Explore the best AI Writing Tools — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step how-to guides, curated by Aizhi.
Centurion Guard is a PC hardware and software-based security product, developed by Centurion Technologies. It was first released in 1996. There were several different releases and versions of this product, and many were distributed in computers donated to libraries by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. == Operating system compatibility == Microsoft Windows 7 Microsoft Windows Vista Microsoft Windows XP
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Illia Polosukhin is a Ukrainian-born computer scientist and entrepreneur known for his work on the transformer architecture in machine learning and for co-founding the NEAR blockchain. == Early life and education == Polosukhin studied at the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, later relocating to San Diego and then moving to Silicon Valley. == Career == === Google and transformer research === Polosukhin worked at Google and was part of the team associated with research on self-attention that culminated in the 2017 paper Attention Is All You Need, widely credited with introducing the transformer architecture used in modern large language models. === NEAR Protocol === After his work in machine learning, Polosukhin became a co-founder of NEAR Protocol and later associated with the NEAR Foundation ecosystem. In 2023, Polosukhin publicly argued that increasingly capable A.I. systems should be more transparent and user-controlled, and expressed skepticism that conventional regulation alone would solve problems created by closed, corporate models, warning about risks such as regulatory capture. He has promoted “user-owned AI” concepts that combine open approaches with decentralized infrastructure aligned with the blockchain technology. In 2024, Polosukhin downplayed scenarios of A.I. independently causing human extinction, arguing that conflicts are driven by people and that misuse of AI would reflect human intent and incentives. Later this year, Polosukhin said the NEAR Foundation would reduce its workforce by about 40%. == Publications == Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar, Jakob Uszkoreit, Lukasz Kaiser, Illia Polosukhin; et al. (2017). "Attention Is All You Need". arXiv.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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David Krueger is an American machine learning professor and advocate for the reduction of risks related to artificial intelligence. Krueger is an assistant professor in Robust, Reasoning, and Responsible AI at the University of Montreal and a Core Academic Member at Mila. == Early life and education == Krueger obtained a B.A. in mathematics from Reed College, and completed his MSc and Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Montreal. He trained in deep learning under Yoshua Bengio, Roland Memisevic, and Aaron Courville from 2013 to 2021. Krueger was also an intern on Google DeepMind's AI Safety team in 2018. == Career == Krueger researches deep learning, AI alignment, and AI safety. His work is focused on reducing the risk of human extinction resulting from out-of-control AI systems. Krueger was an assistant professor at the University of Cambridge from 2021 to 2024, before taking a faculty position at the University of Montreal in 2024. In 2023, he was a founding research director at the UK AI Security Institute. That same year, Krueger initiated the Statement on AI Risk, which argues that AI could cause human extinction and was signed by Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, AI expert Geoffrey Hinton, and other leaders. In April 2026, Krueger discussed the risks of advanced AI at a Capitol Hill event hosted by Senator Bernie Sanders. === Evitable === In 2025, Krueger founded Evitable, a nonprofit organization that advocates for an AI moratorium. == Views == Krueger argues that AI will lead to a "gradual disempowerment" of workers, likening AI chips to nuclear bombs. He also says the military use of AI "poses an existential risk to humanity."
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Daniel Wolfe (born 1960) is an American activist, advocate, and writer whose work advances health programs and policy that balance scientific research and community expertise. His career has focused on support for community health movements, particularly among groups often regarded as criminal or socially suspect, including gay men and people who use illicit drugs. == Early life == Wolfe was raised between Arizona—including time on Rancho Linda Vista, a commune outside of Tucson—and East Hampton, NY. He received his undergraduate degree in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, and following time studying Arabic in Egypt, worked as the junior ghostwriter on the autobiographies of First Lady of Egypt Jehan Sadat and Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Upon return to New York, he was an assistant at the Council on Foreign Relations to Richard W. Murphy, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Disagreement with US killing of Iraqi civilians during the 1990 Gulf War—and the rising toll of HIV in NY—moved Wolfe to leave Middle East studies and work full-time on AIDS in 1990. == Education == Wolfe was Community Scholar at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Healthwhere he received his Masters in Public Health in 2004. He holds a Masters of Philosophy (in history) from Columbia University, and a BA in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He was the recipient of a Charles H. Revson Foundation fellowship for urban leaders who have made a substantial contribution to New York City, and a fellow at the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad in Cairo, Egypt. == AIDS and gay activism == Wolfe was part of the media committee for ACT UP’s 1998 action to seize control of the FDA, and helped organize ACT UP NY’s challenge to Governor Cuomo to do better on the AIDS response and other actions.Wolfe also joined ACT UP colleagues Gregg Bordowitz, David Barr, Richard Elovich, Jean Carlomusto and others to work at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the nation’s first AIDS organization, where he served as director of communications and spokesperson on issues including opposition to NY State cuts to the AIDS budget, the disclosure that Olympic Champion Greg Louganis had HIV, reports of the FBI spying on AIDS activists, and GMHC’s move to offer HIV testing and targeted support to those who were HIV-negative. Wolfe also continued cultural work, making art, performance and video as a member of the gay and lesbian collective GANG with artists and ACT UP members including Zoe Leonard, Suzanne Wright, Loring McAlpin, Wellington Love, Adam Rolston and others, and writing a biography of Lawrence of Arabia for a series for young adults on famous gay men and lesbians in history edited by Martin Duberman. Controversy followed, with North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms waving a GANG piece in an issue of the Movement Research Performance Journal on the floor of Congress to show the "rottenness" of publicly funded art, and a number of schools banning the biography series for young adults from their libraries. Wolfe and others challenged the move as continuing the longstanding and homophobic demand that notable gay men and lesbians stay silent about essential details of their private lives even while being celebrated for their professional achievements. == Gay health == The approval of antiretroviral therapy for HIV in 1996 opened up new space for discussions of gay health beyond HIV, and new directions for Wolfe. Working from hundreds of interviews, surveys, workshops, and with a team of writers, Wolfe was the author of Men Like Us, the Our Bodies, Ourselves-inspired GMHC Complete Guide to Gay Men’s Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Well-being, covering issues from spirituality to sexual health to aging. The move to frame gay health beyond condoms and pills—and to offer a guide to health that “did not need to be translated from the original heterosexual”—was part of a larger gay health movement encompassing wellness and pleasure, and focused less on health disparity than on individual and community resilience. Wolfe was a keynote speaker and workshop leader, along with Eric Rofes, Chris Bartlett, and other organizers, at the first National Gay Men’s Health Summit held in Boulder, Colorado in 2002. Awarded a Charles H. Revson Fellowship for urban leaders in the City of New York, Wolfe became a community scholar at Columbia University’s Center of History and Ethics of Public Health, where he received his MPH in 2003, and was a contributor to Searching Eyes: Privacy, the State, and Disease Surveillance in America. == International harm reduction == Wolfe was Director of International Harm Reduction Development at the Open Society Foundations (2005-2021) where he led grantmaking and advocacy to protect the health and rights of people who use drugs in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Wolfe challenged approaches that conditioned support on abstinence or that sought to treat people who use illegal drugs like drugs themselves, as something to be controlled or contained. As with the gay health movement, he advocated a focus on community resilience and strengths, and on supporting individuals and communities to negotiate the balance between risk and pleasure of activities integral to life. Noting what he called the “antisocial behavior of health systems,” Wolfe’s analysis elevated issues such as forced labor and harsh punishment delivered in the name of addiction treatment and rehabilitation, the role of criminalization, imprisonment and stigma in interrupting or impeding HIV treatment, and the bias toward coercive approaches in studying and delivering addiction treatments. He also pointed to defects in national and international drug control policies and human rights violations as a root cause of HIV, hepatitis, and other health challenges faced by people who used drugs. Concrete advocacy supported by Open Society’s International Harm Reduction Development program under his direction included rebuffing US government efforts to force the UN to remove all references to harm reduction in its materials, addition of the addiction treatment medicines methadone and buprenorphine to the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list, and WHO endorsement of lay distribution of the opioid overdose antidote naloxone. Wolfe and OSF colleagues also advocated for new approaches to intellectual property and data sharing in research and development of medicines and vaccines to lower price and improve access to medicines globally to those in need. == AI and patient rights == Reports of patients denied opioid prescriptions based on an algorithm purporting to calculate their risk of overdose led Wolfe to work on AI, first as a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and then as Executive Director of a new UCSF UC Berkeley program pioneering efforts to join AI, clinical and public health practice, and equity. In keeping with his earlier (analog) work on HIV, Wolfe has highlighted concerns about health systems using algorithms to gauge the merit of treatments for those regarded as socially suspect, the importance of moving beyond proprietary, black box algorithms toward an architecture of health data as a public good, and the need to maximize benefit for patients and communities, as well health systems, in the use of large language models.
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Alice AI is a neural network family developed by the Russian company Yandex LLC. Alice AI can create and revise texts, generate new ideas and capture the context of the conversation with the user. Alice AI is trained using a dataset which includes information from books, magazines, newspapers and other open sources available on the internet. The neural network may get facts wrong and hallucinate, but as it learns, it will produce increasingly accurate answers. == Usage == YandexGPT is integrated into virtual assistant Alice (an analog of Siri and Alexa) and is available in Yandex services and applications. The company gives businesses access to the neural network’s API through the public cloud platform Yandex Cloud and develops its own B2B solutions on its basis. Since July 2023, 800 companies have participated in the closed testing of YandexGPT. IT developers, banks, retail businesses, and companies from other industries can use the technology in two modes — API and Playground (an interface in the Yandex Cloud console for testing models and hypotheses). Two model versions are available to businesses: one works in asynchronous mode and is better able to handle complex tasks, while the other is suitable for creating quick responses in real time. As a result, YandexGPT has been tested in dozens of scenarios such as content tasks, tech support, creating chatbots, virtual assistants, etc. == History == In February 2023, Yandex announced that it was working on its own version of the ChatGPT generative neural network while developing a language model from the YaLM (Yet another Language Model) family. The project was tentatively named YaLM 2.0, which was later changed to YandexGPT. On May 17, the company unveiled a neural network called YandexGPT (YaGPT) and enabled its virtual assistant Alice to interact with the new language model. On June 15, 2023, Yandex added the YandexGPT language model to the image generation application Shedevrum. This enabled its users to create fully-fledged posts complete with a title, text, and relevant illustration. In July 2023, YandexGPT launched new features enabling businesses to create virtual assistants and chatbots, as well as generate and structure texts. On September 7, 2023, Yandex presented a new version of the language model, YandexGPT 2, at the Practical ML Conf. Compared to the previous one, the new version is able to perform more types of tasks, and the quality of answers has improved. The developers claimed that YandexGPT 2 answered user questions better than the first version in 67% of cases. From October 6, 2023, YandexGPT can create short retellings of online Russian-language videos on the Internet. It can summarize videos that are from two minutes to four hours long and contain speech.
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Geshe Lobsang Monlam (Tibetan: དགེ་བཤེས་བློ་བཟང་སྨོན་ལམ, Wylie: dge bshes blo bzang smon lam), born in 1976 in Ngawa eastern Tibet, is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and programmer who uses digital technologies to preserve the Tibetan language and culture. He is best known for developing Tibetan typefaces and for the multi-volume Great Monlam Tibetan Dictionary. In 2025, he received the Snow Lion Award for Human Rights from the International Campaign for Tibet. He is also working on developing a "Dalai Lama AI," a specialized language model. == Biography == Lobsang Monlam was born in 1976 in Ngawa, eastern Tibet, anciently Tibetan Amdo, where he became a monk at the age of 12.. At the age of 17, in 1993, Lobsang Monlam fled Tibet by crossing the Himalayas to reach southern India and discovered computer science in a monastery. In 1993, he was ordained monk in the Sera Mey College in Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India, where he obtained a Geshe title in 2013.. By the early 2000s, Lobsang Monlam had already learned to paint thangkas and to compose plans and drawings. He used this knowledge to design a new assembly hall for Sera Mey, which the monks needed. Thanks to his work, Lobsang Monlam received donations from patrons of the monastery, which he was able to use to buy his first computer. He bought his first laptop in 2002 and largely taught himself how to use the hardware and software with the help of manuals. As a Buddhist scholar, he combines meditation practice with his digital work. In 2012, he founded and directs the Monlam Tibetan Information Technology Research Center in Dharamsala, which specializes in Tibetan language and software projects. Since then, he is its director, researching Tibetan language-related software. In 2019, advised by the 14th Dalai Lama, he founded Monlam IT and Research (OPC) Private Limited. Since the 2000s, Monlam has been developing Tibetan typefaces; the first Monlam Tibetan font was created in 2005. Under his direction, the Monlam Great Tibetan Dictionary was created, comprising 223 printed volumes and over 300,000 entries; approximately 150 people worked on this project for over nine years. On May 27, 2022, the Dalai Lama inaugurated the Monlam Tibetan Dictionary, produced by the Monlam Tibetan Information Technology Research Center, at Namgyal Monastery in McLeod Ganj. According to Penpa Tsering, this is the world's largest dictionary, created with guidance from the Dalai Lama, based on proposals from Lobsang Monlam and his team under the direction of Samdhong Rinpoche, and other lamas from all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and Yungdrung Bön. On December 5, 2024, Lobsang Monlam testified at a hearing of the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China in Washington, chaired by Christopher Smith, on the difficulties of preserving the Tibetan language and culture in Tibet and the Tibetan diaspora, and on the interest of the Monlam Tibetan Informatics Research Center in developing technologies for the preservation of the Tibetan language. On December 12, 2024, the work was presented to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and launched at an event. The free Monlam Great Tibetan Dictionary app is available in several languages; the German version was created in collaboration with the Tibet Institute Rikon and has been downloaded millions of times. In total, Monlam has created over 37 apps related to the Tibetan language and translation; In 2023, its center launched the Monlam artificial intelligence platform, equipped with modules for machine translation, optical character recognition, speech transcription and speech synthesis.. For their efforts, he and Sophie Richardson received the Snow Lion Award in 2025, which was presented by Richard Gere and came with a prize of €3,000. In 2019, he started a PhD at Bangalore University on Library Science. He obtained his doctorate on November 30, 2023. Currently, he spearheads Monlam AI. Lobsang Monlam is developing "Dalai Lama AI" to digitally preserve the teachings of the 14th Dalai Lama, now 90 years old, for future generations. Lobsang Monlam states, "If we succeed in preserving the Dalai Lama, we also preserve the movement."
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Modular Audio Recognition Framework (MARF) is an open-source research platform and a collection of voice, sound, speech, text and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms written in Java and arranged into a modular and extensible framework that attempts to facilitate addition of new algorithms. MARF may act as a library in applications or be used as a source for learning and extension. A few example applications are provided to show how to use the framework. There is also a detailed manual and the API reference in the javadoc format as the project tends to be well documented. MARF, its applications, and the corresponding source code and documentation are released under the BSD-style license.
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Linear belief functions are an extension of the Dempster–Shafer theory of belief functions to the case when variables of interest are continuous. Examples of such variables include financial asset prices, portfolio performance, and other antecedent and consequent variables. The theory was originally proposed by Arthur P. Dempster in the context of Kalman Filters and later was elaborated, refined, and applied to knowledge representation in artificial intelligence and decision making in finance and accounting by Liping Liu. == Concept == A linear belief function intends to represent our belief regarding the location of the true value as follows: We are certain that the truth is on a so-called certainty hyperplane but we do not know its exact location; along some dimensions of the certainty hyperplane, we believe the true value could be anywhere from –∞ to +∞ and the probability of being at a particular location is described by a normal distribution; along other dimensions, our knowledge is vacuous, i.e., the true value is somewhere from –∞ to +∞ but the associated probability is unknown. A belief function in general is defined by a mass function over a class of focal elements, which may have nonempty intersections. A linear belief function is a special type of belief function in the sense that its focal elements are exclusive, parallel sub-hyperplanes over the certainty hyperplane and its mass function is a normal distribution across the sub-hyperplanes. Based on the above geometrical description, Shafer and Liu propose two mathematical representations of a LBF: a wide-sense inner product and a linear functional in the variable space, and as their duals over a hyperplane in the sample space. Monney proposes still another structure called Gaussian hints. Although these representations are mathematically neat, they tend to be unsuitable for knowledge representation in expert systems. == Knowledge representation == A linear belief function can represent both logical and probabilistic knowledge for three types of variables: deterministic such as an observable or controllable, random whose distribution is normal, and vacuous on which no knowledge bears. Logical knowledge is represented by linear equations, or geometrically, a certainty hyperplane. Probabilistic knowledge is represented by a normal distribution across all parallel focal elements. In general, assume X is a vector of multiple normal variables with mean μ and covariance Σ. Then, the multivariate normal distribution can be equivalently represented as a moment matrix: M ( X ) = ( μ Σ ) . {\displaystyle M(X)=\left({\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu \\\Sigma \end{array}}\right).} If the distribution is non-degenerate, i.e., Σ has a full rank and its inverse exists, the moment matrix can be fully swept: M ( X → ) = ( μ Σ − 1 − Σ − 1 ) {\displaystyle M({\vec {X}})=\left({\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu \Sigma ^{-1}\\-\Sigma ^{-1}\end{array}}\right)} Except for normalization constant, the above equation completely determines the normal density function for X. Therefore, M ( X → ) {\displaystyle M({\vec {X}})} represents the probability distribution of X in the potential form. These two simple matrices allow us to represent three special cases of linear belief functions. First, for an ordinary normal probability distribution M(X) represents it. Second, suppose one makes a direct observation on X and obtains a value μ. In this case, since there is no uncertainty, both variance and covariance vanish, i.e., Σ = 0. Thus, a direct observation can be represented as: M ( X ) = ( μ 0 ) {\displaystyle M(X)=\left({\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu \\0\end{array}}\right)} Third, suppose one is completely ignorant about X. This is a very thorny case in Bayesian statistics since the density function does not exist. By using the fully swept moment matrix, we represent the vacuous linear belief functions as a zero matrix in the swept form follows: M ( X → ) = [ 0 0 ] {\displaystyle M({\vec {X}})=\left[{\begin{array}{{20}c}0\\0\end{array}}\right]} One way to understand the representation is to imagine complete ignorance as the limiting case when the variance of X approaches to ∞, where one can show that Σ−1 = 0 and hence M ( X → ) {\displaystyle M({\vec {X}})} vanishes. However, the above equation is not the same as an improper prior or normal distribution with infinite variance. In fact, it does not correspond to any unique probability distribution. For this reason, a better way is to understand the vacuous linear belief functions as the neutral element for combination (see later). To represent the remaining three special cases, we need the concept of partial sweeping. Unlike a full sweeping, a partial sweeping is a transformation on a subset of variables. Suppose X and Y are two vectors of normal variables with the joint moment matrix: M ( X , Y ) = [ μ 1 Σ 11 Σ 21 μ 2 Σ 12 Σ 22 ] {\displaystyle M(X,Y)=\left[{\begin{array}{{20}c}{\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu _{1}\\\Sigma _{11}\\\Sigma _{21}\end{array}}&{\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu _{2}\\\Sigma _{12}\\\Sigma _{22}\end{array}}\end{array}}\right]} Then M(X, Y) may be partially swept. For example, we can define the partial sweeping on X as follows: M ( X → , Y ) = [ μ 1 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 − ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 21 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 μ 2 − μ 1 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 Σ 22 − Σ 21 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 ] {\displaystyle M({\vec {X}},Y)=\left[{\begin{array}{{20}c}{\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu _{1}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\\-(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\\\Sigma _{21}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\end{array}}&{\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu _{2}-\mu _{1}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}\\(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}\\\Sigma _{22}-\Sigma _{21}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}\end{array}}\end{array}}\right]} If X is one-dimensional, a partial sweeping replaces the variance of X by its negative inverse and multiplies the inverse with other elements. If X is multidimensional, the operation involves the inverse of the covariance matrix of X and other multiplications. A swept matrix obtained from a partial sweeping on a subset of variables can be equivalently obtained by a sequence of partial sweepings on each individual variable in the subset and the order of the sequence does not matter. Similarly, a fully swept matrix is the result of partial sweepings on all variables. We can make two observations. First, after the partial sweeping on X, the mean vector and covariance matrix of X are respectively μ 1 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 {\displaystyle \mu _{1}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}} and − ( Σ 11 ) − 1 {\displaystyle -(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}} , which are the same as that of a full sweeping of the marginal moment matrix of X. Thus, the elements corresponding to X in the above partial sweeping equation represent the marginal distribution of X in potential form. Second, according to statistics, μ 2 − μ 1 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 {\displaystyle \mu _{2}-\mu _{1}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}} is the conditional mean of Y given X = 0; Σ 22 − Σ 21 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 {\displaystyle \Sigma _{22}-\Sigma _{21}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}} is the conditional covariance matrix of Y given X = 0; and ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 {\displaystyle (\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}} is the slope of the regression model of Y on X. Therefore, the elements corresponding to Y indices and the intersection of X and Y in M ( X → , Y ) {\displaystyle M({\vec {X}},Y)} represents the conditional distribution of Y given X = 0. These semantics render the partial sweeping operation a useful method for manipulating multivariate normal distributions. They also form the basis of the moment matrix representations for the three remaining important cases of linear belief functions, including proper belief functions, linear equations, and linear regression models. === Proper linear belief functions === For variables X and Y, assume there exists a piece of evidence justifying a normal distribution for variables Y while bearing no opinions for variables X. Also, assume that X and Y are not perfectly linearly related, i.e., their correlation is less than 1. This case involves a mix of an ordinary normal distribution for Y and a vacuous belief function for X. Thus, we represent it using a partially swept matrix as follows: M ( X → , Y ) = [ 0 0 0 μ 2 0 Σ 22 ] {\displaystyle M({\vec {X}},Y)=\left[{\begin{array}{{20}c}{\begin{array}{{20}c}0\\0\\0\end{array}}&{\begin{array}{{20}c}\mu _{2}\\0\\\Sigma _{22}\\\end{array}}\end{array}}\right]} This is how we could understand the representation. Since we are ignorant on X, we use its swept form and set μ 1 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 = 0 {\displaystyle \mu _{1}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}=0} and − ( Σ 11 ) − 1 = 0 {\displaystyle -(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}=0} . Since the correlation between X and Y is less than 1, the regression coefficient of X on Y approaches to 0 when the variance of X approaches to ∞. Therefore, ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 = 0 {\displaystyle (\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}=0} . Similarly, one can prove that μ 1 ( Σ 11 ) − 1 Σ 12 = 0 {\displaystyle \mu _{1}(\Sigma _{11})^{-1}\Sigma _{12}=0} and Σ 21 ( Σ 11 ) −
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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities. The finance module in particular is essential to a suite of applications meeting the definition of an ERP system. The finance module provides the system of record for the organisation; recording the commercial impact of the business operations in the General Ledger. ERP systems can be local-based or cloud-based. Cloud-based applications have grown rapidly since the early 2010s due to the increased efficiencies arising from information being readily available from any location with Internet access. However, ERP differs from integrated business management systems by including planning all resources that are required in the future to meet business objectives. This includes plans for getting suitable staff and manufacturing capabilities for future needs. ERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes, typically using a shared database managed by a database management system. ERP systems track business resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data. ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders. Estimates of the size of the global ERP market range between USD $78 and $81 billion in 2026 . Though early ERP systems focused on large enterprises, smaller enterprises increasingly use ERP systems. The ERP system integrates varied organizational systems and facilitates error-free transactions and production, thereby enhancing the organization's efficiency. However, developing an ERP system differs from traditional system development. ERP systems run on a variety of computer hardware and network configurations, typically using a database as an information repository. == Origin == Business and technology research and advisory firm Gartner is credited for first using the acronym ERP in the 1990s. The term captured a functional extension of two manufacturing-based concepts, material requirements planning (MRP) and manufacturing resource planning (MRP II). Without replacing these terms, ERP came to represent a larger whole that reflected the evolution of application integration beyond manufacturing. Not all ERP packages are developed from a manufacturing core; ERP vendors variously began assembling their packages with finance-and-accounting, maintenance, and human-resource components. By the mid-1990s ERP systems addressed all core enterprise functions. Governments and non–profit organizations also began to use ERP systems. An "ERP system selection methodology" is a formal process for selecting an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Existing methodologies include: Kuiper's funnel method, Dobrin's three-dimensional (3D) web-based decision support tool, and the Clarkston Potomac methodology. == Expansion == ERP systems experienced rapid growth in the 1990s. Because of the year 2000 problem many companies took the opportunity to replace their old systems with ERP. ERP systems initially focused on automating back office functions that did not directly affect customers and the public. Front office functions, such as customer relationship management (CRM), dealt directly with customers, or e-business systems such as e-commerce and e-government—or supplier relationship management (SRM) became integrated later, when the internet simplified communicating with external parties. "ERP II" was coined in 2000 in an article by Gartner Publications entitled ERP Is Dead—Long Live ERP II. It describes web–based software that provides real–time access to ERP systems to employees and partners (such as suppliers and customers). The ERP II role expands traditional ERP resource optimization and transaction processing. Rather than just manage buying, selling, etc.—ERP II leverages information in the resources under its management to help the enterprise collaborate with other enterprises. ERP II is more flexible than the first generation ERP. Rather than confine ERP system capabilities within the organization, it goes beyond the corporate walls to interact with other systems. Enterprise application suite is an alternate name for such systems. ERP II systems are typically used to enable collaborative initiatives such as supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence (BI) among business partner organizations through the use of various electronic business technologies. The large proportion of companies are pursuing a strong managerial targets in ERP system instead of acquire an ERP company. Developers now make more effort to integrate mobile devices with the ERP system. ERP vendors are extending ERP to these devices, along with other business applications, so that businesses don't have to rely on third-party applications. As an example, the e-commerce platform Shopify was able to make ERP tools from Microsoft and Oracle available on its app in October 2021. Technical stakes of modern ERP concern integration—hardware, applications, networking, supply chains. ERP now covers more functions and roles—including decision making, stakeholders' relationships, standardization, transparency, globalization, etc. == Functional areas == An ERP system covers the following common functional areas. In many ERP systems, these are called and grouped together as ERP modules: Financial accounting: general ledger, fixed assets, payables including vouchering, matching and payment, receivables and collections, cash management, financial consolidation Management accounting: budgeting, costing, cost management, activity based costing, billing, invoicing (optional) Human resources: recruiting, training, rostering, payroll, benefits, retirement and pension plans, diversity management, retirement, separation Manufacturing: engineering, bill of materials, work orders, scheduling, capacity, workflow management, quality control, manufacturing process, manufacturing projects, manufacturing flow, product life cycle management Order processing: order to cash, order entry, credit checking, pricing, available to promise, inventory, shipping, sales analysis and reporting, sales commissioning Supply chain management: supply chain planning, supplier scheduling, product configurator, order to cash, purchasing, inventory, claim processing, warehousing (receiving, putaway, picking and packing) Project management: project planning, resource planning, project costing, work breakdown structure, billing, time and expense, performance units, activity management Customer relationship management (CRM): sales and marketing, commissions, service, customer contact, call center support – CRM systems are not always considered part of ERP systems but rather business support systems (BSS) Supplier relationship management (SRM): suppliers, orders, payments. Data services: various "self-service" interfaces for customers, suppliers or employees Management of school and educational institutes. Contract management: creating, monitoring, and managing contracts, reducing administrative burdens and minimising legal risks. These modules often feature contract templates, electronic signature capabilities, automated alerts for contract milestones, and advanced search functionality. === GRP – ERP use in government === Government resource planning (GRP) is the equivalent of an ERP for the public sector and an integrated office automation system for government bodies. The software structure, modularization, core algorithms and main interfaces do not differ from other ERPs, and ERP software suppliers manage to adapt their systems to government agencies. Both system implementations, in private and public organizations, are adopted to improve productivity and overall business performance in organizations, but comparisons (private vs. public) of implementations shows that the main factors influencing ERP implementation success in the public sector are cultural. == Best practices == Most ERP systems incorporate best practices. This means the software reflects the vendor's interpretation of the most effective way to perform each business process. Systems vary in how conveniently the customer can modify these practices. Use of best practices eases compliance with requirements such as International Financial Reporting Standards, Sarbanes–Oxley, or Basel II. They can also help comply with de facto industry standards, such as electronic funds transfer. This is because the procedure can be readily
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Shanghai Jieyue Xingchen Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd, known as StepFun, is an artificial intelligence (AI) company based in Shanghai, China. It has been dubbed one of China's "AI Tiger" companies by investors. == Background == StepFun was founded in April 2023 by former Microsoft employees. Investors include Tencent, Qiming Venture Partners and Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment. In July 2025 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, StepFun announced the "Model-Chip Ecosystem Innovation Alliance" which consisted of Chinese developers of large language models (LLMs) and AI chip manufacturers. This included companies such as Huawei, Biren Technology, Moore Threads and Enflame. Another second alliance named the "Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce AI Committee" was also established that included StepFun, SenseTime, MiniMax, MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX. On 25 February 2026, it was reported that StepFun was seeking an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. StepFun focuses on multimodal models which are designed to understand multiple types of input data such as text, video and audio. == Products == In July 2024 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, StepFun officially launched Step-2, a trillion-parameter LLM, along with the Step-1.5V multimodal model and the Step-1X image generation model. In February 2025, StepFun and Geely jointly announced the open-sourcing of two multimodal large models to global developers. They were Step-Video-T2V and Step-Audio. In July 2025, StepFun released Step 3. The Model-Chip Ecosystem Innovation Alliance aimed to optimize Step 3 for domestic chips. In April 2025, Step-R1-V-Mini was released. It is a multimodal reasoning model designed for visual interpretation and image understanding. In February 2026, Step-3.5-Flash, a mixture-of-experts model with 196 billion parameters and 11 billion active parameters was released under the free and open-source Apache 2.0 license. It supports tool use and a 256k token context window. == Models ==
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Inbenta is an AI company that originated in Barcelona, Spain, in 2005. Inbenta is currently headquartered in Allen, Texas, with additional offices in Spain, São Paulo, Brazil, Toulouse, France, and Tokyo, Japan. Inbenta provides natural language processing and semantic search through artificial intelligence. == History == Inbenta raised $12 Million in their Series B funding round to extend the reach of their artificial intelligence for business solutions. In 2023 Inbenta's new chief executive officer Melissa Solis moved Inbenta's headquarters to One Bethany West in Allen, Texas from Foster City, California. == Controversy == On 23 June 2018, Ticketmaster UK identified malicious software on a customer support product hosted by Inbenta Technologies, compromising personal data and payment details for thousands of Ticketmaster customers. Three days later, Inbenta's CEO Issued a message about the incident to convey the full scope of the breach. Also on its FAQ section, Inbenta claimed that "After a careful analysis of all clues and snapshots from our systems, the technical team at Inbenta discovered that the script had been implemented on the payment page. We were unaware of this, and would have advised against doing so had we known, as it presents a point of vulnerability". On November 13, 2020, the Information Commissioner's Office fined Ticketmaster UK Limited £1.25 million for failing to protect customers' payment details. According to the ICO, "It was because of Ticketmaster's business decision to include the [Inbenta] chat bot on its payment page that the chat bot was able to unlawfully process the personal data of customers."
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Dendral was a project in artificial intelligence (AI) of the 1960s, and the computer software expert system that it produced. Its primary aim was to study hypothesis formation and discovery in science. For that, a specific task in science was chosen: help organic chemists in identifying unknown organic molecules, by analyzing their mass spectra and using knowledge of chemistry. It was done at Stanford University by Edward Feigenbaum, Bruce G. Buchanan, Joshua Lederberg, and Carl Djerassi, along with a team of highly creative research associates and students. It began in 1964 and spans approximately half the history of AI research. The software program Dendral is considered the first expert system because it automated the decision-making process and problem-solving behavior of organic chemists. The project consisted of research on two main programs Heuristic Dendral and Meta-Dendral, and several sub-programs. It was written in the Lisp programming language, which was considered the language of AI because of its flexibility. Many systems were derived from Dendral, including MYCIN, MOLGEN, PROSPECTOR, XCON, and STEAMER. There are many other programs today for solving the mass spectrometry inverse problem, see List of mass spectrometry software, but they are no longer described as 'artificial intelligence', just as structure searchers. The name Dendral is an acronym of the term "Dendritic Algorithm". == Heuristic Dendral == Heuristic Dendral is a program that uses mass spectra or other experimental data together with a knowledge base of chemistry to produce a set of possible chemical structures that may be responsible for producing the data. A mass spectrum of a compound is produced by a mass spectrometer, and is used to determine its molecular weight, the sum of the masses of its atomic constituents. For example, the compound water (H2O), has a molecular weight of 18 since hydrogen has a mass of 1.01 and oxygen 16.00, and its mass spectrum has a peak at 18 units. Heuristic Dendral would use this input mass and the knowledge of atomic mass numbers and valence rules, to determine the possible combinations of atomic constituents whose mass would add up to 18. As the weight increases and the molecules become more complex, the number of possible compounds increases drastically. Thus, a program that is able to reduce this number of candidate solutions through the process of hypothesis formation is essential. New graph-theoretic algorithms were invented by Lederberg, Harold Brown, and others that generate all graphs with a specified set of nodes and connection-types (chemical atoms and bonds) -- with or without cycles. Moreover, the team was able to prove mathematically that the generator is complete, in that it produces all graphs with the specified nodes and edges, and that it is non-redundant, in that the output contains no equivalent graphs (e.g., mirror images). The CONGEN program, as it became known, was developed largely by computational chemists Ray Carhart, Jim Nourse, and Dennis Smith. It was useful to chemists as a stand-alone program to generate chemical graphs showing a complete list of structures that satisfy the constraints specified by a user. == Meta-Dendral == Meta-Dendral is a machine learning system that receives the set of possible chemical structures and corresponding mass spectra as input, and proposes a set of rules of mass spectrometry that correlate structural features with processes that produce the mass spectrum. These rules would be fed back to Heuristic Dendral (in the planning and testing programs described below) to test their applicability. Thus, "Heuristic Dendral is a performance system and Meta-Dendral is a learning system". The program is based on two important features: the plan-generate-test paradigm and knowledge engineering. === Plan-generate-test paradigm === The plan-generate-test paradigm is the basic organization of the problem-solving method, and is a common paradigm used by both Heuristic Dendral and Meta-Dendral systems. The generator (later named CONGEN) generates potential solutions for a particular problem, which are then expressed as chemical graphs in Dendral. However, this is feasible only when the number of candidate solutions is minimal. When there are large numbers of possible solutions, Dendral has to find a way to put constraints that rules out large sets of candidate solutions. This is the primary aim of Dendral planner, which is a “hypothesis-formation” program that employs “task-specific knowledge to find constraints for the generator”. Last but not least, the tester analyzes each proposed candidate solution and discards those that fail to fulfill certain criteria. This mechanism of plan-generate-test paradigm is what holds Dendral together. === Knowledge Engineering === The primary aim of knowledge engineering is to attain a productive interaction between the available knowledge base and problem solving techniques. This is possible through development of a procedure in which large amounts of task-specific information is encoded into heuristic programs. Thus, the first essential component of knowledge engineering is a large “knowledge base.” Dendral has specific knowledge about the mass spectrometry technique, a large amount of information that forms the basis of chemistry and graph theory, and information that might be helpful in finding the solution of a particular chemical structure elucidation problem. This “knowledge base” is used both to search for possible chemical structures that match the input data, and to learn new “general rules” that help prune searches. The benefit Dendral provides the end user, even a non-expert, is a minimized set of possible solutions to check manually. == Heuristics == A heuristic is a rule of thumb, an algorithm that does not guarantee a solution, but reduces the number of possible solutions by discarding unlikely and irrelevant solutions. The use of heuristics to solve problems is called "heuristics programming", and was used in Dendral to allow it to replicate in machines the process through which human experts induce the solution to problems via rules of thumb and specific information. Heuristics programming was a major approach and a giant step forward in artificial intelligence, as it allowed scientists to finally automate certain traits of human intelligence. It became prominent among scientists in the late 1940s through George Polya’s book, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method. As Herbert A. Simon said in The Sciences of the Artificial, "if you take a heuristic conclusion as certain, you may be fooled and disappointed; but if you neglect heuristic conclusions altogether you will make no progress at all." == History == During the mid 20th century, the question "can machines think?" became intriguing and popular among scientists, primarily to add humanistic characteristics to machine behavior. John McCarthy, who was one of the prime researchers of this field, termed this concept of machine intelligence as "artificial intelligence" (AI) during the Dartmouth summer in 1956. AI is usually defined as the capacity of a machine to perform operations that are analogous to human cognitive capabilities. Much research to create AI was done during the 20th century. Also around the mid 20th century, science, especially biology, faced a fast-increasing need to develop a "man-computer symbiosis", to aid scientists in solving problems. For example, the structural analysis of myoglobin, hemoglobin, and other proteins relentlessly needed instrumentation development due to its complexity. In the early 1960s, Joshua Lederberg started working with computers and quickly became tremendously interested in creating interactive computers to help him in his exobiology research. Specifically, he was interested in designing computing systems to help him study alien organic compounds. Lederberg had been heading a team designing instruments for the Mars Viking lander to search for precursor molecules of life in samples of the Mars surface, using a mass spectrometer coupled with a minicomputer. As he was not an expert in either chemistry or computer programming, he collaborated with Stanford chemist Carl Djerassi to help him with chemistry, and Edward Feigenbaum with programming, to automate the process of determining chemical structures from raw mass spectrometry data. Feigenbaum was an expert in programming languages and heuristics, and helped Lederberg design a system that replicated the way Djerassi solved structure elucidation problems. They devised a system called Dendritic Algorithm (Dendral) that was able to generate possible chemical structures corresponding to the mass spectrometry data as an output. Dendral then was still very inaccurate in assessing spectra of ketones, alcohols, and isomers of chemical compounds. Thus, Djerassi "taught" general rules to Dendral that could help eliminate most of the "chemically implausible" structures, and p
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Gas (sometimes stylized in all caps), formerly known as Melt as well as Crush, was an American anonymous social media app. Launched in August 2022, the app is oriented towards high schoolers. The app was developed by Nikita Bier, Isaiah Turner, and former Facebook engineer Dave Schatz. Gas was largely based upon the prior tbh app developed by co-founder Nikita Bier, along with Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, and Nicolas Ducdodon in September 2017. tbh was acquired by Facebook inc. (now Meta Platforms) on October 16, 2017, and nearly a year later in July 2018 was dissolved, owing to low usage. Gas follows a similar purpose to tbh in being a social media app oriented towards high schoolers. In the app, users participate in anonymous polls regarding pre-written complimentary statements to their peers, such as "I'd say yes if (blank) asked me out on a date," "I think (blank) is the coolest kid in school," or "would make an ugly face and still look pretty." Winners of said polls receive a "flame." The name of the app is derived from this, with "gassing someone up" being Gen Z slang for complimenting someone. Users can pay a $6.99 subscription that enables "God Mode," which shows hints regarding who voted for them in a poll. Gas overtook TikTok and BeReal as the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store in October 2022 (the app is currently not available for Android). The app has over 5.1 million downloads as of early November 2022, over a million active users and 300 thousand daily downloads as of October 2022. Currently, the app is available in Canada and the majority of the United States. On January 17, 2023, Gas was acquired by Discord, however it would remain a standalone app and its developers became Discord staff members. On October 18, 2023, Discord announced that service for Gas would be permanently ending effective November 7, 2023, due to a steep decline in users. Effective November 7, the app became completely unusable. == Controversy regarding human-trafficking == Beginning in October 2022, rumors spread largely throughout TikTok and Snapchat alleged that the app was linked to human trafficking (in particular sex trafficking). According to Bier, the rumor originated with a single user review from China on October 5, and then was disseminated through TikTok accounts with "few to no US teen followers." Although largely dismissed as a hoax by experts, who cite how the app doesn't log user locations and general anonymity, the hoax became pervasive to the extent that various police departments, school systems, and local news outlets began issuing warnings regarding the app. For instance, on October 31, 2022, the police department of Piedmont, Oklahoma issued a warning to parents, encouraging them to check their children's phones, while on November 3, the Oklahoma Oktaha Public School system stated in a Facebook post that "Children are being kidnapped in other towns and this new app is thought to be the source of predators finding their location." (both statements have since been retracted by Police Chief Scott Singer and Superintendent Jerry Needham respectively). Additionally, local medial outlets such as KOCO in Oklahoma City ran stories making similar statements. The rumor had a negative impact on the app, with downloads plateauing for a two-week period in late October and with 3% of users in a single day reportedly uninstalling the app. Revenue and ratings have also reportedly dropped and the company's social media accounts have been bombarded with comments labeling them as sex-traffickers. Additionally, the four-person development team has reportedly been bombarded with various death threats as a result.
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Sriram Krishnan (born 1984) is a tech executive and White House official, currently serving as the Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence. Krishnan was named a Time Person of the Year in 2025 as an "Architect of Artificial Intelligence." He was described in Time as providing the "wake-up call that we needed" to the other AI builders, leading to "a multiyear, $500 billion initiative dubbed Stargate" to push American-made AI, as well as numerous other AI initiatives. Also in December 2025, President Trump said of Krishnan, "without him, things on AI would not function well" and cited Krishnan as the leading figure behind the American executive order on AI. As the leader of the United States' policy team regarding artificial intelligence, Krishnan plays "a significant role in shaping the administration’s approach to AI and driving measures to advance federal adoption of AI." The role calls for removing barriers to AI adoption within the government, driving vendors toward solutions suitable for federal needs, designing sensible regulation of private-sector AI, and conducting "AI diplomacy". He has stated a policy goal of "reinvigorating US dominance in emerging technologies," including AI. He also represents the United States' interests in AI abroad, such as at the Paris AI Summit. He is one of the authors of the American "AI Action Plan" released in July, 2025, which he contends is necessary to win the "existential race with China" for AI supremacy. Krishnan, a U.S. citizen born in India, is also a venture capitalist, podcaster, product manager and author. Early in his career, he led product teams at Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Snap. In addition to his work as an investor and technologist, he and his wife, Aarthi Ramamurthy, rose to additional prominence in 2021 as podcast hosts. He served as a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and led its London office. In 2022, Krishnan announced that he was working with Elon Musk on the rebuilding of Twitter following Musk's acquisition of the company. On December 22, 2024, US president-elect Donald Trump announced that Krishnan would be Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence in his incoming administration; in 2026 he joined the National Economic Council. == Early life and education == Krishnan was born in Chennai, India. He earned his Bachelor of Technology in Information Technology from SRM University (2001–2005), moved to the United States in 2007 to join Microsoft, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2016. == Career == === Early career === In 2007, he began working at Microsoft where he served as a program manager for Visual Studio. At Facebook, Krishnan built the Facebook Audience Network, a competitive platform to Google's ad technologies. At Twitter, he led product and core user experience, driving a 20% annual user growth rate and launching a redesigned home page and events experience. === Andreessen Horowitz === Krishnan was appointed a general partner of American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz ("a16z") in February 2021. He was anticipated to serve consumer and social markets, however he has also theorized on the impact of "deep tech" on society. In 2023 he was appointed to lead the firm's London office, its first non-US location. The office is expected to serve Web3 investments as well as AI and other fields. Krishnan announced that he would leave the firm at the end of 2024. === Social media and AI === In 2022, various news media reported that Krishnan was assisting Elon Musk in the revamp of Twitter following Musk's takeover of the company. Additional reports named Krishnan as the leading candidate for the role of CEO of the newly private company. Krishnan penned a 2023 New York Times opinion column regarding social media, AI, and related fields. He predicted a rise in the number and diversity of online spaces due to decentralization and platforms like Farcaster, Bluesky and Mastodon. === Public office === In 2024, the Financial Times reported that Krishnan was active in international affairs, reintroducing Boris Johnson to Elon Musk, following Musk's nomination to the proposed Department of Government Efficiency. Krishnan was also reported as potentially leaving a16z at the end of the year to "be jumping into something I've wanted to spend [his] energy on," which was widely reported as being related to Musk's and Vivek Ramaswamy's work at DOGE. Others reported to be involved include Joe Lonsdale, Marc Andreesen, Bill Ackman, and Travis Kalanick. On December 22, 2024, US president-elect Donald Trump announced that he would be Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence in his incoming administration. On February 6, 2025, Reuters reported that Krishnan would be accompanying Vice President Vance to the Paris AI Summit, a "major artificial intelligence" event later that month. Other members of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy would also be joining the event with around 100 other countries to "focus on AI's potential." Krishnan joined a U.S. technology policy delegation to the Middle East in advance of President Trump's visit in May 2025. Conducting "AI diplomacy," Krishnan negotiated the spread of U.S. AI technologies with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, as well as other means to strengthen bilateral trade in artificial intelligence technologies. He explained that the goal of the diplomatic mission was that "we want American A.I. to spread." Krishnan, along with David Sacks and Michael Kratsios, were credited as authors of the American AI Action Plan released in July 2025. The plan is "the administration’s most significant policy directive" regarding artificial intelligence; it calls for financing to support the global spread of American AI models and a policy to enforce neutrality in models. The Washington Post referred to the plan as a "bold action to ensure that American AI remains at the cutting edge." The AI Action Plan is a continuation of prior efforts to reduce barriers to U.S. production of AI systems and the removal of rules that were considered to hinder such growth. Later in 2025, at the POLITICO AI & Tech Summit, Krishnan called national AI development "an existential race with China." He suggested that private companies are best positioned to create new models, quipping "let them cook." He further suggested that state-by-state regulation of AI technologies may hinder national AI competitiveness. Also in 2025, at the Axios AI+ Summit, Krishnan stated that the United States and China are in a race for AI supremacy, in which the winner will be judged by market share. Winning the race is a "business strategy" to Krishnan. Krishnan was named in the 2025 Time Person of the Year article as an "AI Architect". === The Aarthi and Sriram Show and other media === In early 2021, Krishnan and his wife, Aarthi Ramamurthy, launched a Clubhouse talk show that "focuses on organic conversations on anything from startups to venture capitalism and cryptocurrencies." An early appearance by Elon Musk on the Good Time Show was described as the first show that "broke Clubhouse" by rapidly exceeding the limit of 5,000 simultaneous users. The desire to interact with a larger community led to a variety of later innovations to allow streaming and replaying of Clubhouse chats. On that episode, Elon Musk grilled Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev regarding the GameStop trading controversy. As of December 2021, the show had over 187,000 subscribers, plus 735,000 subscribers between Krishnan and Ramamurthy's personal Clubhouse accounts. Other guests have included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Diane von Fürstenberg, Tony Hawk, MrBeast, and A.R. Rahman. In 2022, the Good Time Show moved to YouTube. It then evolved to a podcasting format under the name The Aarthi and Sriram Show, with both audio and video content. The Hollywood Reporter reported that the podcast had received more than 1 million downloads by early 2023. == Personal life == Krishnan is married to Aarthi Ramamurthy, co-host of The Aarthi and Sriram Show (formerly the Good Time Show) and a serial entrepreneur. They met in college in 2003 through a Yahoo! chat room related to a coding project and began dating in 2006 and eloped in 2010. == Awards == Time Person of the Year - 2025
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The Chinese room argument holds that a computer executing a program cannot have a mind, understanding, or consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was presented in a 1980 paper by the American philosopher John Searle, entitled "Minds, Brains, and Programs" and published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Similar arguments had been made previously by others, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Peter Winch, and Anatoly Dneprov. Searle's version has been widely discussed in the years since. The centerpiece of Searle's argument is a thought experiment known as the "Chinese room". The argument is directed against the philosophical positions of functionalism and computationalism, which hold that the mind may be viewed as an information-processing system operating on formal symbols, and that simulation of a given mental state is sufficient for its presence. Specifically, the argument is intended to refute a position Searle calls the strong AI hypothesis: "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds." Although its proponents originally presented the argument in reaction to statements of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, it is not an argument against the goals of mainstream AI research because it does not show a limit in the amount of intelligent behavior a machine can display. The argument applies only to digital computers running programs and does not apply to machines in general. While widely discussed, the argument has been subject to significant criticism and remains controversial among philosophers of mind and AI researchers. == Chinese room thought experiment == Suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in programming a computer to behave as if it understands Chinese. The machine accepts Chinese characters as input, carries out each instruction of the program step by step, and then produces Chinese characters as output. The machine does this so perfectly that no one can tell that they are communicating with a machine and not a hidden Chinese speaker. The questions at issue are these: does the machine actually understand the conversation, or is it just simulating the ability to understand the conversation? Does the machine have a mind in exactly the same sense that people do, or is it just acting as if it had a mind? Now suppose that Searle is in a room with an English version of the program, along with sufficient pencils, paper, erasers and filing cabinets. Chinese characters are slipped in under the door, and he follows the program step-by-step, which eventually instructs him to slide other Chinese characters back out under the door. If the computer had passed the Turing test this way, it follows that Searle would do so as well, simply by running the program by hand. Searle can see no essential difference between the roles of the computer and himself in the experiment. Each simply follows a program, step-by-step, producing behavior that makes them appear to understand. However, Searle would not be able to understand the conversation. Therefore, he argues, it follows that the computer would not be able to understand the conversation either. Searle argues that, without "understanding" (or "intentionality"), we cannot describe what the machine is doing as "thinking" and, since it does not think, it does not have a "mind" in the normal sense of the word. Therefore, he concludes that the strong AI hypothesis is false: a computer running a program that simulates a mind would not have a mind in the same sense that human beings have a mind. == History == Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made a similar argument in 1713 against mechanism, the idea that everything that makes up a human being could, in principle, be explained in mechanical terms—in other words, that a person, including their mind, is merely a very complex machine. Leibniz used the thought experiment of expanding the brain until it was the size of a mill. He found it difficult to imagine that a "mind" capable of "perception" could be constructed using only mechanical processes. British philosopher Peter Winch made the same point in his 1958 book The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, in which he argues that "a man who understands Chinese is not a man who has a firm grasp of the statistical probabilities for the occurrence of the various words in the Chinese language" (p. 108). Soviet cyberneticist Anatoly Dneprov made an essentially identical argument in 1961, in the form of his short story "The Game". In it, a stadium of people act as switches and memory cells implementing a program to translate a sentence from Portuguese, a language none of them know. The game was organized by a "Professor Zarubin" to answer the question "Can mathematical machines think?" Speaking through Zarubin, Dneprov writes that "the only way to prove that machines can think is to turn yourself into a machine and examine your thinking process", and he concludes, as Searle does, that "even the most perfect simulation of machine thinking is not the thinking process itself." In 1974, Lawrence H. Davis imagined duplicating the brain using telephone lines and offices staffed by people, and in 1978, Ned Block envisioned the entire population of China involved in such a brain simulation. This is known as the China brain thought experiment. Searle's version appeared in his 1980 article "Minds, Brains, and Programs", published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. It eventually became the journal's "most influential target article", generating an enormous number of commentaries and responses in the ensuing decades, and Searle had continued to defend and refine the argument in multiple papers, popular articles, and books. David Cole writes that "the Chinese Room argument has probably been the most widely discussed philosophical argument in cognitive science to appear in the past 25 years". Most of the discussion consists of attempts to refute it. "The overwhelming majority", notes Behavioral and Brain Sciences editor Stevan Harnad, "still think that the Chinese Room Argument is dead wrong". The sheer volume of the literature that has grown up around it inspired Pat Hayes to comment that the field of cognitive science ought to be redefined as "the ongoing research program of showing Searle's Chinese Room Argument to be false". Searle's argument has become "something of a classic in cognitive science", according to Harnad. Varol Akman agrees, and has described the original paper as "an exemplar of philosophical clarity and purity". == Philosophy == Although the Chinese Room argument was originally presented in reaction to the statements of artificial intelligence researchers, philosophers have come to consider it as an important part of the philosophy of mind. It is a challenge to functionalism and the computational theory of mind, and is related to such questions as the mind–body problem, the problem of other minds, the symbol grounding problem, and the hard problem of consciousness. === Strong AI === Searle identified a philosophical position he calls "strong AI": The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds. The definition depends on the distinction between simulating a mind and actually having one. Searle writes that "according to Strong AI, the correct simulation really is a mind. According to Weak AI, the correct simulation is a model of the mind." The claim is implicit in some of the statements of early AI researchers and analysts. For example, in 1957, the economist and psychologist Herbert A. Simon declared that "there are now in the world machines that think, that learn and create". Simon, together with Allen Newell and Cliff Shaw, after having completed the first program that could do formal reasoning (the Logic Theorist), claimed that they had "solved the venerable mind–body problem, explaining how a system composed of matter can have the properties of mind." John Haugeland wrote that "AI wants only the genuine article: machines with minds, in the full and literal sense. This is not science fiction, but real science, based on a theoretical conception as deep as it is daring: namely, we are, at root, computers ourselves." Searle also ascribes the following claims to advocates of strong AI: AI systems can be used to explain the mind; The study of the brain is irrelevant to the study of the mind; and The Turing test is adequate for establishing the existence of mental states. === Strong AI as computationalism or functionalism === In more recent presentations of the Chinese room argument, Searle has identified "strong AI" as "computer functionalism" (a term he attributes to Daniel Dennett). Functionalism is a position in modern philosophy of mind that holds that we can define menta
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