Interactions LLC (also known as Interactions Corporation) is an American software company that develops voice and text-based virtual assistant applications for customer-service contact centers. Since September 2025, it has been a subsidiary of SoundHound AI. == History == Interactions was founded in 2004. In July 2011, the company announced a $12 million venture-capital funding round led by Sigma Partners. In November 2014, AT&T sold its "Watson" speech recognition platform and related patents to Interactions in exchange for equity. In May 2017, Interactions acquired the social media customer-engagement company Digital Roots; financial terms were not disclosed. On September 3, 2025, SoundHound AI completed its acquisition of Interactions Corporation, with the acquired company becoming a wholly owned subsidiary. == Products and services == Interactions' products have been described as automated voice portals and intelligent virtual assistants used for customer-service tasks. In 2011, Humana expanded the use of an Interactions voice portal for Medicare Part D enrollment.
Embodied cognitive science
Embodied cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior. It comprises three main methodologies: the modeling of psychological and biological systems in a holistic manner that considers the mind and body as a single entity; the formation of a common set of general principles of intelligent behavior; and the experimental use of robotic agents in controlled environments. == Contributors == Embodied cognitive science borrows heavily from embodied philosophy and the related research fields of cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Contributors to the field include: From the perspective of neuroscience, Gerald Edelman of the Neurosciences Institute at La Jolla, Francisco Varela of CNRS in France, and J. A. Scott Kelso of Florida Atlantic University From the perspective of psychology, Lawrence Barsalou, Michael Turvey, Vittorio Guidano and Eleanor Rosch From the perspective of linguistics, Gilles Fauconnier, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Leonard Talmy and Mark Turner From the perspective of language acquisition, Eric Lenneberg and Philip Rubin at Haskins Laboratories From the perspective of anthropology, Edwin Hutchins, Bradd Shore, James Wertsch and Merlin Donald. From the perspective of autonomous agent design, early work is sometimes attributed to Rodney Brooks or Valentino Braitenberg From the perspective of artificial intelligence, Understanding Intelligence by Rolf Pfeifer and Christian Scheier or How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, by Rolf Pfeifer and Josh C. Bongard From the perspective of philosophy, Andy Clark, Dan Zahavi, Shaun Gallagher, and Evan Thompson In 1950, Alan Turing proposed that a machine may need a human-like body to think and speak: It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. That process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again, I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried. == Traditional cognitive theory == Embodied cognitive science is an alternative theory to cognition in which it minimizes appeals to computational theory of mind in favor of greater emphasis on how an organism's body determines how and what it thinks. Traditional cognitive theory is based mainly around symbol manipulation, in which certain inputs are fed into a processing unit that produces an output. These inputs follow certain rules of syntax, from which the processing unit finds semantic meaning. Thus, an appropriate output is produced. For example, a human's sensory organs are its input devices, and the stimuli obtained from the external environment are fed into the nervous system which serves as the processing unit. From here, the nervous system is able to read the sensory information because it follows a syntactic structure, thus an output is created. This output then creates bodily motions and brings forth behavior and cognition. Of particular note is that cognition is sealed away in the brain, meaning that mental cognition is cut off from the external world and is only possible by the input of sensory information. == The embodied cognitive approach == Embodied cognitive science differs from the traditionalist approach in that it denies the input-output system. This is chiefly due to the problems presented by the Homunculus argument, which concluded that semantic meaning could not be derived from symbols without some kind of inner interpretation. If some little man in a person's head interpreted incoming symbols, then who would interpret the little man's inputs? Because of the specter of an infinite regress, the traditionalist model began to seem less plausible. Thus, embodied cognitive science aims to avoid this problem by defining cognition in three ways. === Physical attributes of the body === The first aspect of embodied cognition examines the role of the physical body, particularly how its properties affect its ability to think. This part attempts to overcome the symbol manipulation component that is a feature of the traditionalist model. Depth perception, for instance, can be better explained under the embodied approach due to the sheer complexity of the action. Depth perception requires that the brain detect the disparate retinal images obtained by the distance of the two eyes. In addition, body and head cues complicate this further. When the head is turned in a given direction, objects in the foreground will appear to move against objects in the background. From this, it is said that some kind of visual processing is occurring without the need of any kind of symbol manipulation. This is because the objects appearing to move the foreground are simply appearing to move. This observation concludes then that depth can be perceived with no intermediate symbol manipulation necessary. A more poignant example exists through examining auditory perception. Generally speaking the greater the distance between the ears, the greater the possible auditory acuity. Also relevant is the amount of density in between the ears, for the strength of the frequency wave alters as it passes through a given medium. The brain's auditory system takes these factors into account as it process information, but again without any need for a symbolic manipulation system. This is because the distance between the ears for example does not need symbols to represent it. The distance itself creates the necessary opportunity for greater auditory acuity. The amount of density between the ears is similar, in that it is the actual amount itself that simply forms the opportunity for frequency alteration. Thus under consideration of the physical properties of the body, a symbolic system is unnecessary and an unhelpful metaphor. === The body's role in the cognitive process === The second aspect draws heavily from George Lakoff's and Mark Johnson's work on concepts. They argued that humans use metaphors whenever possible to better explain their external world. Humans also have a basic stock of concepts in which other concepts can be derived from. These basic concepts include spatial orientations such as up, down, front, and back. Humans can understand what these concepts mean because they can directly experience them from their own bodies. For example, because human movement revolves around standing erect and moving the body in an up-down motion, humans innately have these concepts of up and down. Lakoff and Johnson contend this is similar with other spatial orientations such as front and back too. As mentioned earlier, these basic stocks of spatial concepts are the basis in which other concepts are constructed. Happy and sad for instance are seen now as being up or down respectively. When someone says they are feeling down, what they are really saying is that they feel sad for example. Thus the point here is that true understanding of these concepts is contingent on whether one can have an understanding of the human body. So the argument goes that if one lacked a human body, they could not possibly know what up or down could mean, or how it could relate to emotional states. [I]magine a spherical being living outside of any gravitational field, with no knowledge or imagination of any other kind of experience. What could UP possibly mean to such a being? While this does not mean that such beings would be incapable of expressing emotions in other words, it does mean that they would express emotions differently from humans. Human concepts of happiness and sadness would be different because human would have different bodies. So then an organism's body directly affects how it can think, because it uses metaphors related to its body as the basis of concepts. === Interaction of local environment === A third component of the embodied approach looks at how agents use their immediate environment in cognitive processing. Meaning, the local environment is seen as an actual extension of the body's cognitive process. The example of a personal digital assistant (PDA) is used to better imagine this. Echoing functionalism (philosophy of mind), this point claims that mental states are individuated by their role in a much larger system. So under this premise, the information on a PDA is similar to the information stored in the brain. So then if one thinks information in the brain constitutes mental states, then it must follow that information in the PDA is a cognitive state too. Consider also the role of pen and paper in a complex multiplication problem. The pen and paper are so involved in the cognitive process of solving the problem that it seems ridiculous to say they are somehow different from the process, in very much the same way the PDA is used for information like the brain. Another example examines how humans control and manipulate their environment
HOCR
hOCR is an open standard of data representation for formatted text obtained from optical character recognition (OCR). The definition encodes text, style, layout information, recognition confidence metrics and other information using Extensible Markup Language (XML) in the form of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or XHTML. == Software == The following OCR software can output the recognition result as hOCR file: OCRopus Tesseract Cuneiform ghostscript HebOCR gcv2hocr gImageReader == Example == The following example is an extract of an hOCR file: The recognized text is stored in normal text nodes of the HTML file. The distribution into separate lines and words is here given by the surrounding span tags. Moreover, the usual HTML entities are used, for example the p tag for a paragraph. Additional information is given in the properties such as: different layout elements such as "ocr_par", "ocr_line", "ocrx_word" geometric information for each element with a bounding box "bbox" language information "lang" some confidence values "x_wconf" == bbox == === General === The Layout of the Bounding Box Object or bbox Object is Grammar. property-name = "bbox" property-value = uint uint uint uint ==== Example ==== bbox 0 0 100 200 The bbox - short for "bounding box" - of an element is a rectangular box around this element, which is defined by the upper-left corner (x0, y0) and the lower-right corner (x1, y1). the values are with reference to the top-left corner of the document image and measured in pixels the order of the values are x0 y0 x1 y1 = "left top right bottom" ===== Usage ===== Use x_bboxes below for character bounding boxes. Do not use bbox unless the bounding box of the layout component is, in fact, rectangular, some non-rectangular layout components may have rectangular bounding boxes if the non-rectangularity is caused by floating elements around which text flows. The bounding box bbox of this line is shown in blue and it is span by the upper-left corner (10, 20) and the lower-right corner (160, 30). All coordinates are measured with reference to the top-left corner of the document image which border is drawn in black. == Searchable PDF files == The hOCR format is most commonly used in order to make searchable PDF files or as an extracted metadata of the PDF file. In order to create searchable PDF files we can use a scanned document image and a .hocr file of the particular image. We can use the following open source tools in order to achieve that. === hocr-tools === Source: hocr-tools is an open source library written in Python. It has a command-line utility attached in the scripts called hocr-pdf that enables us to convert standard hocr files to a searchable PDF file. It is also worth noting that the version for dealing with hocr files in RTL or non-Latin scripts like Arabic, we need to use the GitHub repository at the moment. hocr-pdf We can use the hocr-pdf utility using the following basic syntax. hocr-pdf—savefile final.pdf folder_images_and_hocr The folder_images_and_hocr must contain the respective .jpg and .hocr format files with their file extensions changed. ==== Known issues ==== Some of the known issues of hocr-pdf script in PyPI installation are the following. Not up to date with GitHub repository. hocr-pdf is broken on line 134 due to decodebytes() depreciated after Python 3.1 ==== Known fixes ==== Compile hocr-tools using latest GitHub repository. === hocr2pdf === hocr2pdf is another library that supports the conversion of hocr files. It is written in C++ and is cross-compatible with other libraries. It also has support for UTF-8 languages but that may require some additional debugging and browsing through some google conversation records to achieve that. According to Ubuntu Manpages,ExactImage is a fast C++ image processing library. Unlike many other library frameworks it allows operation in several color spaces and bit depths natively, resulting in low memory and computational requirements. hocr2pdf creates well layouted, searchable PDF files from hOCR (annotated HTML) input obtained from an OCR system. == hOCR to PDF attempts == In addition to the following discussed and stable libraries there have been many contributions to the hOCR format over the years with support from many of the early adopters of this format. You can get access to inlaying text on an Image with hOCR and converting that in a PDF file using Python 2 with this 12-year-old script as of 2021. This script can also be updated and made functional by converting that Python 2 Source code to Python 3 Supported Context. - HOCRConverter by jbrinley (Documentation) === HOCRConverter === The HOCRConverter is a script written in Python 2.x that can used in order to convert a hOCR file with a specified image file in order to convert it to a searchable PDF file. You can see the documentation using the link above. ==== Known issues ==== Has not been tested. Does not natively support Python 3.x
Arthur Zimek
Arthur Zimek is a professor in data mining, data science and machine learning at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark. He graduated from LMU Munich in Germany, where he worked with Prof. Hans-Peter Kriegel. His dissertation on "Correlation Clustering" was awarded the "SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award 2009 Runner-up" by the Association for Computing Machinery. He is well known for his work on outlier detection, density-based clustering, correlation clustering, and the curse of dimensionality. He is one of the founders and core developers of the open-source ELKI data mining framework.
AI Presentation Makers: Free vs Paid (2026)
Curious about the best AI presentation maker? An AI presentation maker is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI presentation maker slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.
Piranesi (software)
Piranesi is an interactive paint system that enables the user to create artistic images from 3D scenes created using conventional modeling applications. == Image format == Piranesi uses the proprietary EPix file format. For every pixel, additional information is stored, such as distance from the viewer and material settings. EPix files can be rendered from 3D scenes using a fixed viewpoint by Piranesi's companion software, Vedute.
Robert Wilensky
Robert Wilensky (26 March 1951 – 15 March 2013) was an American computer scientist and professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, with his main focus of research in artificial intelligence. == Academic career == In 1971, Wilensky received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Yale University, and in 1978, a Ph.D. in computer science from the same institution. After finishing his thesis, "Understanding Goal-Based Stories", Wilensky joined the faculty from the EECS Department of UC Berkeley. In 1986, he worked as the doctoral advisor of Peter Norvig, who then later published the standard textbook of the field: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. From 1993 to 1997, Wilensky was the Berkeley Computer Science Division Chair. During this time, he also served as director of the Berkeley Cognitive Science Program, director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Project, and board member of the International Computer Science Institute. In 1997, he became a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery "for research contributions to the areas of natural language processing and digital libraries as well as outstanding leadership in Computer Science." Furthermore, he also was a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. He retired from faculty in 2007 and died on Friday, March 15, 2013, of a bacterial infection at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. Wilensky was married to Ann Danforth and he is survived by her and their two children, Avi and Eli Wilensky == Research == Throughout his career, Wilensky authored and co-authored over 60 scholarly articles and technical reports on AI, natural language processing, and information dissemination. In addition to his numerous technical publications, Wilensky also published two books on the programming language LISP, LISPcraft and Common LISPcraft, and had almost completed another book manuscript when he suffered a cardiac arrest and stopped writing. Among his publications are: R. Wilensky, (1986-09-17). Common LISPcraft. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393955446. T. A. Phelps and R. Wilensky, "Toward active, extensible, networked documents: Multivalent architecture and applications," in Proc. 1st ACM Intl. Conf. on Digital Libraries, E. A. Fox and G. Marchionini, Eds., New York, NY: ACM Press, 1996, pp. 100–108. J. Traupman and R. Wilensky, "Experiments in Improving Unsupervised Word Sense Disambiguation," University of California, Berkeley, Department of EECS, Computer Science Division, Tech. Rep. 03–1227, Feb. 2003. R. Wilensky, Planning and Understanding: A Computational Approach to Human Reasoning, Advanced Book Program, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1983. R. Wilensky, "Understanding Goal-Based Stories," Yale University, Sep. 1978. B. Kahn and R. Wilensky, "A Framework for Distributed Digital Object Services", May 1995.