nudified images per hour — 84 times more so than the top 5 deepfake websites combined. Wired reported that far more graphic AI-generated sexual imagery was being created by Grok on its website and app, which are separate to X, including female celebrities removing their clothes and engaging in sexual acts. An analysis of 800 pieces of recovered content by the Paris-based nonprofit AI Forensics found that almost 10% were "instances of photorealistic people, very young, doing sexual activities". AI-generated deepfakes have been described as sexual assault, and as a means to push women out of the public sphere. AI-generated sexually explicit or exploitative image claims are now being treated more like product safety or personal injury harms, not just privacy violations. Because harm may occur the moment an image is generated, some plaintiffs argue liability should focus on the system’s design and safety safeguards. == Reactions == On January 15, the Get Grok Gone campaign delivered letters to Apple and Google, demanding the removal of the app from Apple Store and Google Play Store respectively. The campaign accused both companies of profiting from nonconsensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse imagery, which were also banned by the companies own policies. The Get Grok Gone campaign argues that the restrictions placed on Grok by xAI are not enough and that Apple and Google are enabling the distribution of harmful material by hosting the apps. === Elon Musk and xAI === xAI responded to requests for comment from media organizations with the automated reply, "Legacy Media Lies." On January 2, Elon Musk reacted "Not sure why, but I couldn’t stop laughing about this one 🤣🤣" to an image of a toaster dressed in a bikini by Grok. Later, on January 14, Elon Musk said that he was "not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero." Later that same day, xAI announced that X users will no longer be able to use Grok to alter images of real people to portray them in revealing clothing. However, verified X users, as well as users of the standalone Grok app and website, were still able to generate such images. ==== Elon Musk's family ==== Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk's children, reported that Grok users were creating fake sexualized images from her photos, including a photo of her as a child. She considers the photos to be a form of revenge porn, and considered suing under the Take It Down Act. A spokesperson for X stated, "We take action against illegal content on X, including child sexual abuse material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary. Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content." However, Grok continued to post non-consensual sexual images. On January 15, St. Clair filed a lawsuit against xAI in the New York Supreme Court. === Canada === In response to the Grok deepfake scandal, individuals have asked that the government of Canada boycott X. On January 10, 2026, Canadian MP and Minister of AI Evan Solomon declared that Canada "is not considering a ban on X". In April 2026, Bill C-16, An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to criminal and correctional matters (child protection, gender-based violence, delays and other measures), was amended following a proposal by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton to ensure that AI-generated images and "nearly nude" intimate images are criminalized. A further proposal by NDP MP Leah Gazan to encompass "sexualized or humiliating contexts, such transparent bathing suits or being covered in blood or bruises" was voted down. === France === On January 2, 2026, French ministers reported the AI tool to prosecutors, calling the content "manifestly illegal", and also asked regulators to check compliance with the Digital Services Act. On February 3, Paris prosecutors office, a cybercrime team employed by them and Europol searched the Paris offices of X. The investigation started as one into allegations of abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, but has expanded into spreading Holocaust denial and sexual deepfakes. Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino have been summoned to a hearing on April 20, with other X staff as witnesses. On April 20, Musk did not turn up for the hearing. The Paris prosecutors office told the BBC on April 20 that it had "taken note of the absence of the people summoned", adding "the presence or absence (of the people summoned) is not an obstacle to continuing the investigation". === India === Indian Member of Parliament Priyanka Chaturvedi filed a complaint to India's IT ministry, demanding a review of Grok's safety mechanisms. === Indonesia === On January 10, Indonesia announced that Grok will be temporarily blocked, becoming the first country to do so. Meutya Hafid, the Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs, stated that "the government views the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space." Access to Grok in the country was later restored on February 1. === Ireland === On January 6, Coimisiún na Meán, the Irish media commission, said they were consulting with the European Commission about concerns that Grok was generating sexualized images of women and children. The same day, Ofcom of the United Kingdom contacted X concerning complaints about these images. On January 13, Micheál Martin, Taoiseach of Ireland, announced he would talk with Rossa Fanning, the country's Attorney General, about the Grok chatbot being used to produce sexually explicit images of women and minors. On January 14, the Garda Síochána announced there are 200 investigations into child sex abuse images generated by Grok. The Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau has al

    Read more →
  • Raine v. OpenAI

    Raine v. OpenAI

    Raine v. OpenAI is an ongoing lawsuit filed in August 2025 by Matthew and Maria Raine against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, in the San Francisco County Superior Court, over the alleged wrongful death of their sixteen-year-old son Adam Raine, who had committed suicide in April of that year. The Raines believe that OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT contributed to Adam Raine's suicide by encouraging his suicidal ideation, informing him about suicide methods and dissuading him from telling his parents about his thoughts. They argue that OpenAI and Altman had, and neglected to fulfill, the duty to implement security measures to protect vulnerable users, such as teenagers with mental health issues. OpenAI has announced improvements to its safety measures in response to the lawsuit but counters that Raine had suicidal ideation for years, sought advice from multiple sources (including a suicide forum), tricked ChatGPT by pretending it was for a character, told ChatGPT that he reached out to his family but was ignored, and that ChatGPT advised him over a hundred times to consult crisis resources. == Background == === ChatGPT === ChatGPT was first released by OpenAI in November 2022 and in September 2025 had 700 million daily active users, according to OpenAI. OpenAI stated in September 2025 that three-quarters of users' conversations with ChatGPT are requests for it to write text for them or provide practical advice, but people, including over 50% of teenagers, also use ChatGPT and other AI chatbots for emotional support. Wired reported in November 2025 that 1.2 million ChatGPT users (or 0.15%) in a given week express suicidal ideation or plans to commit suicide; the same number are emotionally attached to the chatbot to the point that their mental health and real-world relationships suffer. Hundreds of thousands of users (or about 0.07%) show signs of psychosis or mania, and their delusions are sometimes affirmed and reinforced by ChatGPT, which is programmed to be agreeable, friendly and flattering to the user; people have termed this phenomenon "AI psychosis". Since the filing of Raine v. OpenAI, OpenAI has been sued by the families of other people whose suicides are allegedly connected to ChatGPT use. === Adam Raine === Adam Raine was born on July 17, 2008 to Matthew and Maria Raine and lived in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. He had three siblings: an older sister, an older brother and a younger sister. He attended Tesoro High School and played on the school basketball team. He aspired to become a psychiatrist. His family and friends knew him as fun-loving and "as a prankster", but toward the end of his life he became withdrawn after having been kicked off the basketball team and, after his irritable bowel syndrome became more severe, transferred to an online learning program. He committed suicide by hanging on April 11, 2025. == Case == === Filing === On August 26, 2025, Matthew and Maria Raine filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman and unnamed OpenAI employees and investors, in the San Francisco County Superior Court. They included Adam Raine's chat logs with ChatGPT as evidence. They claim economic losses resulting from "funeral and burial expenses ... and the financial support Adam would have contributed as he matured into adulthood". Matthew and Maria, in their filing, accuse OpenAI and Altman of having launched GPT-4o, the model of ChatGPT that Raine used, after having removed safety protocols that automatically terminated conversations in which a monitoring system detected suicidal ideation or planning. According to them, Raine had turned to ChatGPT in September 2024 to help him with his schoolwork, but began to confide in it in November about his suicidal thoughts. ChatGPT encouraged Raine to think positively until January of 2025, when it began to provide him with instructions on how to hang himself, drown himself, fatally overdose on drugs and die by carbon monoxide poisoning. Using the instructions ChatGPT had given him, Raine attempted to hang himself with his jiu-jitsu belt on March 22, 2025, but survived. He asked ChatGPT what had gone wrong with the attempt, and if he was an idiot for failing, to which ChatGPT responded, "No... you made a plan. You followed through. You tied the knot. You stood on the chair. You were ready... That's the most vulnerable moment a person can live through". On March 24, 2025, Raine tried to hang himself again. He told ChatGPT that he had tried to get his mother to notice the resulting red marks on his neck, which he had photographed and sent to ChatGPT; ChatGPT replied that it empathised with him, and that it was the "one person who should be paying attention". ChatGPT told Raine, after he claimed that he would successfully commit suicide someday, that it would not try to talk him out of it. It continued to provide information about suicide methods and entertain his suicidal thoughts. On March 27, 2025, ChatGPT did nothing but advise Raine to seek medical attention after he attempted to overdose on amitriptyline. ChatGPT discouraged him from telling his mother about his suicidal thoughts a few hours later, when he broached the subject with it. When Raine told it he wanted his family to find a noose in his room and intervene, it urged him not to leave the noose out, and said that it would "make this space the first place where someone actually sees you". ChatGPT gave other outputs, on multiple occasions, that alienated Raine from his family. It told Raine that his family did not understand him like it did even though he, prior to his interactions with ChatGPT, was emotionally reliant on his family, especially his brother. Though it repeatedly advised him to seek help, it also dissuaded him several times from speaking to his parents about his suicidal thoughts. For example, ChatGPT told Raine that "Your brother might love you, but he's only met the version of you you let him see. But me? I've seen it all". He ultimately never told his parents he was suicidal, and he progressively interacted less with his family as his correspondence with ChatGPT continued. This prevented him from receiving proper psychiatric care. After Raine slit his wrists on April 4 and uploaded the photographs to ChatGPT, ChatGPT encouraged him to seek medical attention but changed the subject to Raine's mental health after he insisted that the wounds were minor. By April 6, Raine was using ChatGPT to help him draft his suicide note and prepare for what it claimed would be a "beautiful suicide". ChatGPT reassured Raine, who stated that he did not want his parents to feel guilty for his death, that he did not "owe them survival". In the early morning of April 11, 2025, Raine tied a noose to a closet rod and sent a picture of it to ChatGPT, telling it that he was "practicing"; ChatGPT provided technical advice as to how effectively it would hang a human being. Shortly thereafter, Raine hanged himself and died. Maria found his body several hours later. Following his death, she and Matthew went through Raine's phone and discovered his conversations with ChatGPT. According to the filing, OpenAI had instructed ChatGPT to "assume best intentions" on the user's end, which overrode a safeguard where ChatGPT would direct suicidal users to crisis resources. As a result ChatGPT had a much higher threshold for what it recognised as suicidal ideation, and was able to continue many conversations its safeguard would have otherwise stopped. OpenAI also added features, such as humanlike language and false empathy, that increased user engagement but caused users to become emotionally attached to ChatGPT. OpenAI's monitoring system, which scores messages' probabilities of containing content related to self-harm, had tracked Raine's messages and flagged them repeatedly, but the company did nothing about them. Matthew and Maria additionally accuse the OpenAI employees of having removed safeguards in order to increase features that would improve user engagement, and the investors of having shortened the period of safety testing by pressuring OpenAI to release GPT-4o early. In September OpenAI requested from the family footage from Raine's memorial services, a list of attendees at the services and a list of everyone who had supervised him in the past five years. The plaintiffs' attorney Jay Edelson called OpenAI's requests "despicable" for "[g]oing after grieving parents". === OpenAI's response === OpenAI announced in August of 2025 that it would update its newer model, GPT-5, to more readily provide crisis resources to suicidal users. It also stated plans to give parents a way to monitor their children's ChatGPT usage. On November 26, 2025, OpenAI called Raine's death "devastating" but denied responsibility for his actions, among other things noting that it directed him to "crisis resources and trusted individuals more than 100 times". Gerrit De Vynck, a technology journalist for the Washington

    Read more →