AI Writing Tools

Explore the best AI Writing Tools — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step how-to guides, curated by Aizhi.

  • MinID

    MinID

    MinID is an electronic login system used to secure a range of internet services in the Norwegian public sector. The communication done with MinID is encrypted to secure information from unauthorized usage. Everyone registered in the Norwegian Population Register over the age of 13 years can create a public ID with MinID. As of April 2010, more than 2 million people living in Norway had created user accounts with MinID. To create a public ID, PIN-codes from the Norwegian Tax Administration are needed. == Purpose == The purpose of MinID is to communicate an electronic identity, so that users are authorized to use electronic services, in a secure way. MinID has a user database where social security numbers and PIN-codes are saved. MinID can be used to access more than 50 online services from various Norwegian public agencies, including the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, the Directorate of Taxes and the State Educational Loan. == Controller == The Norwegian Digitalisation Agency (Digdir) is the controller of the personal data handled by MinID. The Norwegian Digitalisation Agency (Norwegian: Digitaliseringsdirektoratet) or Digdir is a government agency subordinate to the Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Governance. It is responsible for help the public sector achieve quality, efficiency, user friendliness, openness and participation, as well as helping the public sector be organized and led in a good way with good intersectoral cooperation. == User profile == Users of MinID have a user profile that contains their mobile phone number and/or e-mail address. This data is used to administrate MinID use. The e-mail address is needed in order to send the user a temporary password if he or she forgets the password. The phone number is needed in order to send an SMS-code at log in or a temporary password if the user forgets the password. == Transparency, correction and deletion == According to the law users can claim full access of the handling of their own personal data. Users also have the right to information about how this data are handled and saved, and how they can correct or delete inaccurate data. Users can at any time choose to delete themselves as a user of MinID. The user profile will then be deleted from the MinID user database. == Extradition to others == MinID passes on the user's social security number and chosen language to the public services he or she logs on to, so that the user can go to other public services without a new login.

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  • Alice and Sparkle

    Alice and Sparkle

    Alice and Sparkle is a 2022 illustrated children's book published by American technology product designer Ammaar Reshi. Reshi created the book using artificial intelligence programs ChatGPT and Midjourney in one weekend, which sparked controversy among artists, both in regard to the copyright status of the book and the quality of the illustration and text. == Plot == A girl named Alice discovers a group of magical and benevolent artificial intelligence beings. She knows that artificial intelligence is powerful, and that it has the power to do good and evil depending on how it is used. One day, she creates her own artificial intelligence and names it Sparkle. Sparkle helps Alice with her homework and plays with her, and they quickly become good friends. However, Sparkle soon grows more powerful and begins to make its own decisions, which makes Alice both proud and scared. She knows that it is her responsibility to guide Sparkle to do good, not evil. Together, Alice and Sparkle use their knowledge to make the world a better place and to teach people about the power of artificial intelligence. The two live happily ever after, spreading the magic of artificial intelligence. == Structure == Including the dedication and postscript, the book contains twenty four pages, about half of which being illustrations provided by Midjourney. The very short story, composed of text generated by ChatGPT, contains 343 words. Some of the illustrations are accompanied by descriptions, at least one of which was provided by Reshi. Both Alice's and Sparkle's appearances change significantly between illustrations, although Alice's is more consistent. Reshi said Midjourney was unable to generate consistent images of Sparkle, so he had to include a line in the book saying that it could turn "into all kinds of robot shapes". == Creation == When reading a children's book to his friend's daughter, Ammaar Reshi "decided he wanted to write his own". He had no experience with creative writing or illustration, so instead used the chatbot ChatGPT to write the story for him and used the image generation software Midjourney to illustrate it. On December 4, 2022, 72 hours after having the idea for the book, he published it on Amazon's digital bookstore, and published a paperback version the following day. == Controversy == On December 9, 2022, Reshi made a thread on Twitter about his experience publishing the book, which soon went viral. Reshi received heavy backlash from artists with concerns over the ethics of art generated by artificial intelligence. He also received death threats and messages encouraging self-harm because of his publication. Many writers and illustrators criticized both the creation process and the product itself, claiming that if artificial intelligence programs such as Midjourney are trained on existing illustrations, then the original artists should be financially compensated for derivative works such as Alice and Sparkle. The book was temporarily removed from Amazon in January 2023 because of "suspicious review activity", caused by a high volume of both five-star and one-star reviews.

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  • Someday (short story)

    Someday (short story)

    "Someday" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the August 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction and reprinted in the collections Earth Is Room Enough (1957), The Complete Robot (1982), Robot Visions (1990), and The Complete Stories, Volume 1 (1990). == Plot summary == The story is set in a future where computers play a central role in organizing society. Humans are employed as computer operators, but they leave most of the thinking to machines. Indeed, whilst binary programming is taught at school, reading and writing have become obsolete. The story concerns a pair of boys who dismantle and upgrade an old Bard, a child's computer whose sole function is to generate random fairy tales. The boys download a book about computers into the Bard's memory in an attempt to expand its vocabulary, but the Bard simply incorporates computers into its standard fairy tale repertoire. The story ends with the boys excitedly leaving the room after deciding to go to the library to learn "squiggles" (writing) as a means of passing secret messages to one another. As they leave, one of the boys accidentally kicks the Bard's on switch. The Bard begins reciting a new story about a poor mistreated and often ignored robot called the Bard, whose sole purpose is to tell stories, which ends with the words: "the little computer knew then that computers would always grow wiser and more powerful until someday—someday—someday—…"

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  • Blackboard system

    Blackboard system

    A blackboard system is an artificial intelligence approach based on the blackboard architectural model, where a common knowledge base, the "blackboard", is iteratively updated by a diverse group of specialist knowledge sources, starting with a problem specification and ending with a solution. Each knowledge source updates the blackboard with a partial solution when its internal constraints match the blackboard state. In this way, the specialists work together to solve the problem. The blackboard model was originally designed as a way to handle complex, ill-defined problems, where the solution is the sum of its parts. == Metaphor == The following scenario provides a simple metaphor that gives some insight into how a blackboard functions: A group of specialists are seated in a room with a large blackboard. They work as a team to brainstorm a solution to a problem, using the blackboard as the workplace for cooperatively developing the solution. The session begins when the problem specifications are written onto the blackboard. The specialists all watch the blackboard, looking for an opportunity to apply their expertise to the developing solution. When someone writes something on the blackboard that allows another specialist to apply their expertise, the second specialist records their contribution on the blackboard, hopefully enabling other specialists to then apply their expertise. This process of adding contributions to the blackboard continues until the problem has been solved. == Components == A blackboard-system application consists of three major components The software specialist modules, which are called knowledge sources (KSs). Like the human experts at a blackboard, each knowledge source provides specific expertise needed by the application. The blackboard, a shared repository of problems, partial solutions, suggestions, and contributed information. The blackboard can be thought of as a dynamic "library" of contributions to the current problem that have been recently "published" by other knowledge sources. The control shell, which controls the flow of problem-solving activity in the system. Just as the eager human specialists need a moderator to prevent them from trampling each other in a mad dash to grab the chalk, KSs need a mechanism to organize their use in the most effective and coherent fashion. In a blackboard system, this is provided by the control shell. === Learnable Task Modeling Language === A blackboard system is the central space in a multi-agent system. It's used for describing the world as a communication platform for agents. To realize a blackboard in a computer program, a machine readable notation is needed in which facts can be stored. One attempt in doing so is a SQL database, another option is the Learnable Task Modeling Language (LTML). The syntax of the LTML planning language is similar to PDDL, but adds extra features like control structures and OWL-S models. LTML was developed in 2007 as part of a much larger project called POIROT (Plan Order Induction by Reasoning from One Trial), which is a Learning from demonstrations framework for process mining. In POIROT, Plan traces and hypotheses are stored in the LTML syntax for creating semantic web services. Here is a small example: A human user is executing a workflow in a computer game. The user presses some buttons and interacts with the game engine. While the user interacts with the game, a plan trace is created. That means the user's actions are stored in a logfile. The logfile gets transformed into a machine readable notation which is enriched by semantic attributes. The result is a textfile in the LTML syntax which is put on the blackboard. Agents (software programs in the blackboard system) are able to parse the LTML syntax. == Implementations == We start by discussing two well known early blackboard systems, BB1 and GBB, below and then discuss more recent implementations and applications. The BB1 blackboard architecture was originally inspired by studies of how humans plan to perform multiple tasks in a trip, used task-planning as a simplified example of tactical planning for the Office of Naval Research. Hayes-Roth & Hayes-Roth found that human planning was more closely modeled as an opportunistic process, in contrast to the primarily top-down planners used at the time: While not incompatible with successive-refinement models, our view of planning is somewhat different. We share the assumption that planning processes operate in a two-dimensional planning space defined on time and abstraction dimensions. However, we assume that people's planning activity is largely opportunistic. That is, at each point in the process, the planner's current decisions and observations suggest various opportunities for plan development. The planner's subsequent decisions follow up on selected opportunities. Sometimes, these decision-sequences follow an orderly path and produce a neat top-down expansion as described above. However, some decisions and observations might also suggest less orderly opportunities for plan development. A key innovation of BB1 was that it applied this opportunistic planning model to its own control, using the same blackboard model of incremental, opportunistic, problem-solving that was applied to solve domain problems. Meta-level reasoning with control knowledge sources could then monitor whether planning and problem-solving were proceeding as expected or stalled. If stalled, BB1 could switch from one strategy to another as conditions – such as the goals being considered or the time remaining – changed. BB1 was applied in multiple domains: construction site planning, inferring 3-D protein structures from X-ray crystallography, intelligent tutoring systems, and real-time patient monitoring. BB1 also allowed domain-general language frameworks to be designed for wide classes of problems. For example, the ACCORD language framework defined a particular approach to solving configuration problems. The problem-solving approach was to incrementally assemble a solution by adding objects and constraints, one at a time. Actions in the ACCORD language framework appear as short English-like commands or sentences for specifying preferred actions, events to trigger KSes, preconditions to run a KS action, and obviation conditions to discard a KS action that is no longer relevant. GBB focused on efficiency, in contrast to BB1, which focused more on sophisticated reasoning and opportunistic planning. GBB improves efficiency by allowing blackboards to be multi-dimensional, where dimensions can be either ordered or not, and then by increasing the efficiency of pattern matching. GBB1, one of GBB's control shells implements BB1's style of control while adding efficiency improvements. Other well-known of early academic blackboard systems are the Hearsay II speech recognition system and Douglas Hofstadter's Copycat and Numbo projects. Some more recent examples of deployed real-world applications include: The PLAN component of the Mission Control System for RADARSAT-1, an Earth observation satellite developed by Canada to monitor environmental changes and Earth's natural resources. The GTXImage CAD software by GTX Corporation was developed in the early 1990s using a set of rulebases and neural networks as specialists operating on a blackboard system. Adobe Acrobat Capture (now discontinued), as it used a blackboard system to decompose and recognize image pages to understand the objects, text, and fonts on the page. This function is currently built into the retail version of Adobe Acrobat as "OCR Text Recognition". Details of a similar OCR blackboard for Farsi text are in the public domain. Blackboard systems are used routinely in many military C4ISTAR systems for detecting and tracking objects. Another example of current use is in Game AI, where they are considered a standard AI tool to help with adding AI to video games. == Recent developments == Blackboard-like systems have been constructed within modern Bayesian machine learning settings, using agents to add and remove Bayesian network nodes. In these 'Bayesian Blackboard' systems, the heuristics can acquire more rigorous probabilistic meanings as proposal and acceptances in Metropolis Hastings sampling though the space of possible structures. Conversely, using these mappings, existing Metropolis-Hastings samplers over structural spaces may now thus be viewed as forms of blackboard systems even when not named as such by the authors. Such samplers are commonly found in musical transcription algorithms for example. Blackboard systems have also been used to build large-scale intelligent systems for the annotation of media content, automating parts of traditional social science research. In this domain, the problem of integrating various AI algorithms into a single intelligent system arises spontaneously, with blackboards providing a way for a collection of distributed, modular natural language processing algorithm

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  • CPU modes

    CPU modes

    CPU modes (also called processor modes, CPU states, CPU privilege levels and other names) are operating modes for the central processing unit of most computer architectures that place restrictions on the type and scope of operations that can be performed by instructions being executed by the CPU. For example, this design allows an operating system to run with more privileges than application software by running the operating systems and applications in different modes. Ideally, only highly trusted kernel code is allowed to execute in the unrestricted mode; everything else (including non-supervisory portions of the operating system) runs in a restricted mode and must use a system call (via interrupt) to request the kernel perform on its behalf any operation that could damage or compromise the system, making it impossible for untrusted programs to alter or damage other programs (or the computing system itself). Device drivers are designed to be part of the kernel due to the need for frequent I/O access. Multiple modes can be implemented, e.g. allowing a hypervisor to run multiple operating system supervisors beneath it, which is the basic design of many virtual machine systems available today. == Mode types == The unrestricted mode is often called kernel mode, but many other designations exist (master mode, supervisor mode, privileged mode, etc.). Restricted modes are usually referred to as user modes, but are also known by many other names (slave mode, problem state, etc.). Hypervisor Hypervisor mode is used to support virtualization, allowing the simultaneous operation of multiple operating systems. Kernel and user In kernel mode, the CPU may perform any operation allowed by its architecture; any instruction may be executed, any I/O operation initiated, any area of memory accessed, and so on. In the other CPU modes, certain restrictions on CPU operations are enforced by the hardware. Typically, certain instructions are not permitted (especially those—including I/O operations—that could alter the global state of the machine), some memory areas cannot be accessed, etc. User-mode capabilities of the CPU are typically a subset of those available in kernel mode, but in some cases, such as hardware emulation of non-native architectures, they may be significantly different from those available in standard kernel mode. Some CPU architectures support more modes than those, often with a hierarchy of privileges. These architectures are often said to have ring-based security, wherein the hierarchy of privileges resembles a set of concentric rings, with the kernel mode in the center. Multics hardware was the first significant implementation of ring security, but many other hardware platforms have been designed along similar lines, including the Intel 80286 protected mode, and the IA-64 as well, though it is referred to by a different name in these cases. Mode protection may extend to resources beyond the CPU hardware itself. Hardware registers track the current operating mode of the CPU, but additional virtual-memory registers, page-table entries, and other data may track mode identifiers for other resources. For example, a CPU may be operating in Ring 0 as indicated by a status word in the CPU itself, but every access to memory may additionally be validated against a separate ring number for the virtual-memory segment targeted by the access, and/or against a ring number for the physical page (if any) being targeted. This has been demonstrated with the PSP handheld system. Hardware that meets the Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements makes writing software to efficiently support a virtual machine much simpler. Such a system can run software that "believes" it is running in supervisor mode, but is actually running in user mode. == Architectures == Several computer systems introduced in the 1960s, such as the IBM System/360, DEC PDP-6/PDP-10, the GE-600/Honeywell 6000 series, and the Burroughs B5000 series and B6500 series, support two CPU modes; a mode that grants full privileges to code running in that mode, and a mode that prevents direct access to input/output devices and some other hardware facilities to code running in that mode. The first mode is referred to by names such as supervisor state (System/360), executive mode (PDP-6/PDP-10), master mode (GE-600 series), control mode (B5000 series), and control state (B6500 series). The second mode is referred to by names such as problem state (System/360), user mode (PDP-6/PDP-10), slave mode (GE-600 series), and normal state (B6500 series); there are multiple non-control modes in the B5000 series. === RISC-V === RISC-V has three main CPU modes: User Mode (U), Supervisor Mode (S), and Machine Mode (M). Virtualization is supported via an orthogonal CSR setting instead of a fourth mode.

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  • SCIgen

    SCIgen

    SCIgen is a paper generator that uses context-free grammar to randomly generate nonsense in the form of computer science research papers. Its original data source was a collection of computer science papers downloaded from CiteSeer. All elements of the papers are formed, including graphs, diagrams, and citations. Created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, its stated aim is "to maximize amusement, rather than coherence." Originally created in 2005 to expose the lack of scrutiny of submissions to conferences, the generator subsequently became used, primarily by Chinese academics, to create large numbers of fraudulent conference submissions, leading to the retraction of 122 SCIgen generated papers and the creation of detection software to combat its use. == Sample output == Opening abstract of Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy: Many physicists would agree that, had it not been for congestion control, the evaluation of web browsers might never have occurred. In fact, few hackers worldwide would disagree with the essential unification of voice-over-IP and public/private key pair. In order to solve this riddle, we confirm that SMPs can be made stochastic, cacheable, and interposable. == Prominent results == In 2005, a paper generated by SCIgen, Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy, was accepted as a non-reviewed paper to the 2005 World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI) and the authors were invited to speak. The authors of SCIgen described their hoax on their website, and it soon received great publicity when picked up by Slashdot. WMSCI withdrew their invitation, but the SCIgen team went anyway, renting space in the hotel separately from the conference and delivering a series of randomly generated talks on their own "track". The organizer of these WMSCI conferences is Professor Nagib Callaos. From 2000 until 2005, the WMSCI was also sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE stopped granting sponsorship to Callaos from 2006 to 2008. Submitting the paper was a deliberate attempt to embarrass WMSCI, which the authors claim accepts low-quality papers and sends unsolicited requests for submissions in bulk to academics. As the SCIgen website states: One useful purpose for such a program is to auto-generate submissions to conferences that you suspect might have very low submission standards. A prime example, which you may recognize from spam in your inbox, is SCI/IIIS and its dozens of co-located conferences (check out the very broad conference description on the WMSCI 2005 website). Computing writer Stan Kelly-Bootle noted in ACM Queue that many sentences in the "Rooter" paper were individually plausible, which he regarded as posing a problem for automated detection of hoax articles. He suggested that even human readers might be taken in by the effective use of jargon ("The pun on root/router is par for MIT-graduate humor, and at least one occurrence of methodology is mandatory") and attribute the paper's apparent incoherence to their own limited knowledge. His conclusion was that "a reliable gibberish filter requires a careful holistic review by several peer domain experts". === Schlangemann === The pseudonym "Herbert Schlangemann" was used to publish fake scientific articles in international conferences that claimed to practice peer review. The name is taken from the Swedish short film Der Schlangemann. In 2008, in response to a series of Call-for-Paper e-mails, SCIgen was used to generate a false scientific paper titled Towards the Simulation of E-Commerce, using "Herbert Schlangemann" as the author. The article was accepted at the 2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE 2008), co-sponsored by the IEEE, to be held in Wuhan, China, and the author was invited to be a session chair on grounds of his fictional Curriculum Vitae. The official review comment: "This paper presents cooperative technology and classical Communication. In conclusion, the result shows that though the much-touted amphibious algorithm for the refinement of randomized algorithms is impossible, the well-known client-server algorithm for the analysis of voice-over-IP by Kumar and Raman runs in _(n) time. The authors can clearly identify important features of visualization of DHTs and analyze them insightfully. It is recommended that the authors should develop ideas more cogently, organizes them more logically, and connects them with clear transitions." The paper was available for a short time in the IEEE Xplore Database, but was then removed. The entire story is described in the official "Herbert Schlangemann" blog, and it also received attention in Slashdot and the German-language technology-news site Heise Online. In 2009, the same incident happened and Herbert Schlangemann's latest fake paper PlusPug: A Methodology for the Improvement of Local-Area Networks was accepted for oral presentation at the 2009 International Conference on e-Business and Information System Security (EBISS 2009), also co-sponsored by IEEE, to be held again in Wuhan, China. In all cases, the published papers were withdrawn from the conferences' proceedings, and the conference organizing committee as well as the names of the keynote speakers were removed from their websites. === List of works with notable acceptance === ==== In conferences ==== Rob Thomas: Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy, 2005 for WMSCI (see above) Mathias Uslar's paper was accepted to the IPSI-BG conference. Professor Genco Gulan published a paper in the 3rd International Symposium of Interactive Media Design. A 2013 scientometrics paper demonstrated that at least 85 SCIgen papers have been published by IEEE and Springer. Over 120 SCIgen papers were removed according to this research. ==== In journals ==== Students at Iran's Sharif University of Technology published a paper in Elsevier's Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation. The students wrote under the surname "MosallahNejad", which translates literally from Persian language (in spite of not being a traditional Persian name) as "from an Armed Breed". The paper was subsequently removed when the publishers were informed that it was a joke paper. Mikhail Gelfand published a translation of the "Rooter" article in the Russian-language Journal of Scientific Publications of Aspirants and Doctorants in August 2008. Gelfand was protesting against the journal, which was apparently not peer-reviewed and was being used by Russian PhD candidates to publish in an "accredited" scientific journal, charging them 4,000 Rubles to do so. The accreditation was revoked two weeks later. (See Dissernet for related information.) Springer Science+Business Media and IEEE were also the subject of similar pranks. === Spoofing Google Scholar and h-index calculators === Refereeing performed on behalf of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has also been subject to criticism after fake papers were discovered in conference publications, most notably by Labbé and a researcher using the pseudonym of Schlangemann. Cyril Labbé from Grenoble University demonstrated the vulnerability of h-index calculations based on Google Scholar output by feeding it a large set of SCIgen-generated documents that were citing each other, effectively an academic link farm, in a 2010 paper. Using this method the author managed to rank "Ike Antkare" ahead of Albert Einstein for instance. === 2013 retractions === In 2013, over 122 published conference papers created by SCIgen were retracted by Springer and the IEEE. Unlike previous submissions that were intended to be pranks, this submission were largely made by Chinese academics, who were using SCIgen papers to boost their publication record. === SciDetect === In 2015, SciDetect was released by Springer. This software, developed by Cyril Labbé, is designed to automatically detect papers generated by SCIgen. === 2021 report === In 2021, a study was published on 243 SCIgen papers that had been published in the academic literature. They found that SCIgen papers made up 75 per million papers (< 0.01%) in information science, and that only a small fraction of the detected papers had been dealt with.

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  • The Old Axolotl

    The Old Axolotl

    The Old Axolotl (Polish: Starość aksolotla) is a 2015 digital-only novel by Polish science-fiction author Jacek Dukaj. The novel was released in Polish on March 10, 2015, and shortly afterward, on March 24 that year, in English (translated by Stanley Bill). It has been described as "an experiment in reading (and creating) the electronic literature of the future". It is Dukaj's first novel to be published in English, though several of his short stories (The Golden Galley, 1996, The Iron General, 2010, The Apocrypha of Lem, 2011) have been translated prior to this. The novel has inspired two Netflix original series: the 2020 Belgian Into the Night, and its 2022 Turkish language spin-off Yakamoz S-245. == Plot == The novel presents a post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk vision of Earth where biological life has been wiped out, inhabited by robots and mechs, many of which are humans whose consciousness has been digitized in the wake of an extinction event. == Significance and analysis == The novel is an example of electronic literature, available only in digital formats, and has no traditional paper version. It was designed from the beginning not only to incorporate more traditional elements such as illustrations, but also hypertext, and 3D-printable models of main robotic characters designed by Alex Jaeger, the art director of Transformers films. The novel composition is layered, with the narrative layer, an encyclopedic/hyperlinked footnote layer, and a multimedia layer, including illustrations and a short promotional video by the Oscar-nominated Platige Image studio. One of the novel's central questions is: "What does it mean to be human?" Other subjects include post humanism and other "staples of cyberpunk and related genres, such as the artificial intelligence". The novel is representative of Dukaj's prose, posing philosophical questions about the future of man and technology. The author explained that: "stories such as The Old Axolotl that model an ‘escape from the body’ are born out of a sense of progress as a process of ‘de-animalising’ human beings through science. This has its origin in the pre-Enlightenment intuition of ‘liberation from nature’. For one of the last shackles of nature is corporeality itself, the limitations of our physicality." The other major element of the novel is Dukaj's attempts to introduce the reader to the new style of electronic literature. The novel was nominated for the 2016 Janusz A. Zajdel Award.

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  • Emi Kusano

    Emi Kusano

    Emi Kusano (Japanese: 草野 絵美, Hepburn: Kusano Emi; born August 4, 1990) is a Tokyobased Japanese multidisciplinary artist known for creating photography, video, and installations using generative AI technology. Her work explores themes of nostalgia, pop culture, and collective memory. Her work explores themes of nostalgia, pop culture, and collective memory. She is recognized as one of the early practitioners of generative AI art. Her work has been exhibited at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and screened at the M+ Museum’s Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival. Additionally, she has participated in prestigious international art fairs, including Paris Photo and Art Basel Hong Kong. In 2025, she was named one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders. In 2026, she was selected as a fellow for the AI x Arts Fellowship at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. Kusano serves as a part-time lecturer at the Tokyo University of the Arts and is the producer and vocalist for the Synthwave music unit, Satellite Young. == Early life == === Photography === Kusano was born and raised in Tokyo. Kusano's career began during her high school years before 2008 when she became involved in street fashion photography. Her photographs, primarily taken in Harajuku, were published on "Japanese Streets", "Metropolis", CNN's travel guide magazine "CNN GO","WGSN". Her photography was exhibited at the FIT Museum in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. == Career == === Music and Installation work === Since 2014, in collaboration with BelleMaison Sekine, Kusano has led "Satellite Young," a synthwave music unit s the lead vocalist, she sings about blending 1980s idol culture with lyrics that tackle contemporary issues such as planned obsolescence ("Sony Timer"), online dating, artificial intelligence, and social media. Their music, known for its conceptual depth, has earned international niche recognition. "Satellite Young" has participated in music festivals, including "South by Southwest," showcasing their unique fusion of retro aesthetics and modern critiques. In 2018, she was selected to participate in "Art Hack Day," an interdisciplinary art hackathon held at The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. where she presented "Singing Dream," a karaoke machine endowed with artificial life, earning the Jury Prize. "Instababy Generator," a 2019 installation co-created with Junichi Yamaoka, explored the concept of designer babies and received recognition at the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery. In October 2020, operating under the name Emi Satellite, she debuted as a solo singer with her first single "Glass Ceiling," an empowerment anthem that addresses the challenges faced by women and encourages progress towards the future. The music video for this song features a direction where strong women rewrite the roles of protagonists in a Bishōjo game, a type of dating simulation game. This concept later served as a prototype for Shinsei Galverse. === Challenge for Blockchain Art === In 2021, she explored the financial world through her single "IPO" and entered the NFT space with "Love Is an IPO," her first NFT work on Ethereum, sold on Foundation. In April 2022, she co-founded the crowdfunded anime project "Shinsei Galverse" with Ayaka Ohira, Devin Mancuso, and Jack Baldwin. serving as one of the executive directors overseeing the creative direction and story. The project's NFT collection of 8,888 ranked #1 on OpenSea's "Top NFTs" for several days, marking one of Japan's first globally successful blockchain art projects. In 2023, Shinsei Galverse produced the official "I like u" music video by Grammy-nominated singer Tove Lo as an initial anime endeavor. Kusano also contributed to discussions on Web3.0 and blockchain technology as a panelist in seminars organized by the Digital Agency of Japan. === AI art === In May 2023, Kusano's first AI art collection "Neural Fad" depicting imaginary fashion history sold out 100 pieces within 24 hours at the "Bright Moments Tokyo" In June, she created WWDJAPAN's first AI-generated magazine cover using her own face. It is the first AI cover in Japanese fashion media. She was also appointed t to the Cultural Affairs Agency's Copyright Subcommittee, she participates in discussions on generative AI and copyright. Her "Synthetic Reflections" self-portrait series debuted on SuperRare, with the first piece auctioned for 3.5 ETH (equivalent to 6,480 US dollars at the time). In July 2023, she co-exhibited a 3D AI-generated dress at Christie's "Future Frequencies" auction with Gucci, alongside Claire Silver. In September, her 30-piece "Pixelated Perception" exhibit at Art Blocks Marfa explored 1990s media and gender, also showcased at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. In December, her "Techno-Animism" AI art collection fused Japanese animism with technology. Collaborating with a U.S. gallery, she unveiled 336 pieces during a two-week Art Basel world tour. Throughout the two-week tour, she sold a total of 336 pieces, generating 11.2 ETH (equivalent to 21,264 US dollars at the time). === Generative art === In February 2024, the generative art platform Art Blocks selected the work "Melancholic Magical Maiden," for its Curated category. This piece reconstructs the aesthetics of 1990s magical girl anime, offering a critique of past anime heroines. It sold out within an hour, with all 300 pieces going for a total of 57 ETH (equivalent to approximately 215,385US dollars at the time). In April 2024, Emi Kusano spoke at the Standing Committee on Copyright and Other Rights at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland, where she presented AI-specific information for discussion. == Style and technique == Kusano draws inspiration from Japanese retro-futurism as a foundation for her artwork, which explores the cutting-edge of technology. This approach is fueled by nostalgia for the pre-internet era, specifically the postwar period when Japanese mass media held significant sway. By blending modern technology with retro-culture, she captures the complex feelings of love, hate, and ambivalence towards present and future accelerationism. While at university, Kusano was profoundly influenced by Naoki Sakai, the industrial designer responsible for igniting the retro-futurism movement. In her musical project "Satellite Young", Kusano dons the persona of an '80s female idol and sings about contemporary technology. In her installation piece "Singing Dream", she investigates the concept of an artificial life form inhabiting a karaoke machine, which has been popular since the 1980s, compelling people to sing. In the collaborative NFT art project "Shinsei Galverse", Kusano reimagines a cyberpunk anime primarily featuring female characters, incorporating elements of magical girls popular in the early Heisei period. == Personal life == Kusano has two sons. In August 2021, she minted her older son Zombie Zoo Keeper's pixel art on "OpenSea" as part of his summer research project. The artwork was purchased by notable figures including Brud CEO Trevor McFedries and Steve Aoki, who bought the piece for the equivalent of 21.82 thousand US dollars, highlighting the intersection of art, technology, and family in her work.

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  • Pixlr

    Pixlr

    Pixlr is a group of SaaS creative tools including Pixlr.com, Designs.ai and Vectr.com. Pixlr.com is a cloud-based set of image editing tools and utilities, including AI image generation and enhancements. The Pixlr suite targets users who require subjectively simple, or more advanced, photo editing as well as graphic design. It features a freemium business model with subscription plans—Plus, Premium and Teams. The platform can be used on desktop and also smartphones and tablets. Pixlr is compatible with various image formats such as JPEG, PNG, WEBP, GIF, PSD (Photoshop Document) and PXZ (native Pixlr document format). Designs.ai lets users create content using AI, with a goal of being within two minutes, across different media types including videos, text, banners and audio. Vectr.com was acquired in 2017 before being spun out into Pixlr Group in 2023. == History == Pixlr was founded in 2008 and built on Macromedia Flash. On 19 July 2011, Autodesk announced that they had acquired the Pixlr suite. In 2013, Time listed Pixlr as one of the top 50 websites of the year. In 2017, Pixlr was acquired from Autodesk. It was subsequently rebuilt and relaunched in HTML5 in 2019. In September 2023, Pixlr was awarded as the Top 13 GenAi Web Product by the world's top venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. In November 2023, Pixlr, Designs.ai and Vectr were combined as a new business group named Pixlr Group focusing on generative AI and creative software solutions. In May 2024, Pixlr was featured as one of the top 18 progressive web applications highlighted on Google I/O. == Versions == Pixlr.com rebranded itself as a full creative suite in 2019 by introducing Pixlr X, Pixlr E and Pixlr M. The platform introduced more features in December 2021 with a new logo and added tools which included: Brushes, the 'Heal tool', Animation, and Batch upload. The brush feature enables the creation of hand-drawn effects. The Heal tool allows users to remove unwanted objects from their images whereas the Animation feature can be used to include movements into their edits. Users can also utilize Batch upload to edit up to 50 images simultaneously. In November 2022, Pixlr 2023 was launched, adding more tools such as "AI smart resize", colorization, text wrapping and other additional effects. In November 2023, Pixlr 2024 was launched with Pixlr Designer and new AI-powered updates which includes AI image generation, AI infill, AI inpainting and more.

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  • Wayve

    Wayve

    Wayve Technologies Ltd is a British autonomous driving technology company focused on developing self-driving vehicle systems through end-to-end deep learning. Founded in 2017 by researchers from the University of Cambridge, Wayve’s approach eschews detailed 3D maps and hand-coded rules, in favor of a self-learning “AI driver” that learns from camera data and driving experience. The London-headquartered startup has garnered significant attention and funding for its visually-based method. == History == Wayve was founded in Cambridge, England, on August 21, 2017, by Amar Shah and Alex Kendall, two machine learning PhD students at the University of Cambridge. Shah initially served as CEO while Kendall was CTO, and the pair set out to develop an unconventional self-driving car system using machine learning at every layer of the driving task. In May 2018, Wayve emerged from stealth mode with backing from early-stage investors. At this time the company had around 10 employees, and its advisory investors included Uber’s Chief Scientist, Zoubin Ghahramani, who shared Wayve’s vision of a learning-centric driving AI. In 2019, Wayve achieved a milestone by training a car to drive autonomously on public roads it had never seen before, using only cameras, a basic GPS map, and end-to-end deep learning control. The company moved its base to London and secured a $20 million Series A funding round in November 2019. This investment enabled Wayve to launch a pilot fleet of autonomous electric vehicles in central London for real-world testing. During these trials, Wayve’s cars (such as retrofitted Jaguar I-Pace SUVs) began navigating the complex, narrow streets of London to prove the system’s ability to adapt to challenging urban scenarios. In 2020, co-founder Amar Shah departed the company, and Alex Kendall assumed the role of CEO. The startup joined the Microsoft for Startups: Autonomous Driving program in 2020, leveraging Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing for training its machine learning models at scale. It also committed to testing exclusively on electric vehicles, and a goal to reduce carbon emissions. In 2021, Wayve entered pilot programs with major UK retailers. It launched a 12-month autonomous delivery trial with supermarket chain Asda, and received a £10 million ($13.6 million) investment from online grocer Ocado Group as part of a partnership to develop self-driving grocery delivery vans. Ocado’s backing gave Wayve access to a fleet of delivery vans for data collection and testing on busy London routes (with human safety drivers present) to train its AI in urban traffic. In 2022, after a successful Series B funding round, the company extended road testing beyond the UK to other regions, and, by 2023, in multiple countries. The company had begun operating in the United States and in continental Europe, in preparation for larger commercial deployments. In 2023, Wayve announced a collaboration with Nissan to integrate Wayve’s AI-driven software into its ProPilot ADAS system, slated to launch in fiscal year 2027. Wayve received strategic investment from Uber, in 2024, to jointly develop autonomous ride-hailing services. The two companies plan to trial a fully driverless robotaxi service in London, supported by a UK government program to accelerate commercial self-driving pilots to as early as 2026. To demonstrate the scalability of its technology, Wayve conducted an “AI-500” roadshow project, driving in dozens of cities across Asia, Europe, and North America using the same AI model. By mid-2025, it had completed autonomous driving demos in 90 cities without prior HD mapping. In April 2025, Wayve opened its first Asian research hub in Japan, with investment by SoftBank, to improve its model’s generalization using local driving data. That year, the company conducted driving tests in over 500 cities in Europe, North America and Japan without city-specific programming. In February 2026, Nissan, Uber and Wayve announced their collaboration on robotaxi development, with the aim of launching a pilot programme in Tokyo by late 2026. Wayve also formed a strategic alliance with Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis on personal vehicle and robotaxi applications. == Financing and investors == Wayve has been backed by a mix of venture capital (VC) firms, corporate investors, and individuals. Its initial seed funding came from funds such as Compound (NYC) and Firstminute Capital (London), as well as Cambridge-based angel investors, in 2018. Academic Pieter Abbeel and Uber’s chief scientist, Zoubin Ghahramani, were early backers. In November 2019, Wayve raised a $20 million Series A led by Eclipse Ventures, with participation from Balderton Capital and other prior investors. The Series A financing was used to fund the company’s first autonomous trials in London, and marked the first time a European self-driving car startup had secured a U.S. VC as lead investor. In October 2021, Ocado Group invested £10 million (approximately $13.6 million) in Wayve as a strategic partner in autonomous grocery delivery. This brought Wayve’s total funding to around $60 million at that time. The Series B round followed in January 2022, when Wayve announced $200 million in new funding led by Eclipse Ventures, with D1 Capital Partners, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Linse Capital. Balderton, Microsoft and Virgin Group joined as strategic backers. Baillie Gifford and Compound also participated; Ocado increased its stake as a strategic investor; and Meta AI head Yann LeCun and Richard Branson also became investors. Wayve’s Series C in May 2024 closed a $1.05 billion, led by Japan’s SoftBank Group. The funding round was the largest-ever for a UK AI company, and included new investor Nvidia, and returning investors Microsoft and Eclipse Ventures, among others. Uber also joined as a stratgic partner and a stakeholder. The Series C round increased Wayve’s total funding raised to about $1.3 billion to date from investors including SoftBank, Microsoft and Nvidia, and lifted Wayve’s valuation into “unicorn” status. In February 2026, Wayve announced a $1.2 billion Series D funding round; later that month, the company reported that $1.5 billion had been raised from, primarily, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, Nissan, and existing backers Uber, Microsoft and Nvidia, increasing Wayve's overall valuation to $8.6 billion. == Technology == Wayve’s self-driving approach centers on end-to-end deep learning and a vision-based AI system. Unlike conventional autonomous vehicles that depend on high-definition maps, hand-coded rules, and arrays of expensive lidar sensors, Wayve’s platform learns to drive predominantly using camera data and machine learning algorithms. The company refers to its AI-driven driving software as an “Embodied AI” or AI Driver, emphasizing that the system learns from experience (both real and simulated) to handle complex or novel situations rather than following pre-programmed instructions, not unlike Tesla's approach. The Wayve hardware-agnostic autonomy stack consists of a suite of video cameras, with basic automotive sensors, mounted on the vehicle, and paired with onboard compute units that are powered by GPUs to run the AI models. This vision-only philosophy is similar to Tesla’s Autopilot/FSDB model, but Wayve’s solution is vehicle-agnostic and mapless. Wayve’s strategy is to provide its driving AI as an OEM-ready platform; it plans to license or embed its technology into vehicles made by established automakers rather than build its own cars. Wayve’s development vehicles currently use Nvidia’s Orin system-on-chip as the onboard computer for running the AI model, but CEO Kendall has noted that the software can run on “whatever GPU [an automaker] already has in their vehicles” Wayve has built a cloud infrastructure, largely on Microsoft Azure, to process petabytes of this data, and uses simulation tools (known internally as the “Wayve Infinity” simulator) to synthetically generate and practice rare or dangerous scenarios for the AI to learn from. == Corporate affairs == Wayve is a privately held company headquartered in London, England, with its primary research and development office in the Kings Cross area of London. The company was initially incorporated as Wayve Technologies Ltd in the UK. Wayve has also established a presence in the U.S., in Silicon Valley); in Canada, with a research hub in Vancouver; in Yokohama, Japan; in Leonberg, Germany; and in Herzliya, Israel. The Leadership team includes research scientists and engineers with backgrounds in computer vision, robotics, and automotive systems. President Erez Dagan was hired in 2024, following two decades at Mobileye; chief scientist Jamie Shotton is formerly of Microsoft Research; CEO Alex Kendall, originally from New Zealand with a PhD in computer vision from Cambridge, took over as CEO in 2020 after the departure of his co-founder Amar Shah.

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  • Semantic Scholar

    Semantic Scholar

    Semantic Scholar is a research tool for scientific literature. It is developed at the Allen Institute for AI and was publicly released in November 2015. Semantic Scholar uses modern techniques in natural language processing to support the research process, for example by providing automatically generated summaries of scholarly papers. The Semantic Scholar team is actively researching the use of artificial intelligence in natural language processing, machine learning, human–computer interaction, and information retrieval. Semantic Scholar began as a database for the topics of computer science, geoscience, and neuroscience. In 2017, the system began including biomedical literature in its corpus. As of September 2022, it includes over 200 million publications from all fields of science. == Technology == Semantic Scholar provides a one-sentence summary of scientific literature. One of its aims was to address the challenge of reading numerous titles and lengthy abstracts on mobile devices. It also seeks to ensure that the three million scientific papers published yearly reach readers, since it is estimated that only half of this literature is ever read. Artificial intelligence is used to capture the essence of a paper, generating it through an "abstractive" technique. The project uses a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, and machine vision to add a layer of semantic analysis to the traditional methods of citation analysis, and to extract relevant figures, tables, entities, and venues from papers. Another key AI-powered feature is Research Feeds, an adaptive research recommender that uses AI to quickly learn what papers users care about reading and recommends the latest research to help scholars stay up to date. It uses a paper embedding model trained using contrastive learning to find papers similar to those in each Library folder. Semantic Scholar also offers Semantic Reader, an augmented reader with the potential to revolutionize scientific reading by making it more accessible and richly contextual. Semantic Reader provides in-line citation cards that allow users to see citations with TLDR (short for Too Long, Didn't Read) automatically generated short summaries as they read and skimming highlights that capture key points of a paper so users can digest faster. In contrast with Google Scholar and PubMed, Semantic Scholar is designed to highlight the most important and influential elements of a paper. The AI technology is designed to identify hidden connections and links between research topics. Like the previously cited search engines, Semantic Scholar also exploits graph structures, which include the Microsoft Academic Knowledge Graph, Springer Nature's SciGraph, and the Semantic Scholar Corpus (originally a 45 million papers corpus in computer science, neuroscience and biomedicine). == Article identifier == Each paper hosted by Semantic Scholar is assigned a unique identifier called the Semantic Scholar Corpus ID (abbreviated S2CID). The following entry is an example: Liu, Ying; Gayle, Albert A; Wilder-Smith, Annelies; Rocklöv, Joacim (March 2020). "The reproductive number of COVID-19 is higher compared to SARS coronavirus". Journal of Travel Medicine. 27 (2). doi:10.1093/jtm/taaa021. PMID 32052846. S2CID 211099356. == Indexing == Semantic Scholar is free to use and unlike similar search engines (e.g., Google Scholar) does not search for material that is behind a paywall. One study compared the index scope of Semantic Scholar to Google Scholar, and found that for the papers cited by secondary studies in computer science, the two indices had comparable coverage, each only missing a handful of the papers. == Number of users and publications == As of January 2018, following a 2017 project that added biomedical papers and topic summaries, the Semantic Scholar corpus included more than 40 million papers from computer science and biomedicine. In March 2018, Doug Raymond, who developed machine learning initiatives for the Amazon Alexa platform, was hired to lead the Semantic Scholar project. As of August 2019, the number of included papers metadata (not the actual PDFs) had grown to more than 173 million after the addition of the Microsoft Academic Graph records. In 2020, a partnership between Semantic Scholar and the University of Chicago Press Journals made all articles published under the University of Chicago Press available in the Semantic Scholar corpus. At the end of 2020, Semantic Scholar had indexed 190 million papers. In 2020, Semantic Scholar reached seven million users per month.

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  • Asian Digital Finance Forum & Awards

    Asian Digital Finance Forum & Awards

    Asian Digital Finance Forum & Awards (also known as Asian Digital Finance Forum and Awards) is a forum and honorary awards platform convened in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It has been hosted in a hybrid format (virtual and in-person), with editions reported in 2022, 2023 and 2025. The event is organised by the Asian FinTech Academy (AFTA) in collaboration with a number of local and international institutions. == Overview == The forum has featured international academic, industry, and policy speakers and has recognised institutions and individuals for contributions related to digital finance and fintech innovation. Media coverage has described participation and recognition at the forum as spanning multiple regions, with institutions and individuals from South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America featured across different editions. == Awards and recognition == The forum and awards were held in a hybrid format with virtual and in-person proceedings at Hilton Colombo in the 2022 and 2023 editions. The Asian Digital Finance Forum & Awards presents honorary recognitions to institutions and individuals for contributions to digital finance, financial inclusion, and related regulatory, technological, and policy developments. Media coverage has described the recognitions as non-competitive and based on demonstrated leadership and impact rather than open nominations. In 2025, the forum and awards served as an anchor initiative associated with the Asia International Digital Economy & AI in Finance Summit at Port City Colombo, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence in finance, financial inclusion, and governance-related themes. === 2022 === According to reporting by Daily FT, institutions recognised at the 2022 edition included Sri Lanka’s Bank of Ceylon, Commercial Bank of Ceylon, Hatton National Bank, and People’s Bank, alongside international organisations and fintech-sector contributors. === 2023 === Coverage of the 2023 forum described recognitions awarded to India’s International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) for regulatory innovation, as well as to digital finance and payments platforms including Dialog Genie and SLT-Mobitel mCash. IDEMIA’s Asia–Pacific operations were also recognised for contributions related to biometric and digital identity technologies in financial services. === 2025 === For the 2025 edition, institutional honourees reported in the media included Nium (Singapore), recognised for cross-border payments optimisation, and Paytm (India), recognised for AI-powered financial inclusion initiatives. A Visionary Award for Next-Generation Financial Hub Development was presented to Port City Colombo in recognition of its fintech- and AI-oriented development strategy. Individual honourees reported for 2025 included Sopnendu Mohanty (Singapore), Neil Tan (Hong Kong), Purvi Munot (United Arab Emirates), and Amira Abdelaziz (Egypt), recognised for contributions spanning fintech governance, ecosystem development, inclusive wealth technology, and AI-driven financial policy and regulation. In 2025, media reports described the awards as being subject to an independent validation framework. The process was led by Dr. Sivaguru S. Sritharan, appointed as Global Validation Chair, and involved independent research, analytical review, and benchmarking against international standards, with recognitions characterised as honorary and non-competitive.

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  • IruSoft

    IruSoft

    IruSoft (Arabic: آيروسوفت) is an insurance regulatory platform designated for licensing, supervision and inspection of the insurance sector within a country. The platform introduced unique supervision-technology (suptech), insurance-technology (insurtech) and regulatory-technology (regtech) automated modules by which a regulator requires less resources to ensure fairness, transparency and competition and to prevent conflicts of interest in the sector. IruSoft was founded by Abdullah Al-Salloum and owned by the Insurance Regulatory Unit in Kuwait. The Insurance Regulatory Unit optimized processing insurance-sector's customer complaints by issuing Resolution No. (1) of 2022 that introduced IruSoft's complaints public module; an automated resolution center, by which the process of receiving submitted complaints, passing them on to the platforms of licensed insurance companies, tracking matter-related discussions and updates and getting them escalated if unresolved to be discussed by a committee assigned by the unit is integrally automated and analyzed for better key performance indicators.

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  • Artificial intelligence engineering

    Artificial intelligence engineering

    Artificial intelligence engineering (AI engineering) is a technical discipline that focuses on the design, development, and deployment of AI systems. AI engineering involves applying engineering principles and methodologies to create scalable, efficient, and reliable AI-based solutions. It merges aspects of data engineering and software engineering to create real-world applications in diverse domains such as healthcare, finance, autonomous systems, and industrial automation. == Terminology ambiguity == According to Chip Huyen's book AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models, the term AI engineering refers to the process of building applications that use foundation models, which are typically models developed by a small number of research laboratories and made available as a service. Huyen distinguishes this from machine learning (ML) engineering, which involves building and deploying models developed in-house. She notes that most practical AI systems combine both approaches. For example, a customer-support chatbot may use a generative model to produce responses while also incorporating locally built components such as request classifiers or scoring mechanisms to assess response quality. As a result, the terms AI engineering and ML engineering are often used together or interchangeably in practice. The distinction and broader usage of the term have been discussed in industry publications and interviews, where AI engineering has been described as an emerging discipline focused on productionizing applications built with foundation models. == Key components == AI engineering integrates a variety of technical domains and practices, all of which are essential to building scalable, reliable, and ethical AI systems. === Data engineering and infrastructure === Data serves as the cornerstone of AI systems, necessitating careful engineering to ensure premium quality, wide spread availability, and usability. AI engineers gather large, diverse datasets from multiple sources such as databases, APIs, and real-time streams. This data undergoes cleaning, normalization, and preprocessing, often facilitated by automated data pipelines that manage extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) processes. Efficient storage solutions, such as SQL (or NoSQL) databases and data lakes, must be selected based on data characteristics and use cases. Security measures, including encryption and access controls, are critical for protecting sensitive information and ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR. Scalability is essential, frequently involving cloud services and distributed computing frameworks to handle growing data volumes effectively. === Algorithm selection and optimization === Selecting the appropriate algorithm is crucial for the success of any AI system. Engineers evaluate the problem (which could be classification or regression, for example) to determine the most suitable machine learning algorithm, including deep learning paradigms. Once an algorithm is chosen, optimizing it through hyperparameter tuning is essential to enhance efficiency and accuracy. Techniques such as grid search or Bayesian optimization are employed, and engineers often utilize parallelization to expedite training processes, particularly for large models and datasets. For existing models, techniques like transfer learning can be applied to adapt pre-trained models for specific tasks, reducing the time and resources needed for training. === Deep learning engineering === Deep learning is particularly important for tasks involving large and complex datasets. Engineers design neural network architectures tailored to specific applications, such as convolutional neural networks for visual tasks or recurrent neural networks for sequence-based tasks. Transfer learning, where pre-trained models are fine-tuned for specific use cases, helps streamline development and often enhances performance. Optimization for deployment in resource-constrained environments, such as mobile devices, involves techniques like pruning and quantization to minimize model size while maintaining performance. Engineers also mitigate data imbalance through augmentation and synthetic data generation, ensuring robust model performance across various classes. === Natural language processing === Natural language processing (NLP) is a crucial component of AI engineering, focused on enabling machines to understand and generate human language. The process begins with text preprocessing to prepare data for machine learning models. Recent advancements, particularly transformer-based models like BERT and GPT, have greatly improved the ability to understand context in language. AI engineers work on various NLP tasks, including sentiment analysis, machine translation, and information extraction. These tasks require sophisticated models that utilize attention mechanisms to enhance accuracy. Applications range from virtual assistants and chatbots to more specialized tasks like named-entity recognition (NER) and Part of speech (POS) tagging. === Reasoning and decision-making systems === Developing systems capable of reasoning and decision-making is a significant aspect of AI engineering. Whether starting from scratch or building on existing frameworks, engineers create solutions that operate on data or logical rules. Symbolic AI employs formal logic and predefined rules for inference, while probabilistic reasoning techniques like Bayesian networks help address uncertainty. These models are essential for applications in dynamic environments, such as autonomous vehicles, where real-time decision-making is critical. === Security === Security is a critical consideration in AI engineering, particularly as AI systems become increasingly integrated into sensitive and mission-critical applications. AI engineers implement robust security measures to protect models from adversarial attacks, such as evasion and poisoning, which can compromise system integrity and performance. Techniques such as adversarial training, where models are exposed to malicious inputs during development, help harden systems against these attacks. Additionally, securing the data used to train AI models is of paramount importance. Encryption, secure data storage, and access control mechanisms are employed to safeguard sensitive information from unauthorized access and breaches. AI systems also require constant monitoring to detect and mitigate vulnerabilities that may arise post-deployment. In high-stakes environments like autonomous systems and healthcare, engineers incorporate redundancy and fail-safe mechanisms to ensure that AI models continue to function correctly in the presence of security threats. === Ethics and compliance === As AI systems increasingly influence societal aspects, ethics and compliance are vital components of AI engineering. Engineers design models to mitigate risks such as data poisoning and ensure that AI systems adhere to legal frameworks, such as data protection regulations like GDPR. Privacy-preserving techniques, including data anonymization and differential privacy, are employed to safeguard personal information and ensure compliance with international standards. Ethical considerations focus on reducing bias in AI systems, preventing discrimination based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics. By developing fair and accountable AI solutions, engineers contribute to the creation of technologies that are both technically sound and socially responsible. == Workload == An AI engineer's workload revolves around the AI system's life cycle, which is a complex, multi-stage process. This process may involve building models from scratch or using pre-existing models through transfer learning, depending on the project's requirements. Each approach presents unique challenges and influences the time, resources, and technical decisions involved. === Problem definition and requirements analysis === Regardless of whether a model is built from scratch or based on a pre-existing model, the work begins with a clear understanding of the problem. The engineer must define the scope, understand the business context, and identify specific AI objectives that align with strategic goals. This stage includes consulting with stakeholders to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and operational requirements. When developing a model from scratch, the engineer must also decide which algorithms are most suitable for the task. Conversely, when using a pre-trained model, the workload shifts toward evaluating existing models and selecting the one most aligned with the task. The use of pre-trained models often allows for a more targeted focus on fine-tuning, as opposed to designing an entirely new model architecture. === Data acquisition and preparation === Data acquisition and preparation are critical stages regardless of the development method chosen, as the performance of any AI system relies heavily on high-quality, re

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  • AI@50

    AI@50

    AI@50, formally known as the "Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years" (July 13–15, 2006), was a conference organized by James H. Moor, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Dartmouth workshop which effectively inaugurated the history of artificial intelligence. Five of the original ten attendees were present: Marvin Minsky, Ray Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Trenchard More, and John McCarthy. While sponsored by Dartmouth College, General Electric, and the Frederick Whittemore Foundation, a $200,000 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called for a report of the proceedings that would: Analyze progress on AI's original challenges during the first 50 years, and assess whether the challenges were "easier" or "harder" than originally thought and why Document what the AI@50 participants believe are the major research and development challenges facing this field over the next 50 years, and identify what breakthroughs will be needed to meet those challenges Relate those challenges and breakthroughs against developments and trends in other areas such as control theory, signal processing, information theory, statistics, and optimization theory. A summary report by the conference director, James H. Moor, was published in AI Magazine. == Conference Program and links to published papers == James H. Moor, conference Director, Introduction Carol Folt and Barry Scherr, Welcome Carey Heckman, Tonypandy and the Origins of Science === AI: Past, Present, Future === John McCarthy, What Was Expected, What We Did, and AI Today Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine === The Future Model of Thinking === Ron Brachman and Hector Levesque, A Large Part of Human Thought David Mumford, What is the Right Model for 'Thought'? Stuart Russell, The Approach of Modern AI === The Future of Network Models === Geoffrey Hinton & Simon Osindero, From Pandemonium to Graphical Models and Back Again Rick Granger, From Brain Circuits to Mind Manufacture === The Future of Learning & Search === Oliver Selfridge, Learning and Education for Software: New Approaches in Machine Learning Ray Solomonoff, Machine Learning — Past and Future Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Learning to be Intelligent Peter Norvig, Web Search as a Product of and Catalyst for AI === The Future of AI === Rod Brooks, Intelligence and Bodies Nils Nilsson, Routes to the Summit Eric Horvitz, In Pursuit of Artificial Intelligence: Reflections on Challenges and Trajectories === The Future of Vision === Eric Grimson, Intelligent Medical Image Analysis: Computer Assisted Surgery and Disease Monitoring Takeo Kanade, Artificial Intelligence Vision: Progress and Non-Progress Terry Sejnowski, A Critique of Pure Vision === The Future of Reasoning === Alan Bundy, Constructing, Selecting and Repairing Representations of Knowledge Edwina Rissland, The Exquisite Centrality of Examples Bart Selman, The Challenge and Promise of Automated Reasoning === The Future of Language and Cognition === Trenchard More The Birth of Array Theory and Nial Eugene Charniak, Why Natural Language Processing is Now Statistical Natural Language Processing Pat Langley, Intelligent Behavior in Humans and Machines === The Future of the Future === Ray Kurzweil, Why We Can Be Confident of Turing Test Capability Within a Quarter Century George Cybenko, The Future Trajectory of AI Charles J. Holland, DARPA's Perspective === AI and Games === Jonathan Schaeffer, Games as a Test-bed for Artificial Intelligence Research Danny Kopec, Chess and AI Shay Bushinsky, Principle Positions in Deep Junior's Development === Future Interactions with Intelligent Machines === Daniela Rus, Making Bodies Smart Sherry Turkle, From Building Intelligences to Nurturing Sensibilities === Selected Submitted Papers: Future Strategies for AI === J. Storrs Hall, Self-improving AI: An Analysis Selmer Bringsjord, The Logicist Manifesto Vincent C. Müller, Is There a Future for AI Without Representation? Kristinn R. Thórisson, Integrated A.I. Systems === Selected Submitted Papers: Future Possibilities for AI === Eric Steinhart, Survival as a Digital Ghost Colin T. A. Schmidt, Did You Leave That 'Contraption' Alone With Your Little Sister? Michael Anderson & Susan Leigh Anderson, The Status of Machine Ethics Marcello Guarini, Computation, Coherence, and Ethical Reasoning

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