EasyA is a web3 technology company and education platform based in London (United Kingdom), founded in 2022 by Phil Kwok and Dom Kwok. EasyA was officially launched in 2022, focusing on web3 technologies. This community was influenced by the founders' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and early collaborations with universities and other educational institutions. Subsequently, the community was used as a foundation for developing Web3-related initiatives, including the organisation of EasyA's first Web3 hackathon in 2022. The EasyA app has over one million users and provides educational content on various blockchain technologies. EasyA Labs is a separate initiative focused on developing products intended to improve accessibility to cryptocurrency for a broader audience.
Verbal overshadowing
Verbal overshadowing is a phenomenon where giving a verbal description of sensory input impairs formation of memories of that input. This was first reported by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) where it was shown that the effects can be observed across multiple domains of cognition which are known to rely on non-verbal knowledge and perceptual expertise. One example of this is memory, which has been known to be influenced by language. Seminal work by Carmichael and collaborators (1932) demonstrated that when verbal labels are connected to non-verbal forms during an individual's encoding process, it could potentially bias the way those forms are reproduced. Because of this, memory performance relying on reportable aspects of memory that encode visual forms should be vulnerable to the effects of verbalization. == Initial findings == Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) were the first to report findings of verbal overshadowing. In their study, participants watched a video of a simulated robbery and were instructed to either verbally describe the robber or engage in a control task. Those who engaged in giving a verbal description were less likely to correctly identify the robber from a test lineup, compared to those who engaged in the control task. A larger effect was detected when the verbal description was provided 20, rather than 5, minutes after the video, and immediately before the test lineup. A meta-analysis by Meissner and Brigham (2001) supported the effects of verbal overshadowing, showing a small but reliably negative effect. == General effects of verbal overshadowing == The effects of verbal overshadowing have been generalized across multiple domains of cognition that are known to rely on non-verbal knowledge and perceptual expertise, such as memory. Memory has been known to be influenced by language. Seminal work by Carmichael and collaborators (1932) demonstrated that labels attached to, or associated with, non-verbal forms during memory encoding can affect the way the forms were subsequently reproduced. Because of this, memory performance that relies on reportable aspects of memory that encode visual forms should be vulnerable to the effects of verbalization. Pelizzon, Brandimonte, and Luccio (2002) found that visual memory representations appear to incorporate visual, spatial, and temporal characteristics. It is explained as follows: With the temporal code (where the only information available is the sequence of the stimuli), performance levels remain high, unless participants are required to retrieve the stimuli in a different order from that used at encoding (visual cue). In this case, performance is significantly impaired, even in the presence of a visual cue. The study showed that order information acts as a link between the two separate representations of figure and background, hence preventing verbal overshadowing at encoding (temporal component) or attenuating its influence at retrieval (spatial component).(p. 960) Hatano, Ueno, Kitagami, and Kawaguchi found that verbal overshadowing is likely to occur when participants verbally described targets in detail. Detailed verbal descriptions resulted in more frequently inaccurate descriptions that in turn created inaccurate representations in the memories of participants. Inaccuracies are also likely to occur when face recognition comes immediately after verbalization. Other forms of non-verbal knowledge affected by verbal overshadowing include the following: [Verbal overshadowing] has also been observed when participants attempt to generate descriptions of other 'difficult-to-describe' stimuli such as colors (Schooler and Engstler-Schooler, 1990) or abstract figures (Brandimonte et al., 1997), or other non-visual tasks such as wine tasting (Melcher and Schooler, 1996), decision making (Wilson and Schooler, 1991), and insight problem-solving. (p. 871) (Schooler et al., 1993) Verbalization of stimuli leads to the disruption of non-reportable processes that are necessary for achieving insight solutions, which are distinct from language processes. Schooler, Ohlsson, and Brooks (1993) found that face recognition requires information that cannot be adequately verbalized, giving rise to difficulty in describing factors in recognition judgments. Subjects were less effective in solving insight problems when compelled to put their thoughts in words, which suggests that language may interfere with thought. The verbal overshadowing effect was not seen when participants engaged in articulatory suppression. Performance was reduced in both the verbal and non-verbal description conditions. This is evidence that verbal encoding plays a role in face recognition. By testing with distracting faces presented between study and test, Lloyd-Jones and Brown (2008) suggested a dual-process approach to recognition memory took place, that verbalization influenced familiarity-based processes at first, but its effects were later seen on recollection, when discrimination between items became more difficult. == Verbal overshadowing in facial recognition == The verbal overshadowing effect can be found for facial recognition because faces are predominately processed in a holistic or configurable manner. (Tanaka & Farah, 1993; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997) Verbalizing one's memory for a face is done using a featural or analytic strategy, leading to a drift from the configurable information about the face and to impaired recognition performance. However, Fallshore & Schooler (1995) found that the verbal overshadowing effect was not found when participants described faces of races different from their own. A study by Brown and Lloyd-Jones (2003) found that there was no verbal overshadowing effect found in car descriptions; it was only seen in facial descriptions. The authors noted that descriptions were no different on any measure including accuracy. It is suggested that less expertise in verbalizing faces rather than cars invokes a stronger shift in verbal and featural processing. This supports the concept of a transfer inappropriate retrieval framework and addresses some limitations of the effect. Wickham and Swift (2006) suggested that the verbal overshadowing effect is not seen in describing all faces, and one aspect that determines this is distinctiveness. Results showed that typical faces produce verbal overshadowing, while distinctive faces did not. In studies of eyewitness reports, variation in response criteria given by participants influenced the quality of the descriptions generated and accuracy on identification task, known as the retrieval-based effect. Face recognition was also impaired when subjects described a familiar face, such as a parent, or when describing a previously seen but novel face. Dodson, Johnson, and Schooler (1997) found that recognition was also impaired when participants were provided with a description of a previously seen face, and they were able to ignore provided versus self-generated descriptions more easily. This finding of verbal overshadowing suggested that eyewitness recognition is not only affected by their own descriptions, but of descriptions heard from others, such other eyewitness testimonies. == Voice recognition == The verbal overshadowing effect has also been found to affect voice identification. Research shows that describing a non-verbal stimuli leads to a decrease in recognition accuracy. In an unpublished study by Schooler, Fiore, Melcher, and Ambadar (1996), participants listened to a tape-recorded voice, after which they were asked either to verbally describe it or to not do so, and then asked to distinguish the voice from 3 similar distractor voices. The results showed that verbal overshadowing impaired accuracy of recognition based on gut feeling, suggesting an overall verbal overshadowing for voice recognition. Due to the forensic relevance of voices heard over the telephone and harassing phone calls that are often a problem for police, Perfect, Hunt, and Harris (2002) examined the influence of three factors on accuracy and confidence in voice recognition from a line-up. They expected to find an effect, because voice represents a class of stimuli that is difficult to describe verbally. This meets Schooler et al.'s (1997) modality mismatch criterion, meaning that describing the speakers age, gender, or accent is difficult, making voice recognition susceptible to the verbal overshadowing phenomenon. It was found that the method of memory encoding had no impact on performance, and that hearing a telephone voice reduced confidence but did not affect accuracy. They also found that providing a verbal description impaired accuracy but had no effect on confidence. The data showed an effect of verbal overshadowing in voice recognition and provided yet another disassociation between confidence and performance. Although there was a difference in confidence level, witnesses were able to identify voices over the telephone as accurately as voices heard direc
Linagora
Linagora is a French open source software editor, founded in June 2000 by Alexandre Zapolsky and Michel-Marie Maudet. Located in France, as well as in Belgium, Canada, Vietnam, the United States and Tunisia, the company employs around 200 people. In 2023, Linagora created the OpenLLM France community, alongside other French Artificial Intelligence companies and organizations. In 2025, the company launched Lucie, an opensource Large Language Model. == History == Linagora was founded on June 28, 2000. Its name is a contraction of the words "Linux" and "Agora". The company was founded by Alexandre Zapolsky and Michel-Marie Maudet. Soon after, the two entrepreneurs were joined by Alexandre Zapolsky's wife and brother, who took on the roles of commercial director and administrative and financial director of the SME. In 2007, the company was selected by the French National Assembly to provide the software for Linux computers, replacing Microsoft Windows. Linagora then claimed the position of the leading French open source software company by revenue. In 2015, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls allocated €10.7 million from the "Investments for the Future" fund for a research program aimed at developing a new generation of open source software platforms based on Linagora's offerings. In September 2016, Linagora launched the social network "La Cerise" for the newspaper L'Humanité. This app offered a service and tool for readers and citizens mobilizing for causes. It aimed to share engagement through petitions, discussions, agendas, and contacts. In October 2016, the company won two public contracts for supporting open source software in forty-two French ministries and other administrative entities. In May 2019, Linagora organized a fundraising event in the presence of the French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs, Cédric O, to celebrate its 19th anniversary. The funds were intended for: Supporting parents of hospitalized Polynesian children in France. Equipping primary school students with digital devices (tablets or PCs). Establishing a digital academy "OpenHackademy" in French Polynesia to train unemployed youth in digital skills and help them find jobs. In December 2022, Linagora acquired a property known as "Maison Rocher" and later "Maison Chocolat," located on the Île Saint-Germain in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Renamed "Villa Good Tech" by Linagora, this award-winning architectural work by Éric Daniel-Lacombe became the company's new headquarters, aiming to provide a space for associative actors and companies to develop technologies that contribute to a better world. In July 2023, Linagora launched OpenLLM France, a community initially comprising around twenty actors focused on generative AI. The goal was to develop a sovereign and open source large language model. This initiative, led by co-founder and CEO Michel-Marie Maudet, had more than four hundred French members by early 2024. and announced its expansion to the European sphere during Fosdem 2024. In February 2024, the CNRS and Linagora signed a framework agreement to strengthen their research collaboration. In January 2025, Linagora released Lucie, an open source and sovereign AI that faced ridicule due to tests on an unfinished, uncensored version designed for scientific and experimental use. The platform divided opinions between those who saw it as a technological achievement and those who criticized it as "French bashing" compared to American and Chinese AIs. == Acquisitions == The company acquired: In July 2007, the SME AliaSource, based in Ramonville-Saint-Agne and led by its founder, Pierre Baudracco. In 2008, the open source web hosting company Netaktiv, a member of the GIE Gitoyen, announced during the 2008 Solutions Linux trade show. In 2012, the Toulouse-based company EBM Websourcing, the publisher of the open-source software Petals Link, and took over its development. In 2016, the digital agency Neoma Interactive, specializing in UX design and digital communication strategy. == Locations == In 2017, the company's headquarters was located in Issy-les-Moulineaux, with branches in Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille, and internationally in Brussels, San Francisco, Montreal, Vietnam, and Tunisia. In 2005, the company attempted to establish a presence in Nantes. In 2024, the headquarters was moved to Issy-les-Moulineaux. == Activity == === Software === Twake Workplace One of Linagora's flagship products is Twake Workplace, which stands out as a 100% open-source solution compared with those of the GAFAMs. Twake Workplace is available as a complete platform or module by module. It includes : Twake Mail, a powerful modern messaging solution based on the JMAP protocol and the James email server from the Apache Foundation, for which Linagora provides technical management; Twake Chat, an instant communications solution for businesses developed using the Matrix protocol and compatible with the French government's chat solution, Tchap; Twake Drive, an easy-to-use collaborative platform for group work using OnlyOffice. ==== OpenPaaS ==== In 2018, the search engine Qwant announced that its email service Qwantmail would be based on the OpenPaaS product. In 2022, Qwant announced the abandonment of its Qwantmail project due to Linagora's collection of personal email addresses and serious security breaches. The site Next (formerly PC INpact) published an article in January 2020 criticizing the "failures and delays" of the Qwantmail project led by Linagora, which led to the CNIL's intervention regarding Qwant and Linagora. ==== LinTO ==== In 2017, Linagora launched its open source voice assistant project named LinTO. This enterprise voice assistant, described as "GAFAM Free," was presented at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. The LinTO voice framework was developed as part of the eponymous research project funded by Bpifrance (Grands Défis du Numérique instrument). === Services === ==== OSSA (Open Source Software Assurance) ==== One of the company's main activities is OSSA. Through OSSA, Linagora provided support for open source software for 42 ministries and other administrative entities in 2012. == Legal issues == === Dispute with BlueMind === In 2012, a legal dispute arose between BlueMind and Linagora. Linagora accused BlueMind of copyright infringement, unfair competition, and breach of a non-compete clause, leading to several legal actions. Linagora sued BlueMind for copyright infringement and unfair competition in the Bordeaux court, which ruled in Linagora's favor for unfair competition and parasitism but rejected the copyright claim. BlueMind was ordered to pay nearly €170,000 to Linagora. Linagora sued former associates Pierre Baudracco and Pierre Carlier in the Paris Commercial Court for breach of a non-compete clause and violation of a warranty of eviction. The court dismissed Linagora's claims and ordered it to pay €20,000 each to Baudracco and Carlier. Linagora appealed, and the Paris Court of Appeal partially overturned the decision, awarding Linagora €480,000. BlueMind sued Linagora for defamation and public insult in the Toulouse Criminal Court. The court ruled against Linagora, but the decision was overturned by the Court of Cassation in January 2024, and the case was remanded for retrial. === Conviction for wrongful termination and harassment === On June 14, 2017, France 3 reported on a decision by the Versailles Court of Appeal, which ruled that Linagora had wrongfully terminated an employee and subjected them to moral harassment. The court ordered Linagora to pay the employee €22,000 for wrongful termination, €11,000 for notice pay, €6,600 for legal severance pay, €3,200 for conservative suspension, and €3,000 for moral harassment.
Darkforest
Darkforest is a computer go program developed by Meta Platforms, based on deep learning techniques using a convolutional neural network. Its updated version Darkfores2 combines the techniques of its predecessor with Monte Carlo tree search. The MCTS effectively takes tree search methods commonly seen in computer chess programs and randomizes them. With the update, the system is known as Darkfmcts3. Darkforest is of similar strength to programs like CrazyStone and Zen. It has been tested against a professional human player at the 2016 UEC cup. Google's AlphaGo program won against a professional player in October 2015 using a similar combination of techniques. Darkforest is named after Liu Cixin's science fiction novel The Dark Forest. == Background == Competing with top human players in the ancient game of Go has been a long-term goal of artificial intelligence. Go's high branching factor makes traditional search techniques ineffective, even on cutting-edge hardware, and Go's evaluation function could change drastically with one stone change. However, by using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network designed for long-term predictions, Darkforest has been able to substantially improve the win rate for bots over more traditional Monte Carlo Tree Search based approaches. === Matches === Against human players, Darkfores2 achieves a stable 3d ranking on KGS Go Server, which roughly corresponds to an advanced amateur human player. However, after adding Monte Carlo Tree Search to Darkfores2 to create a much stronger player named darkfmcts3, it can achieve a 5d ranking on the KGS Go Server. ==== Against other AI ==== darkfmcts3 is on par with state-of-the-art Go AIs such as Zen, DolBaram and Crazy Stone, but lags behind AlphaGo. It won 3rd place in January 2016 KGS Bot Tournament against other Go AIs. === News coverage === After Google's AlphaGo won against Fan Hui in 2015, Facebook made its AI's hardware designs public, alongside releasing the code behind DarkForest as open-source, in addition to heavy recruiting to strengthen its team of AI engineers. == Style of play == Darkforest uses a neural network to sort through the 10100 board positions, and find the most powerful next move. However, neural networks alone cannot match the level of good amateur players or the best search-based Go engines, and so Darkfores2 combines the neural network approach with a search-based machine. A database of 250,000 real Go games were used in the development of Darkforest, with 220,000 used as a training set and the rest used to test the neural network's ability to predict the next moves played in the real games. This allows Darkforest to accurately evaluate the global state of the board, but local tactics were still poor. Search-based engines have poor global evaluation, but are good at local tactics. Combining these two approaches is difficult because search-based engines work much faster than neural networks, a problem which was solved in Darkfores2 by running the processes in parallel with frequent communication between the two. === Conventional strategies === Go is generally played by analyzing the position of the stones on the board. Various advanced players have described it as playing in some part subconsciously. Unlike chess and checkers, where AI players can simply look further forward at moves than human players, but with each round of Go having on average 250 possible moves, that approach is ineffective. Instead, neural networks copy human play by training the AI systems on images of successful moves, the AI can effectively learn how to interpret how the board looks, as many grandmasters do. In November 2015, Facebook demonstrated the combination of MCTS with neural networks, which played with a style that "felt human". === Flaws === It has been noted that Darkforest still has flaws in its playstyle. The bot sometimes plays tenuki ("move elsewhere") pointlessly when local powerful moves are required. When the bot is losing, it shows the typical behavior of MCTS, it plays bad moves and loses more. The Facebook AI team has acknowledged these as areas of future improvement. == Program architecture == The family of Darkforest computer go programs is based on convolution neural networks. The most recent advances in Darkfmcts3 combined convolutional neural networks with more traditional Monte Carlo tree search. Darkfmcts3 is the most advanced version of Darkforest, which combines Facebook's most advanced convolutional neural network architecture from Darkfores2 with a Monte Carlo tree search. Darkfmcts3 relies on a convolution neural networks that predicts the next k moves based on the current state of play. It treats the board as a 19x19 image with multiple channels. Each channel represents a different aspect of board information based upon the specific style of play. For standard and extended play, there are 21 and 25 different channels, respectively. In standard play, each players liberties are represented as six binary channels or planes. The respective plane is true if the player one, two, or three or more liberties available. Ko (i.e. illegal moves) is represented as one binary plane. Stone placement for each opponent and empty board positions are represented as three binary planes, and the duration since a stone has been placed is represented as real numbers on two planes, one for each player. Lastly, the opponents rank is represented by nine binary planes, where if all are true, the player is a 9d level, if 8 are true, an 8d level, and so forth. Extended play additionally considers the border (binary plane that is true at the border), position mask (represented as distance from the board center, i.e. x ( − 0.5 ∗ d i s t a n c e 2 ) {\displaystyle x^{(-0.5distance^{2})}} , where x {\displaystyle x} is a real number at a position), and each player's territory (binary, based on which player a location is closer to). Darkfmct3 uses a 12-layer full convolutional network with a width of 384 nodes without weight sharing or pooling. Each convolutional layer is followed by a rectified linear unit, a popular activation function for deep neural networks. A key innovation of Darkfmct3 compared to previous approaches is that it uses only one softmax function to predict the next move, which enables the approach to reduce the overall number of parameters. Darkfmct3 was trained against 300 random selected games from an empirical dataset representing different game stages. The learning rate was determined by vanilla stochastic gradient descent. Darkfmct3 synchronously couples a convolutional neural network with a Monte Carlo tree search. Since the convolutional neural network is computationally taxing, the Monte Carlo tree search focuses computation on the more likely game play trajectories. By running the neural network synchronously with the Monte Carlo tree search, it is possible to guarantee that each node is expanded by the moves predicted by the neural network. == Comparison with other systems == Darkfores2 beats Darkforest, its neural network-only predecessor, around 90% of the time, and Pachi, one of the best search-based engines, around 95% of the time. On the Kyu rating system, Darkforest holds a 1-2d level. Darkfores2 achieves a stable 3d level on KGS Go Server as a ranked bot. With the added Monte Carlo tree search, Darkfmcts3 with 5,000 rollouts beats Pachi with 10k rollouts in all 250 games; with 75k rollouts it achieves a stable 5d level in KGS server, on par with state-of-the-art Go AIs (e.g., Zen, DolBaram, CrazyStone); with 110k rollouts, it won the 3rd place in January KGS Go Tournament.
Infomax
Infomax', or the principle of maximum information preservation, is an optimization principle for artificial neural networks and other information processing systems. It prescribes that a function that maps a set of input values x {\displaystyle x} to a set of output values z ( x ) {\displaystyle z(x)} should be chosen or learned so as to maximize the average Shannon mutual information between x {\displaystyle x} and z ( x ) {\displaystyle z(x)} , subject to a set of specified constraints and/or noise processes. Infomax algorithms are learning algorithms that perform this optimization process. The principle was described by Linsker in 1988. The objective function is called the InfoMax objective. As the InfoMax objective is difficult to compute exactly, a related notion uses two models giving two outputs z 1 ( x ) , z 2 ( x ) {\displaystyle z_{1}(x),z_{2}(x)} , and maximizes the mutual information between these. This contrastive InfoMax objective is a lower bound to the InfoMax objective. Infomax, in its zero-noise limit, is related to the principle of redundancy reduction proposed for biological sensory processing by Horace Barlow in 1961, and applied quantitatively to retinal processing by Atick and Redlich. == Applications == (Becker and Hinton, 1992) showed that the contrastive InfoMax objective allows a neural network to learn to identify surfaces in random dot stereograms (in one dimension). One of the applications of infomax has been to an independent component analysis algorithm that finds independent signals by maximizing entropy. Infomax-based ICA was described by (Bell and Sejnowski, 1995), and (Nadal and Parga, 1995).
Boyfriend Maker
Boyfriend Maker was a dating sim, romance chatbot smartphone app for iOS (iPhone) and Android devices, developed by Japanese studio 36 You Games (styled as 36You) and distributed under the freemium business model. Boyfriend Maker incorporated advanced artificial intelligence chat technology a decade before products such as ChatGPT. According to the developer's website, Boyfriend Maker is an "app that lets you interact and chat with quirky virtual boyfriends". While each virtual boyfriend has certain unique characteristics, the various instances of the boyfriend are powered by a chat engine, that (at least within a language and market) can utilise vocabulary and knowledge acquired in a chat with one user in subsequent chats with other users. == Gameplay == Users gain experience points and in-game coins. Users can customize their virtual boyfriend's appearance by selecting items such as hair, clothing, face, and a necklace. == Apple delisting and reintroduction == In late November 2012, the original iOS Boyfriend Maker app was delisted from the Apple App Store due to "ribald" chat, according to the New York Times. Boyfriend Maker was removed by Apple due to "reports of references to violent sexual acts and pedophilia". Boyfriend Maker had an age rating of 4+, even though the chat bot "responds with often strange and explicit text unsuitable for young children". User-posted chat excerpts indicate that the virtual boyfriend would sometimes transition abruptly to sexual chat in response to a seemingly innocent question. In one user-posted example, in response to the question, "what kind of wedding cake will we have" the boyfriend responds, "a good sex ima be on top of u u gonna ride oon me bitin the pillow gurrl ima fuck da shit out of u". The developer's use of the SimSimi-created third-party chat engine may be responsible for the sexual text. As the virtual boyfriend converses with human users, the SimSimi chat engine acquires vocabulary from users of the game and applies this "learned" vocabulary in chats with other users. The chat engine might also employ lines harvested from human-human chat logs, song lyrics, movies or TV shows. In April 2013, a detuned and presumably tamer version of the app, titled Boyfriend Plus, was permitted on Apple's App Store.
Andrew Ng
Andrew Yan-Tak Ng (Chinese: 吳恩達; born April 18, 1976) is a British-American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Ng was a cofounder and head of Google Brain and was the former Chief Scientist at Baidu. Ng is an adjunct professor at Stanford University (formerly associate professor and Director of its Stanford AI Lab or SAIL). Ng has also worked in online education, cofounding Coursera and DeepLearning.AI. He has spearheaded many efforts to "democratize deep learning" teaching over 8 million students through his online courses. Ng is renowned globally in computer science, recognized in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2012 and Fast Company's Most Creative People in 2014. His influence extends to being named in the Time100 AI Most Influential People in 2023. In 2018, he launched and currently heads the AI Fund, initially a $175-million investment fund for backing artificial intelligence startups. He has founded Landing AI, which provides AI-powered SaaS products. On April 11, 2024, Amazon announced Ng's appointment to its board of directors. == Early life and education == Andrew Yan-Tak Ng was born in London, in 1976 to Ronald Paul Ng, a hematologist and lecturer at UCL Medical School, and Tisa Ho, an arts administrator working at the London Film Festival. His parents were both immigrants from Hong Kong. His family moved back to Hong Kong and he spent his early childhood there. In 1984 he and his family moved to Singapore. Ng attended and graduated from Raffles Institution. In 1997, he earned his undergraduate degree with a triple major in computer science, statistics, and economics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between 1996 and 1998 he also conducted research on reinforcement learning, model selection, and feature selection at the AT&T Bell Labs. In 1998, Ng earned his master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At MIT, he built the first publicly available, automatically indexed web-search engine for research papers on the web. It was a precursor to CiteSeerX/ResearchIndex, but specialized in machine learning. In 2002, he received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Michael I. Jordan. His thesis is titled "Shaping and policy search in reinforcement learning" and is well-cited to this day. == Career == === Academia and teaching === Ng started working as an assistant professor at Stanford University in 2002 and as an associate professor in 2009. Ng is a professor at Stanford University departments of Computer Science and electrical engineering. He served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), where he taught students and undertook research related to data mining, big data, and machine learning. His machine learning course CS229 at Stanford is the most popular course offered on campus with over 1,000 students enrolling some years. As of 2020, three of the most popular courses on Coursera are Ng's: Machine Learning (#1), AI for Everyone (#5), Neural Networks and Deep Learning (#6). In 2008, his group at Stanford was one of the first in the US to start advocating the use of GPUs in deep learning. The rationale was that an efficient computation infrastructure could speed up statistical model training by orders of magnitude, ameliorating some of the scaling issues associated with big data. At the time it was a controversial and risky decision, but since then and following Ng's lead, GPUs have become a cornerstone in the field. Since 2017, Ng has been advocating the shift to high-performance computing (HPC) for scaling up deep learning and accelerating progress in the field. In 2012, along with Stanford computer scientist Daphne Koller he cofounded and was CEO of Coursera, a website that offers free online courses to everyone. It took off with over 100,000 students registered for Ng's popular CS229A course. Today, several million people have enrolled in Coursera courses, making the site one of the leading massive open online courses (MOOCs) in the world. === Industry === From 2011 to 2012, he worked at Google, where he founded and directed the Google Brain Deep Learning Project with Jeff Dean, Greg Corrado, and Rajat Monga. In 2014, he joined Baidu as chief scientist, and carried out research related to big data and AI. There he set up several research teams for things like facial recognition and Melody, an AI chatbot for healthcare. He also developed for the company the AI platform called DuerOS and other technologies that positioned Baidu ahead of Google in the discourse and development of AI. In March 2017, he announced his resignation from Baidu. He soon afterward launched DeepLearning.AI, an online series of deep learning courses (including the AI for Good Specialization). Then Ng launched LandingAI, which provides AI-powered SaaS products. In January 2018, Ng unveiled the AI Fund, raising $175 million to invest in new startups. In November 2021, LandingAI secured a $57 million round of series A funding led by McRock Capital, to help enterprises adopt AI. In October 2024, Ng's AI Fund made its first investment in India, backing AI healthcare startup Jivi, which uses AI for diagnoses, treatment recommendations, and administrative tasks. The investment highlights the growth of India's AI sector, expected to reach $22 billion by 2027. === Research === Ng researches primarily in machine learning, deep learning, machine perception, computer vision, and natural language processing; and is one of the world's most famous and influential computer scientists. He's frequently won best paper awards at academic conferences and has had a huge impact on the field of AI, computer vision, and robotics. During graduate school, together with David M. Blei and Michael I. Jordan, Ng co-authored the influential paper that introduced latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) for his thesis on reinforcement learning for drones. His early work includes the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter project, which developed one of the most capable autonomous helicopters in the world. He was the leading scientist and principal investigator on the STAIR (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot) project, which resulted in Robot Operating System (ROS), a widely used open source software robotics platform. His vision to build an AI robot and put a robot in every home inspired Scott Hassan to back him and create Willow Garage. He is also one of the founding team members for the Stanford WordNet project, which uses machine learning to expand the Princeton WordNet database created by Christiane Fellbaum. In 2011, Ng founded the Google Brain project at Google, which developed large-scale artificial neural networks using Google's distributed computing infrastructure. Among its notable results was a neural network trained using deep learning algorithms on 16,000 CPU cores, which learned to recognize cats after watching only YouTube videos, and without ever having been told what a "cat" is. The project's technology is also currently used in the Android operating system's speech recognition system. === Views on AI === Ng thinks that the real threat is contemplating the future of work: "Rather than being distracted by evil killer robots, the challenge to labor caused by these machines is a conversation that academia and industry and government should have." He has emphasized the importance of expanding access to AI education, stating that empowering people around the world to use AI tools is essential to building AI applications. In a December 2023 Financial Times interview, Ng highlighted concerns regarding the impact of potential regulations on open-source AI, emphasizing how reporting, licensing, and liability risks could unfairly burden smaller firms and stifle innovation. He argued that regulating basic technologies like open-source models could hinder progress without markedly enhancing safety. Ng advocated for carefully designed regulations to prevent obstacles to the development and distribution of beneficial AI technologies. In a June 2024 interview with the Financial Times, Ng expressed concerns about proposed AI legislation in California that would have required developers to implement safety mechanisms such as a "kill switch" for advanced models. He described the bill as creating "massive liabilities for science-fiction risks" and said it "stokes fear in anyone daring to innovate." Other critics argued the bill would impose burdens on open-source developers and smaller AI companies. The bill was ultimately vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2024. == Online education: massive open online course == In 2011, Stanford launched a total of three massive open online course (MOOCs) on machine learning (CS229a), databases, and AI, taught by Ng