Apache Giraph is an Apache project to perform graph processing on big data. Giraph utilizes Apache Hadoop's MapReduce implementation to process graphs. Facebook used Giraph with some performance improvements to analyze one trillion edges using 200 machines in 4 minutes. Giraph is based on a paper published by Google about its own graph processing system called Pregel. It can be compared to other Big Graph processing libraries such as Cassovary. As of September 2023, it is no longer actively developed.
Smart speaker industry in South Korea
Smart speakers, or AI speakers, have been developed by multiple domestic electronics and telecommunications firms in South Korea. Since their introduction to the local market in 2016, they have been used by millions of people in the country. == Brands == === Google === In September 2018, Google Home (including the Google Home Mini) launched in South Korea. Running Google Assistant, it featured simultaneous recognition of two languages among a total of seven, including Korean. At launch, it could play music from Bugs!, in addition to YouTube. === Kakao === In November 2017, Kakao launched the Kakao Mini, featuring integrated KakaoTalk functionality. === KT === KT launched the GiGA Genie smart speaker in January 2017, using a Harman Kardon speaker. In November 2017, KT announced GiGA Genie LTE, a portable AI speaker with LTE support. They also released a mini speaker called GiGA Genie Buddy. In 2018, KT created a special version of GiGa Genie with a screen for use in hotels. On 29 April 2019, KT announced the GiGA Genie Table TV, a consumer-oriented smart speaker with a display. It featured paid TV access through Wi-Fi. Based on usage data from the hotel model, KT decided not to add a touchscreen. The Table TV also featured a limited-access "personalized-text-to-speech technology" which could use parents' voice recording inputs to read children books. In February 2022, KT began rolling out Amazon Alexa integration into its speakers for English support. === Naver === In August 2017, Naver announced the Wave smart speaker, operating on Clova. In October 2017, Naver launched the Friends smart speaker, which were designed based on Line characters. ==== LG Uplus ==== In December 2017, LG Uplus launched the Friends+ speaker with Naver, operating on U+ Home AI. === Samsung === In August 2018, Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy Home in partnership with Spotify. The original size was delayed, while the Galaxy Home Mini appeared briefly as a bonus for Samsung Galaxy S20 preorders in South Korea in February 2020. === SK Telecom === SK Telecom launched the Nugu smart speaker in September 2016, using an Astell & Kern audio system. In August 2017, SKT released a portable speaker named Nugu mini. In July 2018, SKT launched the Nugu Candle, featuring expanded mood lighting. The first-generation Nugu was subsequently discontinued. On 18 April 2019, SKT released the NUGU Nemo AI, which featured a display and JBL stereo speaker. In August 2019, SKT collaborated with SM Entertainment, incorporating functions related to the agency's artists into Nugu. In January 2022, SKT showcased the NUGU Candle SE, introducing Alexa support. == Usage == In 2018, approximately 3 million people in South Korea used smart speakers. According to data from KT in 2018, the most common commands to its speakers were for controlling televisions. Based on a broader survey in 2017, music was selected as the most frequent use case. By 2018, smart speaker companies were partnering with reading and other education services, adding potential use-cases for children. By 2022, smart speakers were being utilized by the South Korean government. SKT, in partnership with 70 regional governments, distributed smart speakers to 12,000 senior citizens living alone. The government paid for monthly subscriptions to help seniors stay mentally engaged. Naver made an agreement with the Seoul Metropolitan Government to provide Clova CareCall, an automated health checkup program to hundreds of senior citizens living alone. KT's AI care service included an emergency dispatch call function and medication notifications. == Criticism == === Communication === In a survey of 300 users in 2017, approximately half reported having some type of communication issue with their smart speakers. === Privacy === South Korean smart speakers sparked privacy concerns when they were found to be collecting and documenting user audio data in 2019. The speaker companies responded that only a minority of data was collected and that it was anonymized. They stated that such recordings were collected for performance improvements.
Automated journalism
Automated journalism, also known as algorithmic journalism or robot journalism, is a term that attempts to describe modern technological processes that are now in use in the journalistic profession, such as news articles and videos generated by computer programs. There are four main fields of application for automated journalism, namely automated content production, data mining, news dissemination and content optimization. Through generative artificial intelligence, stories are produced automatically by computers rather than human reporters. In the 2020s, generative pre-trained transformers have enabled the generation of articles, simply by providing prompts. Automated journalism is sometimes seen as an opportunity to free journalists from routine reporting, providing them with more time for complex tasks. It also allows efficiency and cost-cutting, alleviating some financial burden that many news organizations face. However, automated journalism is also perceived as a threat to the authorship and quality of news and a threat to the livelihoods of human journalists. == History == Historically, the process involved an algorithm that scanned large amounts of provided data, selected from an assortment of pre-programmed article structures, ordered key points, and inserted details such as names, places, amounts, rankings, statistics, and other figures. These programs interpret, organize, and present data in human-readable ways. The output can also be customized to fit a certain voice, tone, or style. Early implementations were mainly used for stories based on statistics and numerical figures. Common topics include sports recaps, weather, financial reports, real estate analysis, and earnings reviews. Data science and AI companies such as Automated Insights, Narrative Science, United Robots and Monok develop and provide these algorithms to news outlets. In 2016, early adopters included news providers such as the Associated Press, Forbes, ProPublica, and the Los Angeles Times. StatSheet, an online platform covering college basketball, runs entirely on an automated program. In 2006, Thomson Reuters announced their switch to automation to generate financial news stories on its online news platform. Reuters used a tool called Tracer. An algorithm called Quakebot published a story about a 2014 California earthquake on The Los Angeles Times website within three minutes after the shaking had stopped. The Associated Press began using automation to cover 10,000 minor baseball leagues games annually, using a program from Automated Insights and statistics from MLB Advanced Media. Outside of sports, the Associated Press also uses automation to produce stories on corporate earnings. Since 2014, Associated Press has been publishing quarterly financial stories with help from Automated Insights. In May 2020, Microsoft announced that a number of its MSN contract journalists would be replaced by robot journalism. On 8 September 2020, The Guardian published an article entirely written by the neural network GPT-3, although the published fragments were manually picked by a human editor. Agentic Tribune produces all of its news articles automatically using AI. News broadcasters in Kuwait, Greece, South Korea, India, China and Taiwan have presented news with anchors based on generative AI models, prompting concerns about job losses for human anchors and audience trust in news that has historically been influenced by parasocial relationships with broadcasters, content creators or social media influencers. Algorithmically generated anchors have also been used by allies of ISIS for their broadcasts. In 2023, Google reportedly pitched a tool to news outlets that claimed to "produce news stories" based on input data provided, such as "details of current events". Some news company executives who viewed the pitch described it as "[taking] for granted the effort that went into producing accurate and artful news stories." In February 2024, Google launched a program to pay small publishers to write three articles per day using a beta generative AI model. The program does not require the knowledge or consent of the websites that the publishers are using as sources, nor does it require the published articles to be labeled as being created or assisted by these models. Meta AI, a chatbot based on Llama 3 which summarizes news stories, was noted by The Washington Post to copy sentences from those stories without direct attribution and to potentially further decrease the traffic of online news outlets. == Benefits == === Speed === Robot reporters are built to produce large quantities of information at quicker speeds. The Associated Press announced that their use of automation has increased the volume of earnings reports from customers by more than ten times. With software from Automated Insights and data from other companies, they can produce 150 to 300-word articles in the same time it takes journalists to crunch numbers and prepare information. By automating routine stories and tasks, journalists are promised more time for complex jobs such as investigative reporting and in-depth analysis of events. Francesco Marconi of the Associated Press stated that, through automation, the news agency freed up 20 percent of reporters’ time to focus on higher-impact projects. This has also been stated by a spokesperson at Gannett, who stated "By leveraging AI, we are able to expand coverage and enable our journalists to focus on more in-depth reporting." GBH reports that AI tools help increase the reach of news publishers. Mike Carragi, a product manager at Patch, stated that they were able to increase their reach from 1200 communities to 7000 communities in just a few months without the need for new employees solely through the adoption of generative AI. In fact, many communities are served solely by AI generated content, which creates summaries of existing information within the community. === Cost === Automated journalism is cheaper because more content can be produced within less time. It also lowers labour costs for news organizations. Reduced human input means less expenses on wages or salaries, paid leaves, vacations, and employment insurance. Automation serves as a cost-cutting tool for news outlets struggling with tight budgets but still wish to maintain the scope and quality of their coverage. == Concerns == === Authorship === In an automated story, there is often confusion about who should be credited as the author. Several participants of a study on algorithmic authorship attributed the credit to the programmer; others perceived the news organization as the author, emphasizing the collaborative nature of the work. There is also no way for the reader to verify whether an article was written by a robot or human, which raises issues of transparency although such issues also arise with respect to authorship attribution between human authors too. === Credibility and quality === Concerns about the perceived credibility of automated news is similar to concerns about the perceived credibility of news in general. Critics doubt if algorithms are "fair and accurate, free from subjectivity, error, or attempted influence." Again, these issues about fairness, accuracy, subjectivity, error, and attempts at influence or propaganda has also been present in articles written by humans over thousands of years. A common criticism is that machines do not replace human capabilities such as creativity, humour, and critical-thinking. However, as the technology evolves, the aim is to mimic human characteristics. When the UK's Guardian newspaper used an AI to write an entire article in September 2020, commentators pointed out that the AI still relied on human editorial content. Austin Tanney, the head of AI at Kainos said: "The Guardian got three or four different articles and spliced them together. They also gave it the opening paragraph. It doesn’t belittle what it is. It was written by AI, but there was human editorial on that." The largest single study of readers' evaluations of news articles produced with and without the help of automation exposed 3,135 online news consumers to 24 articles. It found articles that had been automated were significantly less comprehensible, in part because they were considered to contain too many numbers. However, the automated articles were evaluated equally on other criteria including tone, narrative flow, and narrative structure. Beyond human evaluation, there are now numerous algorithmic methods to identify machine written articles although some articles may still contain errors that are obvious for a human to identify, they can at times score better with these automatic identifiers than human-written articles. A 2017 Nieman Reports article by Nicola Bruno discusses whether or not machines will replace journalists and addresses concerns around the concept of automated journalism practices. Ultimately, Bruno came to the conclusion that AI would assist journalist
Task Force on Process Mining
The IEEE Task Force on Process Mining (TFPM) is a non-commercial association for process mining. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Task Force on Process Mining was established in October 2009 as part of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society at the Eindhoven University of Technology. The task force is supported by over 80 organizations and has around 750 members. The main goal of the task force is to promote the research, development, education, and understanding of process mining. == About == In 2012, the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence/ IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation held a session on Process Mining. Process mining is a type of research that is a mix of computational intelligence and data mining, as well as process modeling and analysis. === Activities and organization === The Task Force on Process Mining has a Steering Committee and an Advisory Board. The Steering Committee, was chaired by Wil van der Aalst in its inception in 2009, defined 15 action lines. These include the organization of the annual International Process Mining Conference (ICPM) series, standardization efforts leading to the IEEE XES standard for storing and exchanging event data, and the Process Mining Manifesto which was translated into 16 languages. The Task Force on Process Mining also publishes a newsletter, provides data sets, organizes workshops and competitions, and connects researchers and practitioners. In 2016, the IEEE Standards Association published the IEEE Standard for Extensible Event Stream (XES), which is a widely accepted file format by the process mining community. As of 2023, Boudewijn van Dongen serves as chair of the Steering Committee. Wil van der Aalst and Moe Wynn both serve as vice-chair of the Steering Committee.
Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence is a generative artificial intelligence system developed by Apple Inc. Relying on a combination of on-device and server processing, it was announced on June 10, 2024, at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference, as a built-in feature of Apple's iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, which were announced alongside Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence is free for all users with supported devices. On macOS, Apple Intelligence is available only on Apple silicon Mac computers; Intel-based Mac computers are not supported. Features include writing tools that assist users with grammar and proofreading, image generation, summaries of system notifications, AI-assisted image retouching in the Photos app, and integration with ChatGPT, the popular chatbot by OpenAI. As of March 2026, Apple Intelligence is not available yet on devices purchased in mainland China or on any device using an Apple Account set to mainland China, even if the device was bought elsewhere. == History == === Background === Apple first implemented artificial intelligence features in its products with the release of Siri in the iPhone 4S in 2011. In the years after its release, Apple engaged in efforts to ensure its artificial intelligence operations remained covert; according to University of California, Berkeley professor Trevor Darrell, the company's secrecy deterred graduate students. The company started expanding its artificial intelligence team in 2015, opening up its operations by publishing more scientific papers and joining AI industry research groups. Apple reportedly acquired more AI companies from 2016 to 2020. In 2017, Apple released the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X with the A11 Bionic processor, which featured its first dedicated Neural Engine for accelerating common machine learning tasks. Despite its investments in artificial intelligence, Siri was criticized both by reviewers and internally at Apple for lagging behind other AI assistants. The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence and the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 reportedly blindsided Apple executives and forced the company to refocus its efforts on AI. In an interview with Good Morning America, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that generative AI had "great promise" but had some potential dangers, and that it was "looking closely" at ChatGPT. It was first reported in July 2023 that Apple was creating its own internal large language model, codenamed "Ajax". In October 2023, Apple was reportedly on track to release new generative AI features into its operating systems by 2024, including a significantly redeveloped Siri. In an earnings call in February 2024, Cook stated that the company was spending a "tremendous amount of time and effort" into AI features that would be shared "later that year". === Google deal === In January 2026, Apple and Google announced a multi-year partnership under which Apple’s next-generation foundation models are expected to incorporate Google’s Gemini models and cloud infrastructure. According to the companies, the collaboration is intended to support future Apple Intelligence features, including enhancements to Siri, while Apple Intelligence will continue to operate on Apple devices and through Apple’s Private Cloud Compute system, which Apple states is designed to preserve user privacy. On an earnings call, Apple reported to investors that they were integrating an on-device model of the Google Gemini AI to Siri, as the development of their model was beset with setbacks. Apple has previously tested and used other third-party AI models like ChatGPT, but according to a Bloomberg article by Mark Gurman, Apple pushed forward the proposed Google deal; by using Google's Gemini model possessing 1.2 trillion parameters, Apple would integrate a much larger and more complex model than those it previously developed and used. Of note, comparable AI models from other major companies (including OpenAI and Meta) have also been reported to operate at a similar “trillion-parameter” scale and to compete against Gemini-class systems on benchmarks. == Models == Apple Intelligence consists of an on-device model as well as a cloud model running on servers primarily using Apple silicon. Both models consist of a generic foundation model, as well as multiple adapter models that are more specialized to particular tasks like text summarization and tone adjustment. It was launched for developers and testers on July 29, 2024, in U.S. English, with the developer betas of iOS 18.1, macOS 15.1, and iPadOS 18.1, released partially on October 28, 2024, and will fully launch by 2026. According to a human evaluation done by Apple's machine learning division, the on-device foundation model beat or tied equivalent small models by Mistral AI, Microsoft, and Google, while the server foundation models beat the performance of OpenAI's GPT-3, while roughly matching the performance of GPT-4. Apple's cloud models are built on a Private Cloud Compute platform which is allegedly designed with user privacy and end-to-end encryption in mind. Unlike other generative AI services like ChatGPT which use servers from third parties, Apple Intelligence's cloud models are run entirely on Apple servers with custom Apple silicon hardware built for end-to-end encryption. It was also designed to make sure that the software running on said servers matches the independently verifiable software accessible to researchers. In case of a software mismatch, Apple devices will refuse to connect to the servers. On June 10, 2025, Apple announced that Apple's on-device foundation models will be available to third-party applications as part of the Foundation Models API, with support for structured data response and tool calling. == Features == === Writing tools === Apple Intelligence features writing tools that are powered by LLMs. Selected text can be proofread, rewritten, made more friendly, concise or professional, similar to the AI writing features of the popular online English-language writing assistant tool Grammarly. It can also be used to generate summaries, key points, tables, and lists from an article or piece of writing. In iOS 18.2 and macOS 15.2, a ChatGPT integration was added to Writing Tools through "Compose" and "Describe your change" features. === Real-time Translation === Apple Intelligence enables the real-time translation of messages, photos and videos, and phone calls, through Apple's hardware. For communicating with foreigners, using the Translate app on iPhone to show subtitles in their language or to play back the translated audio naturally in their language, and also by wearing AirPods with Live Translation can now help to understand what someone is saying in users' preferred language in conversation. If both have headphones, simultaneous interpretation can be achieved. === Image Playground === Apple Intelligence can be used to generate images on-device with the Image Playground app. Similarly to OpenAI's DALL-E, it can be used to generate images using AI, using phrases and descriptions to output an image with customizable styles such as Animation and Sketch. In Notes, users can access Image Playground on iPad through the Image Wand tool in the Apple Pencil palette without having to open the Image Playground app. Rough sketches made with Apple Pencil can be transformed into images. As part of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26, Image Playground now integrates with the image generation models built into ChatGPT. === Genmoji === Using Apple Intelligence text-to-image models, users can generate unique "Genmoji" images by typing descriptions (prompting). Users can pick people in photos to have Genmoji generate images that resemble them. Similarly to emoji, Genmoji can be added inline to text messages, tapbacks, stickers and can be shared in Messages as well in third-party applications as inline messages or as stickers. === Siri overhaul === Siri, which used to be Apple's virtual assistant, has been updated to be an LLM chatbot, with enhanced capabilities made possible by Apple Intelligence. The latest iteration features an updated user interface, improved natural language processing, and the option to interact via text by double tapping the home bar without enabling the feature in the Accessibility menu, or double-clicking the command key on macOS. In a later update, Apple Intelligence will add the ability for Siri to use personal context from device activities to answer queries. === Mail === Apple Intelligence adds a feature called Priority Messages to the Mail app, which shows urgent emails such as same-day invitations or boarding passes, with AI generated summaries of the email. The Mail app also gains the ability to categorize incoming mail into Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions based on what the email contains, which Apple claims is done all on-device. === Photos === Apple's Photos app includes a feature to create custom memory movies and enhanced search capabilities. Users can describe
OpenIO
OpenIO offered object storage for a wide range of high-performance applications. OpenIO was founded in 2015 by Laurent Denel (CEO), Jean-François Smigielski (CTO) and five other co-founders; it leveraged open source software, developed since 2006, based on a grid technology that enabled dynamic behaviour and supported heterogenous hardware. In October 2017 OpenIO was completed a $5 million funding rounds. In July 2020 OpenIO had been acquired by OVH and withdrawn from the market to become the core technology of OVHcloud object storage offering. == Software == OpenIO is a software-defined object store that supports S3 and can be deployed on-premises, cloud-hosted or at the edge, on any hardware mix. It has been designed from the beginning for performance and cost-efficiency at any scale, and it has been optimized for Big Data, HPC and AI. OpenIO stores objects within a flat structure within a massively distributed directory with indirections, which allows the data query path to be independent of the number of nodes and the performance not to be affected by the growth of capacity. Servers are organized as a grid of nodes massively distributed, where each node takes part in directory and storage services, which ensures that there is no single point of failure and that new nodes are automatically discovered and immediately available without the need to rebalance data. The software is built on top of a technology that ensures optimal data placement based on real-time metrics and allows the addition or removal of storage devices with automatic performance and load impact optimization. For data protection OpenIO has synchronous and asynchronous replication with multiple copies, and an erasure coding implementation based on Reed-Solomon that can be deployed in one data center or geo-distributed or stretched clusters. The software has a feature that catches all events that occur in the cluster and can pass them up in the stack or to applications running on OpenIO nodes. This enables event-driven computing directly into the storage infrastructure. The open source code is available on Github and it is licensed under AGPL3 for server code and LGPL3 for client code. == Performance == OpenIO claimed in 2019 to have reached 1.372 Tbit/s write speed (171 GB/s) on a cluster of 350 physical machines. The benchmark scenario, conducted under production conditions with standard hardware (commodity servers with 7200 rpm HDDs), consisted in backing up a 38 PB Hadoop datalake via the DistCp command. This level of performance marked, according to analysts, the arrival of a new generation of object storage technologies oriented toward high performance and hyper-scalability.
Affective computing
Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. While some core ideas in the field may be traced as far back as to early philosophical inquiries into emotion, the modern idea originated with Rosalind Picard's 1995 paper entitled "Affective Computing" and her 1997 book of the same name published by MIT Press. One motivation for researching affective computing is the ability to give machines emotional intelligence, including simulating empathy. The goal is that a machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behavior to those emotions, responding appropriately. Recent experimental research has shown that subtle affective haptic feedback can shape human reward learning and mobile interaction behavior, suggesting that affective computing systems may not only interpret emotional states but also actively modulate user actions through emotion-laden outputs. == Areas == === Detecting and recognizing emotional information === Detecting emotional information usually begins with passive sensors that capture data about the user's physical state or behavior without interpreting the input. The data gathered is analogous to the cues humans use to perceive emotions in others. For example, a video camera might capture facial expressions, body posture, and gestures, while a microphone might capture speech. Other sensors detect emotional cues by directly measuring physiological data, such as skin temperature and galvanic resistance. Recognizing emotional information requires the extraction of meaningful patterns from the gathered data. This is done using machine learning techniques that process different modalities, such as speech recognition, natural language processing, or facial expression detection. The goal of most of these techniques is to produce labels that would match the labels a human would give in the same situation. For example, if a person makes a facial expression furrowing their brow, then the computer vision system might be trained to label their face as appearing "confused" or as "concentrating" or "slightly negative" (as opposed to positive, which it might say if they were smiling in a happy-appearing way). This response is based on the data used to train the system. These labels may or may not correspond to what the person is actually feeling. === Emotion in machines === Another area within affective computing is the design of computational devices proposed to exhibit either innate emotional capabilities or that are capable of convincingly simulating emotions. A more practical approach, based on current technological capabilities, is the simulation of emotions in conversational agents in order to enrich and facilitate interactivity between human and machine. Marvin Minsky, one of the pioneering computer scientists in artificial intelligence, relates emotions to the broader issues of machine intelligence stating in The Emotion Machine that emotion is "not especially different from the processes that we call 'thinking.'" The innovative approach "digital humans" or virtual humans includes an attempt to give these programs, which simulate humans, an emotional dimension as well, including reactions, facial expressions, and gestures in accordance with the reaction that a real person would have in certain emotionally stimulating situations. Emotion in machines often refers to emotion in computational, often AI-based, systems. As a result, the terms 'emotional AI' is being used. Some modern large language models simulate emotions in their chats with humans. ChatGPT's simulated emotion leans more positive than that of most human responses. == Technologies == In psychology, cognitive science, and in neuroscience, there have been two main approaches for describing how humans perceive and classify emotion: continuous or categorical. The continuous approach tends to use dimensions such as negative vs. positive, calm vs. aroused. The categorical approach tends to use discrete classes such as happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprise, and disgust. Different kinds of machine learning regression and classification models are used for machines to produce continuous or discrete labels. Sometimes, models are also built that allow combinations across the categories (e.g. a happy-surprised face or a fearful-surprised face). The following sections consider many of the kinds of input data used for the task of emotion recognition. === Emotional speech === Various changes in the autonomic nervous system can indirectly alter a person's speech, and affective technologies can leverage this information to recognize emotion. For example, speech produced in a state of fear, anger, or joy becomes fast, loud, and precisely enunciated, with a higher and wider range in pitch, whereas emotions such as tiredness, boredom, or sadness tend to generate slow, low-pitched, and slurred speech. Some emotions have been found to be more easily computationally identified, such as anger or approval. Emotional speech processing technologies recognize the user's emotional state using computational analysis of speech features. Vocal parameters and prosodic features such as pitch variables and speech rate can be analyzed through pattern recognition techniques. Speech analysis is an effective method of identifying affective state, having an average reported accuracy of 70-80% in research from 2003 and 2006. These systems tend to outperform average human accuracy (approximately 60%) but are less accurate than systems which employ other modalities for emotion detection, such as physiological states or facial expressions. However, since many speech characteristics are independent of semantics or culture, this technique is considered to be a promising route for further research. ==== Algorithms ==== The process of speech/text affect detection requires the creation of a reliable database, knowledge base, or vector space model, broad enough to fit every need for its application, as well as the selection of a successful classifier which will allow for quick and accurate emotion identification. As of 2010, the most frequently used classifiers were linear discriminant classifiers (LDC), k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), Gaussian mixture model (GMM), support vector machines (SVM), artificial neural networks (ANN), decision tree algorithms, and hidden Markov models (HMMs). Various studies showed that choosing the appropriate classifier can significantly enhance the overall performance of the system. The list below gives a brief description of each algorithm: LDC – Classification happens based on the value obtained from the linear combination of the feature values, which are usually provided in the form of vector features. k-NN – Classification happens by locating the object in the feature space, and comparing it with the k nearest neighbors (training examples). The majority vote decides on the classification. GMM – A probabilistic model used for representing the existence of subpopulations within the overall population. Each sub-population is described using the mixture distribution, which allows for classification of observations into the sub-populations. SVM – A type of (usually binary) linear classifier which decides in which of the two (or more) possible classes, each input may fall into. ANN – is a mathematical model, inspired by biological neural networks, that can better grasp possible non-linearities of the feature space. Decision tree algorithms – work based on following a decision tree in which leaves represent the classification outcome, and branches represent the conjunction of subsequent features that lead to the classification. HMMs – a statistical Markov model in which the states and state transitions are not directly available to observation. Instead, the series of outputs dependent on the states are visible. In the case of affect recognition, the outputs represent the sequence of speech feature vectors, which allow the deduction of states' sequences through which the model progressed. The states can consist of various intermediate steps in the expression of an emotion, and each of them has a probability distribution over the possible output vectors. The states' sequences allow us to predict the affective state which we are trying to classify, and this is one of the most commonly used techniques within the area of speech affect detection. It has been proven that having enough acoustic evidence available the emotional state of a person can be classified by a set of majority voting classifiers. The proposed set of classifiers is based on three main classifiers: kNN, C4.5 and SVM-RBF Kernel. This set achieves better performance than each basic classifier taken separately. It is compared with two other sets of classifiers: one-against-all (OAA) multiclass SVM with Hybrid kernels and th