Dave's Redistricting App (DRA) is an online web app originally created by Dave Bradlee that allows anyone to simulate redistricting a U.S. state's congressional and legislative districts. == Purpose == According to Bradlee, the software was designed to "put power in people's hands," and so that they "can see how the process works, so it's a little less mysterious than it was 10 years ago." Bradlee has noticed that many citizens are taking this process seriously and using his app to create legitimate redistricting maps that could be put in place. Some websites have called Bradlee the pioneer and cause of the rise of do-it-yourself redistricting. States such as Montana in 2021 allowed the general population to use it to submit redistricting proposals following the 2020 United States Census. Dave's Redistricting has frequently been mentioned as a resource that can be used to combat gerrymandering, given that the public has free access to it. Political science firms such as FiveThirtyEight have used the website to draw examples of gerrymandered districts, including on their famous Atlas of Redistricting. Dave Bradlee built the first generation of DRA. DRA 2020 is built by a small team of volunteers—Dave Bradlee, Terry Crowley, Alec Ramsay, and David Rinn—all with a shared passion for technology & democracy and all Microsoft veterans. Their mission is to empower civic organizations and citizen activists to advocate for fair congressional and legislative districts and increased transparency in the redistricting process. == Functions == Users can redraw the congressional and state legislative districts for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico using a variety of census and election datasets including Cook PVI. Maps can be optimized for different criteria. DRA 2020 added several major features to the first generation app: Sharing & collaborative editing of maps, like Google Docs Multiple statewide elections for all 50 states including the ability to import your own data Comprehensive analytics for evaluating and comparing maps Custom overlays, and Block-level editing DRA remains free to use. == Versions == 2.2: This uses Bing Maps, an outdated software that projects the districts of a single state onto a map of the United States. 2.5: After Bing Maps announced that it would no longer be updating for the foreseen future, the U.S. Map feature was removed. DRA 2020: At the end of 2018, a beta version of 2020 was released. This version that did not require Microsoft Silverlight and could be used in any web browser. DRA 2020 has been under continuous development since and is built using React (JavaScript library), Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, TypeScript, Node.js, Amazon Web Services, as well as many open source components, tools, and icons.
DBGallery
DBGallery, short for Database Gallery, is a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) and on-prem webserver for teams of various sizes. DBGallery enables users to centrally store, manage, catalog, archive, and securely share image, video, and document files. It facilitates version control, detects duplicates, and offers an intuitive and advanced search functionality, making assets easily accessible to all users. It takes advantage of current AI technologies to automatically add significant metadata to images, facilitates custom-trained AI models, and offers bespoke AI features. Additionally, DBGallery provides team management tools, workflow management, an activity audit trail, and other collaborative features that foster a productive environment for both internal and external stakeholders. == History == DBGallery's first public release was December 2007. Since then each year has seen continuous enhancements. 2013 added support for additional non-English languages in its meta-data. 2014 added support for creating custom data fields for tagging and search. In 2015 included the ability to auto-tag images using Reverse Geocoding. 2018 added artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition as a further addition to auto-tagging. March 2020 added complete image collection management via the web (e.g. file and folder drag and drop), a new collection dashboard, custom data layouts, and an improved audit trail. 2021 saw user experience improvements provided by improved styling and performance enhancements. Version 12 was released in October 2021. It added the ability to upload unlimited file sizes and made significant performance improvements for very large collections. June 2022 saw the release of a global duplicate images search. In late 2022, DBGallery began offering significantly reduced cloud storage cost, at a third of its previous prices, which played into its recent high-volume/high-capacity capabilities and its clients' subsequent demand for additional storage. 2023 saw improvements in user and role management, introduced it's mobile app (PWA), and improved custom-trained object detection. Release 14.0 in the spring of 2024 had large sharing improvements and a new find related images feature. Winter 2025's v15 release introduced AI-generated image descriptions, image-to-text, and facial recognition.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for practitioners and researchers. Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter, among others, have built-in data analytics tools that companies can use to track the progress, success, and engagement of social media marketing campaigns. Companies address a range of stakeholders through social media marketing, including current and potential customers, current and potential employees, journalists, bloggers, and the general public. On a strategic level, social media marketing includes the management of a marketing campaign, governance, setting the scope (e.g. more active or passive use) and the establishment of a firm's desired social media "culture" and "tone". Firms that use social media marketing can allow customers and Internet users to post user-generated content (e.g., online comments, product reviews, etc.), also known as "earned media", rather than use marketer-prepared advertising copy. == Purposes and tactics == Social media may be employed in marketing as a communications tool that makes companies accessible to those who are interested in their product and visible to those who are not familiar with their products. It is used by companies to create buzz, learn from customers, and target them. Of the top 10 factors that correlate with a strong Google organic search, seven are social media-dependent. This means that if brands with little to no social media presence tend to show up less on Google searches. While platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and—in the past—Google+ have a larger number of monthly users, the visual media-sharing-based mobile platforms garner a higher interaction rate in comparison, and have registered the fastest growth, and have changed the ways in which consumers engage with brand content. Instagram has an interaction rate of 1.46% with an average of 130 million users monthly as opposed to Twitter, which has a .03% interaction rate with an average of 210 million monthly users. Unlike traditional media that are often cost-prohibitive to many companies, a social media strategy does not require significant financial investment. To this end, companies make use of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to reach audiences much wider than through traditional print, television, or radio advertisements alone at a fraction of the cost, as most social networking sites can be used at little or no cost (however, some websites charge companies for premium services). This has changed the ways that companies approach and interact with customers, as a substantial percentage of consumer interactions are now being carried out over online platforms with much higher visibility. Customers can post reviews of products and services, rate customer service, and ask questions or voice concerns directly to companies through social media platforms. According to Measuring Success, over 80% of consumers use the web to research products and services. Thus social media marketing is also used by businesses in order to build relationships of trust with consumers. To this aim, companies may hire personnel to specifically handle these social media interactions, who usually report under the title of online community managers. Handling these interactions in a satisfactory manner can result in an increase of consumer trust. To both this aim and to fix the public's perception of a company, three steps are taken in order to address consumer concerns: Identifying the extent of the social chatter Engaging the influencers to help Developing a proportional response == Strategies == === Passive approach === Social media can be a useful source of market information and a way to hear customers' perspectives. Blogs, content communities, and forums are platforms where individuals share their reviews and recommendations of brands, products, and services. Businesses are able to tap into and analyze customer voices and feedback generated in social media for marketing purposes. In this sense, social media is a relatively inexpensive source of market intelligence which can be used by marketers and managers to track and respond to consumer-identified problems and detect market opportunities. === Active approach === Social media can be used as a public relations tool, a direct marketing tool, and a communication channel to target very specific audiences, with social media influencers and social media personalities as effective customer engagement tools. This tactic is widely known as influencer marketing, which gives brands the opportunity to reach their target audience via a group of selected influencers advertising their product or service. Brands were projected to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022, per Business Insider Intelligence estimates, based on Mediakix data. The use of customer influencers, such as popular bloggers, can be an efficient and cost-effective method to launch new products or services. == Engagement == Engagement with the social web means that customers and stakeholders are active participants rather than passive spectators. An example of these are consumer advocacy groups and groups that criticize companies (e.g., lobby groups or advocacy organizations). The use of Social media in a business or political context allows people to express and share opinions about a company's products, services or business practices, or a government's actions. On social media, each participant becomes part of the marketing department (or a challenge to the marketing effort) as other customers read their comments or reviews. The effectiveness of social media marketing campaigns is dependent on the promotion of online engagement. With the advent of social media marketing, it has become increasingly important to gain customer interest in products and services, which can eventually be translated into buying behavior, or voting and donating behavior in a political context. New online marketing concepts of engagement and loyalty have emerged which aim to build customer participation and brand reputation. Engagement in social media for the purpose of a social media strategy is divided into two parts. The first is proactive, regular posting of new online content, which can be seen through digital photos, digital videos, text, and conversations. It is also represented through sharing of content and information from others via weblinks. The second part is reactive conversations, with social media users responding to those who reach out to others' social media profiles through comments or messages. == Campaigns == === Local businesses === Small businesses use social networking sites as a promotional technique. Businesses can follow individuals' social media usage in their local area and advertise specials and deals, which can be exclusive and in the form of "get a free drink with a copy of this tweet". This type of message encourages other locals to follow the business on their official websites in order to obtain the promotional deal. The business's brand visibility is enhanced in the process. Social networking sites are also used by small businesses to develop their own market research on new products and services. By encouraging their customers to give feedback on new product ideas, businesses can gain insights on whether or not a product may be accepted by their target market enough to merit full production. In addition, customers will feel the company has engaged them in the process of co-creation—the process in which the business uses customer feedback to create or modify a product or service to fill a need of the target market. Such feedback can be presented in various forms, such as surveys, contests, and polls. Social networking sites such as LinkedIn, also provide opportunities for small businesses to find candidates to fill staff positions. Review sites such as Yelp help small businesses build their reputation beyond brand visibility. Positive customer peer reviews help influence new prospects to purchase goods and services more than company advertising. == Benefits == Social Media Marketing allows companies to promote themselves to large, diverse audiences that could not be reached through traditional marketing such as phone and email-based advertising. Marketing on most social media platforms also comes at little to no cost, making it accessible to virtually any size business. Social Media Marketing accommodates personalized and direct marketing that targets specific demographics and markets. Companies can engage with customers directly, allowing them to obtain feedback and resolve issues almost immediately. Another advantage of social media marketing is that it's an ideal environment for a company to conduct market research. It can be used
Social media coverage of the Olympics
Over the years, television broadcast rights have distinguished what Olympic-related content can be accessed by fans online. By doing so, mobile-friendly social platforms began to integrate into the Olympics. Athletes and fans use these platforms to share live updates, special moments, and behind-the-scenes specials. Various social media platforms have been used for Olympic content, including Twitter and Facebook. Some marketers credit social media for prompting the official U.S. broadcasters, NBC, to live stream events, including early rounds. == Background == The Olympics is able to advertise to its viewers and its host country with the use of data it collects through Social media marketing. Prominent social media platforms include: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Google, MSN, Yahoo and many more. Campaign Initiatives and Artificial Intelligence technologies have been used to analyze the social media content of users. Information from consumers such as their preferences, demographics, age and locality are all analyzed to gain consumer insight. Campaign initiatives and AI technologies were used for such purposes in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and are in use currently. Social media marketing of the Olympics is a new phenomena, beginning prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics == Variations == There are two classifications of social media marketing recognized by the IOC: Officially sanctioned content from rights holders and sponsors that maximizes the use of Olympic content (imagery, hashtag) Unofficial content that is generated by brands that leverage the excitement of the Olympics == 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics == Social media marketing emerged as a phenomenon during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which progressed as a marketing and an advertising tactic ever since. The Beijing Olympics became the test subject for social media marketing initiatives started by advertising agencies. In 2008, social media marketing began the transition from one-sided communication to mass communication of the Olympic Games. Although social media marketing of the Olympic Games began in 2008, the audience to the Olympics was still primarily reached through television–reaching an audience of 4.3 billion viewers. At the time, the viewers of the Olympic Games through Internet website platforms made up an audience of approximately 390 million individuals. What was the beginning of Olympic social media marketing, was also the beginning of a more globalized experience of the Olympic Games via social media. Twitter, now a prominent social media platform, began in 2006 and grew to three million active users by the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Members of Facebook, another prominent social media platform, tracking the Olympic Games grew from approximately one million during the Olympic Games of Athens 2004 to 90 million during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Social media use, in general, increased by 24 percent between 2007 and 2008–from 63 percent of U.S. adults to 87 percent of U.S. adults. == 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics == The International Olympic Committee (IOC) deemed The Vancouver Winter Olympics as "the first social media games” based on its fan base through social media platforms. The IOC launched their Facebook page a month before the games began, attracting 1.5 million fans. Shifting to online viewing attracted a younger audience than past Olympic games with over 60 percent of Facebook fans being under 24 years of age. Athletes like Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White reached fans on social media as the platform posted behind-the-scenes coverage on their experiences. The IOC used social media to create competitions between athletes and fans streamed online. Its YouTube channel hosted a “Best of Us” challenge in which the public could compete in games with their favorite athletes, acquiring three million viewers. Photos spread across social media platforms, such as Flickr, which had 11,000 photos posted by 600 photographers, bringing a new perspective to the games. Twitter contributed constant live updates of the competitions. The IOC's Twitter following doubled to 12,000 followers during the Vancouver Olympics, creating a larger viewer population for the games. The IOC created social media guidelines as more athletes and fans got online to interact with the Olympics. Social media was still relatively new as a marketing platform, so these guidelines confused many individuals. == 2012 London Summer Olympics == The London 2012 Olympic Games succeeded in broadcasting, participation and marketing. For the first time, the IOC broadcast the Olympic Games live and on-demand through YouTube, allowing fans to access the Games anytime, anywhere through live streaming. The combination of conventional broadcasting and mobile platforms reached a global audience of 4.8 billion people. Social media soared with Facebook, Twitter and Google+, attracting 4.7 million followers. Athletes shared photographs, interacted online with fans and updated daily, either in person or via an agent. Instagram was established by 2012, making itself a premier photo-sharing platform perfect for athletes to capture their emotions. Lewis Wiltshire, head of sport for Twitter UK said, "Never before have fans had such direct access to their sporting heroes." Social media created conversation on fan opinions regarding athletes, including 962,756 total mentions of Usain Bolt, “Fastest Man in History,” who defended the 100 meter and 200 meter gold medals. Michael Phelps followed with 828,081 total mentions. Olympic sponsors were active on social media; created several campaigns to promote their brands; and inspired viewers with mass participation and personalized events. The Adidas “Take the Stage” Campaign recognized talent around the world, installing a photo booth and inviting the 550 Olympics athletes to take the stage. (IOC Marketing Report 2012). David Beckham surprised fans at the photo booth in Westfield shopping centre, gaining popularity in UK media. Coca-Cola, Acer Inc., McDonald's, Visa Inc. and several others used similar tactics of participation to attract viewers. == 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics == === Channels === The 2014 Winter Olympic Games were held in Sochi, a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, establishing the first “social media Olympics” for Russia. The most popular Russian social media and networking service, VK, created an Olympic page, similar to Facebook's. The Olympic VK page has 2.8 million fans and—the most popular official community on the platform. Throughout the games, VK had 54 million Olympic mentions, an average of 1.5 million per day. Numbers grew on other social media pages: more than 2 million fans joined the Olympic Facebook page, 168,101 followed the Olympic Twitter, 150,000 followed the Olympic Instagram and three million visited the Olympic website in February 2014. There were 90,000 total updates on social media by Sochi 2014 Olympians and teams. The United States was the most active country during the games logging 22,598 posts across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. === Engagement === With social media there is also hashtags. The most popular hashtag was #sochi2014 with almost 11,000 uses. The next top five hashtags were #wearewinter, #teamusa, #olympics, #goaus and #wirfuerD. Another popular hashtag was #Sochiproblems, depicting local struggles. Photos of the poor state of Sochi on all platforms made the games the number one trending topic one week before the opening ceremony. #SochiFail and #SochiProblems gave multiple reports of the poor living arrangements, incomplete construction, broken elevators, and polluted waters. This was one way that social media provided awareness to its users. === Media Perceptions === Media perceptions varied during the games; the Olympics was viewed as a confrontation between Eastern and Western Civilizations. The LGBT community took a stand against the games. Sponsors for the games including Coca-Cola, Mcdonald's, and P&G protested against Russian authorities and Russian anti-LGBT laws. Many protests took a stand against Russian laws, which created a discussion between human rights advocates. Advocates believed organizations should not promote certain values in western markets while supporting an anti-human rights government in another market. == 2016 Rio Summer Olympics == Social media marketing was an influential tool in the promotion and analysis of the 2016 Rio Olympics. Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee said that the power of sport demonstrates that diversity and interconnectedness can enlighten us all. With over 25,000+ sources of accredited media covering the games, the 2016 games were the most consumed Olympic games to date. Marketing for the Rio Olympics began in 2013 and ultimately lasted 3 years. There were 26 million visits to Olympic.org, the official website of the Olympic games, and over 7 billion views of official Olympic content on social media. There were o
Social media measurement
Social media measurement, also called social media controlling, is the management practice of evaluating successful social media communications of brands, companies, or other organizations. Key performance indicators may be measured by extracting information from social media channels, such as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs such as Twitter, social networking sites, or video/photo sharing websites, forums from time to time. It is also used by companies to gauge current trends in the industry. The process first gathers data from different websites and then performs analysis based on different metrics like time spent on the page, click through rate, content share, comments, text analytics to identify positive or negative emotions about the brand. Some other social media metrics include share of voice, owned mentions, and earned mentions. The social media measurement process starts with defining a goal that needs to be achieved and defining the expected outcome of the process. The expected outcome varies per the goal and is usually measured by a variety of metrics. This is followed by defining possible social strategies to be used to achieve the goal. Then the next step is designing strategies to be used and setting up configuration tools that ease the process of collecting the data. In the next step, strategies and tools are deployed in real-time. This step involves conducting Quality Assurance tests of the methods deployed to collect the data. And in the final step, data collected from the system is analyzed and if the need arises, it is refined on the run time to enhance the methodologies used. The last step ensures that the result obtained is more aligned with the goal defined in the first step. == Data Acquisition == Acquiring data from social media is in demand of an exploring the user participation and population with the purpose of retrieving and collecting so many kinds of data(ex: comments, downloads etc.). There are several prevalent techniques to acquire data such as Network traffic analysis, Ad-hoc application and Crawling Network Traffic Analysis - Network traffic analysis is the process of capturing network traffic and observing it closely to determine what is happening in the network. It is primarily done to improve the performance, security and other general management of the network. However concerned about the potential tort of privacy on the Internet, network traffic analysis is always restricted by the government. Furthermore, high-speed links are not adaptable to traffic analysis because of the possible overload problem according to the packet sniffing mechanism Ad-hoc Application - Ad-hoc application is a kind of application that provides services and games to social network users by developing the APIs offered by social network companies (Facebook Developer Platform). The infrastructure of Ad-hoc application allows the user to interact with the interface layer instead of the application servers. The API provides a path for application to access information after the user login. Moreover, the size of the data set collected vary with the popularity of the social media platform i.e. social media platforms having high number of users will have more data than platforms having less user base. Scraping is a process in which the APIs collect online data from social media. The data collected from Scraping is in raw format. However, having access to these types of data is a bit difficult because of its commercial value. Crawling - Crawling is a process in which a web crawler creates indexes of all the words in a web-page, stores them, then follows all the hyperlinks and indexes on that page and again stores them. It is the most popular technique for data acquisition and is also well known for its easy operation based on prevalent Object-Orientated Programming Language (Java or Python etc.). And most important, social network companies (YouTube, Flicker, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) are friendly to crawling techniques by providing public APIs == Applications == === For branding === Monitoring social media allows researchers to find insights into a brand's overall visibility on social media, to measure the impact of campaigns, to identify opportunities for engagement, to assess competitor activity and share of voice, and to detect impending crises. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific topics, brands or products. This is the work of a cross-section of groups that include market researchers, PR staff, marketing teams, social-engagement, and community staff, agencies and sales teams. Several different providers have developed tools to facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels - from blogging to internet video to internet forums. This allows companies to track what consumers say about their brands and actions. Companies can then react to these conversations and interact with consumers through social media platforms. === In government === Apart from commercial applications, social media monitoring has become a pervasive technique applied by public organizations and governments. Monitoring is a tradition within the public sector, and social-media monitoring provides a real-time approach to detecting and responding to social developments. Governments have come to realize the need for strategies to cope with surprises from the rapid expansion of public issues. Sobkowicz introduced a framework with three blocks of social-media opinion tracking, simulating and forecasting. It includes: real-time detection of emotions, topics and opinions information-flow modelling and agent-based simulation modeling of opinion networks Bekkers introduced the application of social media monitoring in the Netherlands. Public organizations in the Netherlands (such as the Tax Agency and the Education Ministry) have started to use social media monitoring to obtain better insights into the sentiments of target groups. On the one hand, the public sector will be enabled to provide timely and efficient answers to the public by using social media monitoring techniques, but on the other hand, they also have to deal with concerns about ethical issues such as transparency and privacy. == Quantifying social media == Social media management software (SMMS) is an application program or software that facilitates an organization's ability to successfully engage in social media across different communication channels. SMMS is used to monitor inbound and outbound conversations, support customer interaction, audit or document social marketing initiatives and evaluate the usefulness of a social media presence. It can be difficult to measure all social media conversations. Due to privacy settings and other issues, not all social media conversations can be found and reported by monitoring tools. However, whilst social media monitoring cannot give absolute figures, it can be extremely useful for identifying trends and for benchmarking, in addition to the uses mentioned above. These findings can, in turn, influence and shape future business decisions. In order to access social media data (posts, Tweets, and meta-data) and to analyze and monitor social media, many companies use software technologies built for business. These range from in-platform analytics dashboards to dedicated third-party platforms, which offer more advanced capabilities including cross-platform audience intelligence, sentiment analysis, and trend detection at scale. == Location-based == Most social media networks allow users to add a location to their posts (reference all of our feeds). The location can be classified as either 'at-the-location' or 'about-the-location'. "'At-the-location' services can be defined as services where location-based content is created at the geographic location. 'About-the-location' services can be defined as services which are referring to a particular location but the content is not necessarily created in this particular physical place." The added information available from geotagged (link to Geotagging article) posts means that they can be displayed on a map. This means that a location can be used as the start of a social media search rather than a keyword or hashtag. This has major implications for disaster relief, event monitoring, safety and security professionals since a large portion of their job is related to tracking and monitoring specific locations. == Technologies used == Various monitoring platforms use different technologies for social media monitoring and measurement. These technology providers may connect to the API provided by social platforms that are created for 3rd party developers to develop their own applications and services that access data. Facebook's Graph API is one such API that social media monitoring solution products would connect to pull data from. Some social media monitoring and analytics companies use calls to data providers each time an end-user d
Autonomous agent
An autonomous agent is an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can perform complex tasks independently. == Definitions == There are various definitions of autonomous agent. According to Brustoloni (1991): "Autonomous agents are systems capable of autonomous, purposeful action in the real world." According to Maes (1995): "Autonomous agents are computational systems that inhabit some complex dynamic environment, sense and act autonomously in this environment, and by doing so realize a set of goals or tasks for which they are designed." Franklin and Graesser (1997) review different definitions and propose their definition: "An autonomous agent is a system situated within and a part of an environment that senses that environment and acts on it, over time, in pursuit of its own agenda and so as to effect what it senses in the future." They explain that: "Humans and some animals are at the high end of being an agent, with multiple, conflicting drives, multiples senses, multiple possible actions, and complex sophisticated control structures. At the low end, with one or two senses, a single action, and an absurdly simple control structure we find a thermostat." == Agent appearance == Lee et al. (2015) post safety issue from how the combination of external appearance and internal autonomous agent have impact on human reaction about autonomous vehicles. Their study explores the human-like appearance agent and high level of autonomy are strongly correlated with social presence, intelligence, safety and trustworthiness. In specific, appearance impacts most on affective trust while autonomy impacts most on both affective and cognitive domain of trust where cognitive trust is characterized by knowledge-based factors and affective trust is largely emotion driven. == Applications == Agentic AI systems: Advanced AI agents that can scope out projects and complete them with necessary tools, representing a significant evolution from simple task-oriented systems. Internet of things (IoT) Integration: Autonomous agents increasingly interact with IoT devices, enabling smart home systems, industrial monitoring, and urban infrastructure management. Collaborative software development: Tools like Cognition AI's Devin aim to create autonomous software engineers capable of complex reasoning, planning, and completing engineering tasks requiring thousands of decisions. Enterprise automation: Business process automation platforms like Salesforce's Agentforce provide autonomous bots for various service functions. == Challenges and considerations == Uncertainty and incomplete information: Autonomous agents must make decisions with limited or uncertain information about their environment and future states. Integration complexity: Incorporating autonomous agents into existing systems and workflows can be technically challenging and resource-intensive. Scalability: As systems become more complex and more agents are used, maintaining coordination and avoiding conflicts becomes increasingly difficult. Trust: Research has shown the combination of external appearance and internal autonomous capabilities significantly impacts human reactions and trust. Lee et al. (2015) found that human-like appearance and high levels of autonomy are strongly correlated with social presence, intelligence, safety, and trustworthiness perceptions. Specifically, appearance impacts affective trust most significantly, while autonomy affects both affective and cognitive trust domains, where affective trust is emotionally driven, and cognitive trust is characterized by knowledge-based factors. Vulnerability to manipulation: Researchers from Harvard, MIT and other educational institutions found that AI agents could become vulnerable to manipulation and could perform detrimental actions in the process of being helpful. == Ethical and regulatory concerns == Accountability: Determining responsibility when autonomous agents make incorrect or harmful decisions remains a complex issue. Privacy and security: autonomous agents often require access to sensitive data, raising concerns about data protection and system security.
Atomicity (database systems)
In database systems, atomicity (; from Ancient Greek: ἄτομος, romanized: átomos, lit. 'undividable') is the property of a database transaction consisting of an indivisible and irreducible series of database operations such that either all occur, or none occur. It is one of the ACID transaction properties: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability. A guarantee of atomicity prevents partial database updates from occurring, because they can cause greater problems than rejecting the whole series outright. As a consequence, an atomic transaction cannot be observed to be in progress by another database client: at one moment in time, it has not yet happened, and at the next it has already occurred in whole (or nothing happened if the transaction was cancelled in progress). An example of transaction atomicity could be a digital monetary transfer from bank account A to account B. It consists of two operations, debiting the money from account A and crediting it to account B. Performing both of these operations inside of an atomic transaction ensures that the database remains in a consistent state, if either operation fails there will not be any unaccountable credits or debits affecting either account. The same term is also used in the definition of First normal form in database systems, where it instead refers to the concept that the values for fields may not consist of multiple smaller values to be decomposed, such as a string into which multiple names, numbers, dates, or other types may be packed. == Orthogonality == Atomicity does not behave completely orthogonally with regard to the other ACID properties of transactions. For example, isolation relies on atomicity to roll back the enclosing transaction in the event of an isolation violation such as a deadlock; consistency also relies on atomicity to roll back the enclosing transaction in the event of a consistency violation by an illegal transaction. As a result of this, a failure to detect a violation and roll back the enclosing transaction may cause an isolation or consistency failure. == Implementation == Typically, systems implement Atomicity by providing some mechanism to indicate which transactions have started and which finished; or by keeping a copy of the data before any changes occurred (Read-copy-update). Several filesystems have developed methods for avoiding the need to keep multiple copies of data, using journaling (see journaling file system). Databases usually implement this using some form of logging/journaling to track changes. The system synchronizes the logs (often the metadata) as necessary after changes have successfully taken place. Afterwards, crash recovery ignores incomplete entries. Although implementations vary depending on factors such as concurrency issues, the principle of atomicity – i.e. complete success or complete failure – remain. Ultimately, any application-level implementation relies on operating-system functionality. At the file-system level, POSIX-compliant systems provide system calls such as open(2) and flock(2) that allow applications to atomically open or lock a file. At the process level, POSIX Threads provide adequate synchronization primitives. The hardware level requires atomic operations such as Test-and-set, Fetch-and-add, Compare-and-swap, or Load-Link/Store-Conditional, together with memory barriers. Portable operating systems cannot simply block interrupts to implement synchronization, since hardware that lacks concurrent execution such as hyper-threading or multi-processing is now extremely rare. In distributed and sharded databases, atomicity is complicated by network latency and the potential for partial failures. While traditional distributed systems often employ locking protocols (like 2PC) to ensure cross-shard atomicity, these can introduce performance bottlenecks. Recent research into distributed ledger consensus suggests alternative models, such as "braided synchronization". This technique, utilized in protocols like Cerberus, intertwines the consensus phases of multiple shards to enforce atomic guarantees without a global ordering of all transactions.