AI App How To Use

AI App How To Use — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

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  Microsoft Fresh Paint

  Fresh Paint is a painting app developed by Microsoft and released on May 25, 2012. == History == Fresh Paint originated from a Microsoft Research project known as Project Gustav, an endeavor to reproduce the behavior of physical oil paint on a digital medium. To push the boundaries of simulating oil on a digital medium, the research team created a physics model that precisely replicated on a screen what would happen in the real world if you combined oil, a surface and a tool such as a paint brush. Two publications, Detail-Preserving Paint Modeling for 3D Brushes and Simple Data-Driven Modeling of Brushes, were released as a result of the team’s findings. After a variety of internal testing Project, Gustav was codenamed Digital Art. Partnering with The Museum of Modern Art, Digital Art was tested for a year by 60,000 people. With feedback culled from MoMA, developers expanded the existing physics model, experimenting with how real oil paint blended and reacted to the texture of a canvas. After final adjustments were made, Digital Art was rebranded as Fresh Paint. It was released to the public on 25 May 2012.

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  Texas Senate Bill 20

  Texas Senate Bill 20 (S.B. 20), also known as the "Stopping AI-Generated Child Pornography Act", is a 2025 law in the state of Texas that creates new criminal offenses for those who possess, promote, or view visual material deemed obscene, which is said to depict a child, whether it is an actual person, animated or cartoon depiction, or an image of someone created through computer software or artificial intelligence. It was passed by the Texas Legislature on May 28, 2025, unanimously in both chambers. It was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on June 20, 2025. It went into effect on September 1, 2025. It was authored by Pete Flores and co-sponsored by Brent Hagenbuch, Juan Hinojosa, Joan Huffman, Phil King, and Tan Parker, as part of a package of legislation in the Texas House and Senate about A.I. and child pornography. Some supporters called it "common-sense" legislation falling within the "proper role" of government, protecting children and the "common good" within the state, with Heidi Ruiz, a police sergeant in Houston, describing the bill as "fantastic" and "fabulous." The bill drew comparisons to language, within Texas state legislation, which aimed to institute state-level book bans. Critics described the law as unconstitutional, saying it violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment which prohibits abridgement of freedom of speech and the press, including the legal precedent set in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund vowed to support those wrongly accused under the law. Much of the controversy regarding S.B. 20 involves the broad language pertaining to "obscene" pornographic images as including A.I.-created, animated, and cartoon depictions, with some critics arguing it could have a chilling effect on anime, manga, graphic novels, and other media produced, distributed, or created within Texas. == Provisions == S.B. 20 gives Texas police more provisions to restrict artificial intelligence-created child pornography, creating new criminal charge for possessing material depicting an underage person, under age 18, whether this child is an actual person or not. Those charged with this felony offense could go to state jail, but this could be elevated if the person charged has a prior conviction, of a $10,000 fine and two years in prison. == Reactions == === Support === Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick applauded the unanimous passage of the law in the Texas Senate and called it "a priority" to protect children in Texas, and Texas citizens and thanked Pete Flores for his work on "this important issue". He later described the bill as part of the "bold, conservative agenda" that the Texas legislature passed during the 2025 legislative session. Phil King, one of the bill's co-sponsors, said that issue of child pornography had "infiltrated" the state's schools and said he was proud that the Texas legislature had "taken decisive action to protect our vulnerable Texans". Another co-sponsor of the legislation, Tan Parker described the law as "decisive action" to protect the children within Texas, and said he looked "forward to advancing this critical legislation" onward from the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee. He also described the legislation as "critical" action to protect the state's children from A.I.-generated child pornography and an "effective tool for law enforcement" to crack down on child porn perpetrators. Other supporters, such as police, and prosecutors, called the legislation an "important step" to ensure that images generated with A.I., along with deepfakes, "can't be shared with impunity" and necessary to ensure children's protection. Flores told senators that technology which enabled the production of "offensive" material by child predators had "no redeeming value whatsoever" and asserted that the materials had often been "used to groom and abuse children". John Leigh, a co-founder of Anime Matsuri, one of the largest conventions for anime within Texas, reassured those who contacted him, saying that the law is not targeted at anime and manga fans, stated that he supported the legislation, describing it as a step "in the right direction," and said that he did not believe it would "negatively impact" anime or related art in the state. Also, State Representative Dade Phelan emphasized the legislation's urgency to deal with A.I. and child pornography, adding that they need to "put some guardrails on it to where the public is being taken care of". The Texas Policy Research Foundation supported the legislation, saying that although it may lead to increased demands on state and local governmental resources, higher costs for local governments, and possible "civil liberty concerns" around online censorship, it represents a "necessary legal update" to address exploitation of children online, while "modernizing enforcement mechanisms" and recommended that lawmakers vote in favor of the law. Additionally, the group Texans for Fiscal Responsibility supported the law, arguing that it strengthened state law, upheld public safety, protected minors, and called it a "common-sense bill" protecting and promoting the "common good", children, and fell within the "proper role" of government. The Texas Public Policy Foundation also expressed their support for the law. A policy director for aforementioned conservative think tank, Zach Whiting, told the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, on March 4, 2025, that the foundation would assist legislators ans staff to "advance any and all measures to protect kids online" and shared an excerpt from of research paper about threats posed by A.I. in creating "sexually explicit deepfakes of children". === Opposition === Although the bill passed both chambers unanimously, there were some reports that the bill stalled due to opposition from Democratic lawmakers. Additionally, some individuals expressed concerns about the broad nature of the law's provisions. Anime Matsuri co-founder Deneice Leigh called for the law's wording to be clarified because "artists are anxious about displaying or selling fan art" even if the intention is "not be to penalize creators". She also described the bill as "vague and open to interpretation" as to what would be considered obscene and offensive while noting that the bill is not aiming to "target artists". Benjamin Napier, owner of Mansfield Comics and Manga in Mansfield, Texas, said that at first he felt the law was "ridiculous" and "kind of frivolous" at first, part of a "misguided puritanical onslaught", and noted that he would not cow "to the puritanical regime" if it was enacted. Kirsten Cather, an Asian Studies scholar at University of Texas, expressed concern at the law's misinterpretation because "many anime characters appear youthful, regardless of their actual age", said that the law could "stifle creative expression", and noted that the law's scope is broad enough to have manga and anime under scrutiny, a "real slippery slope here that's being breached". Marcel Green of Screen Rant said that the law's ambiguity led to concerns from manga and anime fans, and theorized that the law's application to a fan within Texas, who downloaded the 368th chapter of My Hero Academia, which has a "sexualized depiction" of an "underage high school student", would result in a criminal offense of "180 days to two years in state jail, along with a fine of up to $10,000". Green also said the law is problematic because many anime and manga characters are young, with many protagonists as minors and argued that the law could apply in limited cases, if state officials deemed an anime or manga under scrutiny as lacking "artistic value". Evan D. Mullicane, on the same site, said the vague wording of the legislation made it "dangerous" for anime such as Dragon Ball and Naruto, and could impact more than hentai, predicting it will be used against more than its "intended target" and be used to censor stories with "young LGBTQIA characters". Another critic on the same site, Carlyle Edmundson, called for anime fans to step up and prevent the law's enactment "for the good of artists and fans everywhere", saying that the legislation was "draconian" and claimed it was the most extreme case of anime and manga censorship in U.S. history. Nick Valdez of ComicBook.com said that the legislation could lead to censorship of "many anime and manga projects," like Kill la Kill and The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, becoming a crime, and said that even if the law is enforced in a case-by-case basis, it could lead to a "much larger ban of materials in the state" itself due to the content of certain manga and anime. Vanessa Esguerra of The Mary Sue argued that possession of manga like Berserk and Vagabond, or viewing Dandadan, could be deemed illegal under the law, due to various parts of each of these media, and asserted that viewing and owning certain anime and other media, falling under the law's provisions,

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  METR

  Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) (MEE-tər), is a nonprofit research institute, based in Berkeley, California, that evaluates frontier AI models' capabilities to carry out long-horizon, agentic tasks that some researchers argue could pose catastrophic risks to society. METR has worked with leading AI companies to conduct pre-deployment model evaluations and contribute to system cards, including OpenAI's o3, o4-mini, GPT-4o and GPT-4.5, and Anthropic's Claude models. METR's CEO and founder is Beth Barnes, a former alignment researcher at OpenAI who left in 2022 to form ARC Evals, the evaluation division of Paul Christiano's Alignment Research Center. In December 2023, ARC Evals was spun off into an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit and renamed METR. == Research == A substantial amount of METR's research is focused on evaluating the capabilities of AI systems to conduct research and development of AI systems themselves, including RE-Bench, a benchmark designed to test whether AIs can "solve research engineering tasks and accelerate AI R&D". === Doubling time estimates === In March 2025, METR published a paper noting that the length of software engineering tasks that the leading AI model could complete had a doubling time of around 7 months between 2019 and 2024. In January 2026, METR released a new version of their time horizon estimates model (Time Horizon 1.1). According to the updated model, the rate of progress of AI capabilities has increased since 2023, with a post-2023 doubling time estimated at 130.8 days (4.3 months). Progress is thus estimated to be 20% more rapid. === Time horizon measurements === METR releases a "task-completion time horizon" for analysed AI models. This measures the "task duration (measured by human expert completion time) at which an AI agent is predicted to succeed with a given level of reliability." The metric is reported in two variants: the 50%-time horizon, which gives the task duration at which an AI model is estimated to succeed 50% of the time, and the 80%-time horizon, which gives the task duration at which an AI model is estimated to succeed 80% of the time. METR has published two versions of the underlying model: Time Horizon 1.0 and Time Horizon 1.1, the latter introduced in January 2026. As of 9 May 2026, the best-performing model is Claude Mythos, with a 50%-time horizon of likely at least 16 hours and an 80%-time horizon of 3 hours and 6 minutes. METR notes that "[m]easurements above 16 [hours] are unreliable with [their] current task suite". The following table provides time horizon estimates ordered by each model's release date:

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  Lethal autonomous weapon

  A lethal autonomous weapon (LAW), also known as a lethal autonomous weapon system (LAWS), autonomous weapon system (AWS), robotic weapon, or killer robot, is a type of military drone or military robot, which is autonomous in that it can independently search for and engage targets based on programmed constraints and descriptions. As of 2025, most military drones (including unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned combat aerial vehicles) and military robots are not truly autonomous. LAWs may engage in drone warfare in the air, on land, on water, underwater, or in space. == Definitions == In weapons development, the term "autonomous" is somewhat ambiguous and can vary hugely between different scholars, nations and organizations. There is no definition of lethal autonomous weapon systems that is generally agreed upon among different countries. The official United States Department of Defense Policy on Autonomy in Weapon Systems (Department of Defense Directive 3000.09) defines an Autonomous Weapon System as one that "...once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator." Heather Roff, a writer for Case Western Reserve University School of Law, describes autonomous weapon systems as "... capable of learning and adapting their 'functioning in response to changing circumstances in the environment in which [they are] deployed,' as well as capable of making firing decisions on their own." The British Ministry of Defence states "Whilst definitions can vary, the key difference is that an automated system is capable of carrying out complicated tasks but is incapable of complex decision-making, whereas an autonomous system is capable of deciding a course of action without depending on human oversight and control." Scholars such as Peter Asaro and Mark Gubrud believe that any weapon system that is capable of releasing a lethal force without the operation, decision, or confirmation of a human supervisor can be deemed autonomous. == Automatic defensive systems == Some definitions of autonomous weapon systems are broad enough to include land mines and naval mines, simple automatically-triggered lethal weapons that have been in use for centuries. Some current examples of LAWs are automated "hardkill" active protection systems, such as a radar-guided close-in weapon systems (CIWS) used to defend ships that have been in use since the 1970s (e.g., the US Phalanx CIWS). Such systems can autonomously identify and attack oncoming missiles, rockets, artillery fire, aircraft, and surface vessels according to criteria set by the human operator. Similar systems exist for tanks, such as the Russian Arena, the Israeli Trophy, and the German AMAP-ADS. Several types of stationary sentry guns, which can fire at humans and vehicles, are used in South Korea and Israel. Many missile defence systems, such as Iron Dome, also have autonomous targeting capabilities. The main reason for not having a "human in the loop" in these systems is the need for rapid response. They have generally been used to protect personnel and installations against incoming projectiles. == Autonomous offensive systems == According to The Economist in 2018, as technology advances, applications of uncrewed undersea vehicles could include mine clearance, mine-laying, anti-submarine sensor networking in contested waters, patrolling with active sonar, resupplying manned submarines, and becoming low-cost missile platforms. In 2017 the Russian Federation was developing artificially intelligent missiles, drones, unmanned vehicles, military robots and medic robots. In 2018, the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review alleged that Russia was developing a "new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo" named "Status 6". Israeli Minister Ayoob Kara stated in 2017 that Israel is developing military robots, including ones as small as flies. In October 2018, Zeng Yi, a senior executive at the Chinese defense firm Norinco, gave a speech in which he said that "In future battlegrounds, there will be no people fighting", and that the use of lethal autonomous weapons in warfare is "inevitable". In 2019, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper lashed out at China for selling drones capable of taking life with no human oversight. As of 2020, DARPA was working on making swarms of 250 autonomous lethal drones available to the American military. The US Navy is developing unmanned surface vehicles, also called sea drones, including Ghost Fleet Overlord, with plans to equip them with weapons and with the potential to use them semi-autonomously. In 2020 a Kargu 2 drone hunted down and attacked a human target in Libya, according to a report from the UN Security Council's Panel of Experts on Libya, published in March 2021. This may have been the first time an autonomous killer robot armed with lethal weaponry attacked human beings. In May 2021 Israel conducted an AI-guided combat drone swarm attack in Gaza. In the Russo-Ukrainian war, Ukraine has developed advanced drones with integrated artificial intelligence for a range of drone warfare purposes, including to attack infrastructure in Russia, although as of May 2026, Al Jazeera reported that humans remain in control of operation. == Ethical and legal issues == === Degree of human control === Three classifications of the degree of human control of autonomous weapon systems were laid out by Bonnie Docherty in a 2012 Human Rights Watch report. human-in-the-loop: a human must instigate the action of the weapon (in other words not fully autonomous). human-on-the-loop: a human may abort an action. human-out-of-the-loop: no human action is involved. === Standard used in US policy === Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 states that "Autonomous … weapons systems shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force." However, as noted in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the policy requires that autonomous weapon systems that kill people or use kinetic force, selecting and engaging targets without further human intervention, be certified as compliant with "appropriate levels" and other standards, not that such weapon systems cannot meet these standards and are therefore forbidden. "Semi-autonomous" hunter-killers that autonomously identify and attack targets do not even require certification. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work said in 2016 that the Defense Department would "not delegate lethal authority to a machine to make a decision", but might need to reconsider this since "authoritarian regimes" may do so. In October 2016 President Barack Obama stated that early in his career he was wary of a future in which a US president making use of drone warfare could "carry on perpetual wars all over the world, and a lot of them covert, without any accountability or democratic debate". In the US, security-related AI has fallen under the purview of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence since 2018. On October 31, 2019, the United States Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Board published the draft of a report outlining five principles for weaponized AI and making 12 recommendations for the ethical use of artificial intelligence by the Department of Defense that would ensure a human operator would always be able to look into the 'black box' and understand the kill-chain process. A major concern is how the report will be implemented. === Possible violations of ethics and international acts === Stuart Russell, professor of computer science from University of California, Berkeley stated the concern he has with LAWs is that his view is that it is unethical and inhumane. The main issue with this system is it is hard to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. There is concern by some economists and legal scholars about whether LAWs would violate International Humanitarian Law, especially the principle of distinction, which requires the ability to discriminate combatants from non-combatants, and the principle of proportionality, which requires that damage to civilians be proportional to the military aim. This concern is often invoked as a reason to ban "killer robots" altogether - but it is doubtful that this concern can be an argument against LAWs that do not violate International Humanitarian Law. A 2021 report by the American Congressional Research Service states that "there are no domestic or international legal prohibitions on the development of use of LAWs," although it acknowledges ongoing talks at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). LAWs are said by some to blur the boundaries of who is responsible for a particular killing. Philosopher Robert Sparrow argues that autonomous weapons are causally but not morally responsible, similar to child soldiers. In each case, he argues there is a risk of atrocities occurring without an appropriate subject to hold responsible, which violates jus in bell

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  Super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging

  Super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI) is a post-processing method for the calculation of super-resolved images from recorded image time series that is based on the temporal correlations of independently fluctuating fluorescent emitters. SOFI has been developed for super-resolution of biological specimen that are labelled with independently fluctuating fluorescent emitters (organic dyes, fluorescent proteins). In comparison to other super-resolution microscopy techniques such as STORM or PALM that rely on single-molecule localization and hence only allow one active molecule per diffraction-limited area (DLA) and timepoint, SOFI does not necessitate a controlled photoswitching and/ or photoactivation as well as long imaging times. Nevertheless, it still requires fluorophores that are cycling through two distinguishable states, either real on-/off-states or states with different fluorescence intensities. In mathematical terms SOFI-imaging relies on the calculation of cumulants, for what two distinguishable ways exist. For one thing an image can be calculated via auto-cumulants that by definition only rely on the information of each pixel itself, and for another thing an improved method utilizes the information of different pixels via the calculation of cross-cumulants. Both methods can increase the final image resolution significantly although the cumulant calculation has its limitations. Actually SOFI is able to increase the resolution in all three dimensions. == Principle == Likewise to other super-resolution methods SOFI is based on recording an image time series on a CCD- or CMOS camera. In contrary to other methods the recorded time series can be substantially shorter, since a precise localization of emitters is not required and therefore a larger quantity of activated fluorophores per diffraction-limited area is allowed. The pixel values of a SOFI-image of the n-th order are calculated from the values of the pixel time series in the form of a n-th order cumulant, whereas the final value assigned to a pixel can be imagined as the integral over a correlation function. The finally assigned pixel value intensities are a measure of the brightness and correlation of the fluorescence signal. Mathematically, the n-th order cumulant is related to the n-th order correlation function, but exhibits some advantages concerning the resulting resolution of the image. Since in SOFI several emitters per DLA are allowed, the photon count at each pixel results from the superposition of the signals of all activated nearby emitters. The cumulant calculation now filters the signal and leaves only highly correlated fluctuations. This provides a contrast enhancement and therefore a background reduction for good measure. As it is implied in the figure on the left the fluorescence source distribution: ∑ k = 1 N δ ( r → − r → k ) ⋅ ε k ⋅ s k ( t ) {\displaystyle \sum _{k=1}^{N}\delta ({\vec {r}}-{\vec {r}}_{k})\cdot \varepsilon _{k}\cdot s_{k}(t)} is convolved with the system's point spread function (PSF) U(r). Hence the fluorescence signal at time t and position r → {\displaystyle {\vec {r}}} is given by F ( r → , t ) = ∑ k = 1 N U ( r → − r → k ) ⋅ ε k ⋅ s k ( t ) . {\displaystyle F({\vec {r}},t)=\sum _{k=1}^{N}U({\vec {r}}-{\vec {r}}_{k})\cdot \varepsilon _{k}\cdot s_{k}(t).} Within the above equations N is the amount of emitters, located at the positions r → k {\displaystyle {\vec {r}}_{k}} with a time-dependent molecular brightness ε k ⋅ s k {\displaystyle \varepsilon _{k}\cdot s_{k}} where ε k {\displaystyle \varepsilon _{k}} is a variable for the constant molecular brightness and s k ( t ) {\displaystyle s_{k}(t)} is a time-dependent fluctuation function. The molecular brightness is just the average fluorescence count-rate divided by the number of molecules within a specific region. For simplification it has to be assumed that the sample is in a stationary equilibrium and therefore the fluorescence signal can be expressed as a zero-mean fluctuation: δ F ( r → , t ) = F ( r → , t ) − ⟨ F ( r → , t ) ⟩ t {\displaystyle \delta F({\vec {r}},t)=F({\vec {r}},t)-\langle F({\vec {r}},t)\rangle _{t}} where ⟨ ⋯ ⟩ t {\displaystyle \langle \cdots \rangle _{t}} denotes time-averaging. The auto-correlation here e.g. the second-order can then be described deductively as follows for a certain time-lag τ {\displaystyle \tau } : δ F ( r → , t ) = ⟨ δ F ( r → , t + τ ) ⋅ δ F ( r → , t ) ⟩ t {\displaystyle \delta F({\vec {r}},t)=\langle \delta F({\vec {r}},t+\tau )\cdot \delta F({\vec {r}},t)\rangle _{t}} From these equations it follows that the PSF of the optical system has to be taken to the power of the order of the correlation. Thus in a second-order correlation the PSF would be reduced along all dimensions by a factor of 2 {\displaystyle {\sqrt {2}}} . As a result, the resolution of the SOFI-images increases according to this factor. === Cumulants versus correlations === Using only the simple correlation function for a reassignment of pixel values, would ascribe to the independency of fluctuations of the emitters in time in a way that no cross-correlation terms would contribute to the new pixel value. Calculations of higher-order correlation functions would suffer from lower-order correlations for what reason it is superior to calculate cumulants, since all lower-order correlation terms vanish. == Cumulant-calculation == === Auto-cumulants === For computational reasons it is convenient to set all time-lags in higher-order cumulants to zero so that a general expression for the n-th order auto-cumulant can be found: A C n ( r → , τ 1 … n − 1 = 0 ) = ∑ k = 1 N U n ( r → − r → k ) ε k n w k ( 0 ) {\displaystyle AC_{n}({\vec {r}},\tau _{1\ldots n-1}=0)=\sum _{k=1}^{N}U^{n}({\vec {r}}-{\vec {r}}_{k})\varepsilon _{k}^{n}w_{k}(0)} w k {\displaystyle w_{k}} is a specific correlation based weighting function influenced by the order of the cumulant and mainly depending on the fluctuation properties of the emitters. Albeit there is no fundamental limitation in calculating very high orders of cumulants and thereby shrinking the FWHM of the PSF there are practical limitations according to the weighting of the values assigned to the final image. Emitters with a higher molecular brightness will show a strong increase in terms of the pixel cumulant value assigned at higher-orders as well as this performance can be expected from a diverse appearance of fluctuations of different emitters. A wide intensity range of the resulting image can therefore be expected and as a result dim emitters can get masked by bright emitters in higher-order images:. The calculation of auto-cumulants can be realized in a very attractive way in a mathematical sense. The n-th order cumulant can be calculated with a basic recursion from moments K n ( r → ) = μ n ( r → ) − ∑ i = 1 n − 1 ( n − 1 i ) K n − i ( r → ) μ i ( r → ) {\displaystyle K_{n}({\vec {r}})=\mu _{n}({\vec {r}})-\sum _{i=1}^{n-1}{\begin{pmatrix}n-1\\i\end{pmatrix}}K_{n-i}({\vec {r}})\mu _{i}({\vec {r}})} where K is a cumulant of the index's order, likewise μ {\displaystyle \mu } represents the moments. The term within the brackets indicates a binomial coefficient. This way of computation is straightforward in comparison with calculating cumulants with standard formulas. It allows for the calculation of cumulants with only little time of computing and is, as it is well implemented, even suitable for the calculation of high-order cumulants on large images. === Cross-cumulants === In a more advanced approach cross-cumulants are calculated by taking the information of several pixels into account. Cross-cumulants can be described as follows: C C n ( r → , τ 1 … n − 1 = 0 ) = ∏ j < l n U ( r → j − r → l n ) ⋅ ∑ i = 1 N U n ( r → i − ∑ k n r → k n ) ε i n w i ( 0 ) {\displaystyle CC_{n}({\vec {r}},\tau _{1\ldots n-1}=0)=\prod _{j Read more →

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  Semantic data model

  A semantic data model (SDM) is a high-level semantics-based database description and structuring formalism (database model) for databases. This database model is designed to capture more of the meaning of an application environment than is possible with contemporary database models. An SDM specification describes a database in terms of the kinds of entities that exist in the application environment, the classifications and groupings of those entities, and the structural interconnections among them. SDM provides a collection of high-level modeling primitives to capture the semantics of an application environment. By accommodating derived information in a database structural specification, SDM allows the same information to be viewed in several ways; this makes it possible to directly accommodate the variety of needs and processing requirements typically present in database applications. The design of the present SDM is based on our experience in using a preliminary version of it. SDM is designed to enhance the effectiveness and usability of database systems. An SDM database description can serve as a formal specification and documentation tool for a database; it can provide a basis for supporting a variety of powerful user interface facilities, it can serve as a conceptual database model in the database design process; and, it can be used as the database model for a new kind of database management system. == In software engineering == A semantic data model in software engineering has various meanings: It is a conceptual data model in which semantic information is included. This means that the model describes the meaning of its instances. Such a semantic data model is an abstraction that defines how the stored symbols (the instance data) relate to the real world. It is a conceptual data model that includes the capability to express and exchange information which enables parties to interpret meaning (semantics) from the instances, without the need to know the meta-model. Such semantic models are fact-oriented (as opposed to object-oriented). Facts are typically expressed by binary relations between data elements, whereas higher order relations are expressed as collections of binary relations. Typically binary relations have the form of triples: Object-RelationType-Object. For example: the Eiffel Tower Paris. Typically the instance data of semantic data models explicitly include the kinds of relationships between the various data elements, such as . To interpret the meaning of the facts from the instances, it is required that the meaning of the kinds of relations (relation types) be known. Therefore, semantic data models typically standardize such relation types. This means that the second kind of semantic data models enables that the instances express facts that include their own meanings. The second kind of semantic data models are usually meant to create semantic databases. The ability to include meaning in semantic databases facilitates building distributed databases that enable applications to interpret the meaning from the content. This implies that semantic databases can be integrated when they use the same (standard) relation types. This also implies that in general they have a wider applicability than relational or object-oriented databases. == Overview == The logical data structure of a database management system (DBMS), whether hierarchical, network, or relational, cannot totally satisfy the requirements for a conceptual definition of data, because it is limited in scope and biased toward the implementation strategy employed by the DBMS. Therefore, the need to define data from a conceptual view has led to the development of semantic data modeling techniques. That is, techniques to define the meaning of data within the context of its interrelationships with other data, as illustrated in the figure. The real world, in terms of resources, ideas, events, etc., are symbolically defined within physical data stores. A semantic data model is an abstraction which defines how the stored symbols relate to the real world. Thus, the model must be a true representation of the real world. According to Klas and Schrefl (1995), the "overall goal of semantic data models is to capture more meaning of data by integrating relational concepts with more powerful abstraction concepts known from the Artificial Intelligence field. The idea is to provide high level modeling primitives as an integral part of a data model in order to facilitate the representation of real world situations". == History == The need for semantic data models was first recognized by the U.S. Air Force in the mid-1970s as a result of the Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) Program. The objective of this program was to increase manufacturing productivity through the systematic application of computer technology. The ICAM Program identified a need for better analysis and communication techniques for people involved in improving manufacturing productivity. As a result, the ICAM Program developed a series of techniques known as the IDEF (ICAM Definition) Methods which included the following: IDEF0 used to produce a “function model” which is a structured representation of the activities or processes within the environment or system. IDEF1 used to produce an “information model” which represents the structure and semantics of information within the environment or system. IDEF1X a semantic data modeling technique used to produce a graphical information model which represents the structure and semantics of information within an environment or system. Use of this standard permits the construction of semantic data models which may serve to support the management of data as a resource, the integration of information systems, and the building of computer databases. IDEF2 used to produce a “dynamics model” which represents the time varying behavioral characteristics of the environment or system. During the 1990s, the application of semantic modelling techniques resulted in the semantic data models of the second kind. An example of such is the semantic data model that is standardised as ISO 15926-2 (2002), which is further developed into the semantic modelling language Gellish (2005). The definition of the Gellish language is documented in the form of a semantic data model. Gellish itself is a semantic modelling language, that can be used to create other semantic models. Those semantic models can be stored in Gellish Databases, being semantic databases. == Applications == A semantic data model can be used to serve many purposes. Some key objectives include: Planning of data resources: A preliminary data model can be used to provide an overall view of the data required to run an enterprise. The model can then be analyzed to identify and scope projects to build shared data resources. Building of shareable databases: A fully developed model can be used to define an application independent view of data which can be validated by users and then transformed into a physical database design for any of the various DBMS technologies. In addition to generating databases which are consistent and shareable, development costs can be drastically reduced through data modeling. Evaluation of vendor software: Since a data model actually represents the infrastructure of an organization, vendor software can be evaluated against a company’s data model in order to identify possible inconsistencies between the infrastructure implied by the software and the way the company actually does business. Integration of existing databases: By defining the contents of existing databases with semantic data models, an integrated data definition can be derived. With the proper technology, the resulting conceptual schema can be used to control transaction processing in a distributed database environment. The U.S. Air Force Integrated Information Support System (I2S2) is an experimental development and demonstration of this kind of technology, applied to a heterogeneous type of DBMS environments.

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  UMBEL

  UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is a logically organized knowledge graph of 34,000 concepts and entity types that can be used in information science for relating information from disparate sources to one another. It was retired at the end of 2019. UMBEL was first released in July 2008. Version 1.00 was released in February 2011. Its current release is version 1.50. The grounding of this information occurs by common reference to the permanent URIs for the UMBEL concepts; the connections within the UMBEL upper ontology enable concepts from sources at different levels of abstraction or specificity to be logically related. Since UMBEL is an open-source extract of the OpenCyc knowledge base, it can also take advantage of the reasoning capabilities within Cyc. UMBEL has two means to promote the semantic interoperability of information:. It is: An ontology of about 35,000 reference concepts, designed to provide common mapping points for relating different ontologies or schema to one another, and A vocabulary for aiding that ontology mapping, including expressions of likelihood relationships distinct from exact identity or equivalence. This vocabulary is also designed for interoperable domain ontologies. UMBEL is written in the Semantic Web languages of SKOS and OWL 2. It is a class structure used in Linked Data, along with OpenCyc, YAGO, and the DBpedia ontology. Besides data integration, UMBEL has been used to aid concept search, concept definitions, query ranking, ontology integration, and ontology consistency checking. It has also been used to build large ontologies and for online question answering systems. Including OpenCyc, UMBEL has about 65,000 formal mappings to DBpedia, PROTON, GeoNames, and schema.org, and provides linkages to more than 2 million Wikipedia pages (English version). All of its reference concepts and mappings are organized under a hierarchy of 31 different "super types", which are mostly disjoint from one another. Each of these "super types" has its own typology of entity classes to provide flexible tie-ins for external content. 90% of UMBEL is contained in these entity classes.

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  Mike Vernal

  Mike Vernal (born September 7, 1980) is an American business executive who is a venture capitalist at Conviction. He was previously an investor at Sequoia Capital in Silicon Valley and was one of the top executives at Facebook between 2008 and 2016. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital, he was Vice President of Search, Local, and Developer products at Facebook. == Career == Vernal joined Facebook in 2008. From 2009 to 2013, Vernal managed the Facebook Platform team and is credited with managing the Facebook Platform transition from desktop to mobile. During his time at Facebook, he served as vice president and was considered among the “top executives” who ran the company. In 2016, after eight years at Facebook, Vernal announced his plans to leave the company. In May 2016, he joined Sequoia Capital, a venture-capital firm specializing in technology startups. He is an early investor in Rippling, Clay, Notion and Statsig. In July 2023, The Information reported that Vernal was departing Sequoia. At Conviction, he has led investments in Listen Labs, OpenEvidence and Thinking Machines Lab.

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  Semantic analytics

  Semantic analytics, also termed semantic relatedness, is the use of ontologies to analyze content in web resources. This field of research combines text analytics and Semantic Web technologies like RDF. Semantic analytics measures the relatedness of different ontological concepts. Some academic research groups that have active project in this area include Kno.e.sis Center at Wright State University among others. == History == An important milestone in the beginning of semantic analytics occurred in 1996, although the historical progression of these algorithms is largely subjective. In his seminal study publication, Philip Resnik established that computers have the capacity to emulate human judgement. Spanning the publications of multiple journals, improvements to the accuracy of general semantic analytic computations all claimed to revolutionize the field. However, the lack of a standard terminology throughout the late 1990s was the cause of much miscommunication. This prompted Budanitsky & Hirst to standardize the subject in 2006 with a summary that also set a framework for modern spelling and grammar analysis. In the early days of semantic analytics, obtaining a large enough reliable knowledge bases was difficult. In 2006, Strube & Ponzetto demonstrated that Wikipedia could be used in semantic analytic calculations. The usage of a large knowledge base like Wikipedia allows for an increase in both the accuracy and applicability of semantic analytics. == Methods == Given the subjective nature of the field, different methods used in semantic analytics depend on the domain of application. No singular methods is considered correct, however one of the most generally effective and applicable method is explicit semantic analysis (ESA). ESA was developed by Evgeniy Gabrilovich and Shaul Markovitch in the late 2000s. It uses machine learning techniques to create a semantic interpreter, which extracts text fragments from articles into a sorted list. The fragments are sorted by how related they are to the surrounding text. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is another common method that does not use ontologies, only considering the text in the input space. == Applications == Entity linking Ontology building / knowledge base population Search and query tasks Natural language processing Spoken dialog systems (e.g., Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana) Artificial intelligence Knowledge management The application of semantic analysis methods generally streamlines organizational processes of any knowledge management system. Academic libraries often use a domain-specific application to create a more efficient organizational system. By classifying scientific publications using semantics and Wikipedia, researchers are helping people find resources faster. Search engines like Semantic Scholar provide organized access to millions of articles.

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  Semantic triple

  A semantic triple, or RDF triple or simply triple, is the atomic data entity in the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model. As its name indicates, a triple is a sequence of three entities that codifies a statement about semantic data in the form of subject–predicate–object expressions (e.g., "Bob is 35", or "Bob knows John"). == Subject, predicate and object == This format enables knowledge to be represented in a machine-readable way. Particularly, every part of an RDF triple is individually addressable via unique URIs—for example, the statement "Bob knows John" might be represented in RDF as: http://example.name#BobSmith12 http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_knows http://example.name#JohnDoe34. Given this precise representation, semantic data can be unambiguously queried and reasoned about. The components of a triple, such as the statement "The sky has the color blue", consist of a subject ("the sky"), a predicate ("has the color"), and an object ("blue"). This is similar to the classical notation of an entity–attribute–value model within object-oriented design, where this example would be expressed as an entity (sky), an attribute (color) and a value (blue). From this basic structure, triples can be composed into more complex models, by using triples as objects or subjects of other triples—for example, Mike → said → (triples → can be → objects). Given their particular, consistent structure, a collection of triples is often stored in purpose-built databases called triplestores. == Difference from relational databases == A relational database is the classical form for information storage, working with different tables, which consist of rows. The query language SQL is able to retrieve information from such a database. In contrast, RDF triple storage works with logical predicates. No tables nor rows are needed, but the information is stored in a text file. An RDF-triple store can be converted into an SQL database and the other way around. If the knowledge is highly unstructured and dedicated tables aren't flexible enough, semantic triples are used over classic relational storage. In contrast to a traditional SQL database, an RDF triple store isn't created with a table editor. The preferred tool is a knowledge editor, for example Protégé. Protégé looks similar to an object-oriented modeling application used for software engineering, but it's focused on natural language information. The RDF triples are aggregated into a knowledge base, which allows external parsers to run requests. Possible applications include the creation of non-player characters within video games. == Limitations == One concern about triple storage is its lack of database scalability. This problem is especially pertinent if millions of triples are stored and retrieved in a database. The seek time is larger than for classical SQL-based databases. A more complex issue is a knowledge model's inability to predict future states. Even if all the domain knowledge is available as logical predicates, the model fails in answering what-if questions. For example, suppose in the RDF format a room with a robot and table is described. The robot knows what the location of the table is, is aware of the distance to the table and knows also that a table is a type of furniture. Before the robot can plan its next action, it needs temporal reasoning capabilities. Thus, the knowledge model should answer hypothetical questions in advance before an action is taken.

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  AirSim

  AirSim (Aerial Informatics and Robotics Simulation) is an open-source, cross-platform simulator for drones, ground vehicles such as cars and various other objects, built on Epic Games’ proprietary Unreal Engine 4 as a platform for AI research. It is developed by Microsoft and can be used to experiment with deep learning, computer vision and reinforcement learning algorithms for autonomous vehicles. This allows testing of autonomous solutions without worrying about real-world damage. AirSim provides some 12 kilometers of roads with 20 city blocks and APIs to retrieve data and control vehicles in a platform independent way. The APIs are accessible via a variety of programming languages, including C++, C#, Python and Java. AirSim supports hardware-in-the-loop with driving wheels and flight controllers such as PX4 for physically and visually realistic simulations. The platform also supports common robotic platforms, such as Robot Operating System (ROS). It is developed as an Unreal plug-in that can be dropped into any Unreal environment. An experimental release for a Unity plug-in is also available. On December 15, 2023 Microsoft has shutdown the development of the project.

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  Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab

  The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab (also called the Quantum AI Lab or QuAIL) is a joint initiative of NASA, Universities Space Research Association, and Google (specifically, Google Research) whose goal is to pioneer research on how quantum computing might help with machine learning and other difficult computer science problems. The lab is hosted at NASA's Ames Research Center. == History == The Quantum AI Lab was announced by Google Research in a blog post on May 16, 2013. At the time of launch, the Lab was using the most advanced commercially available quantum computer, D-Wave Two from D-Wave Systems. On October 10, 2013, Google released a short film describing the current state of the Quantum AI Lab. On October 18, 2013, Google announced that it had incorporated quantum physics into Minecraft. In January 2014, Google reported results comparing the performance of the D-Wave Two in the lab with that of classical computers. The results were ambiguous and provoked heated discussion on the Internet. On 2 September 2014, it was announced that the Google Quantum AI Lab, in partnership with UC Santa Barbara, would be launching an initiative to create quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics. On the 23rd of October 2019, the Quantum AI Lab announced in a paper that it had achieved quantum supremacy with their Sycamore processor. The claim of quantum supremacy achievement has since been debated, with a far more accurate simulation on a classical computer being possible in 2.5 days as a conservative estimate. == Present == On December 9, 2024, Google introduced the Willow processor, describing it as a "state-of-the-art quantum chip". Google claims that this new chip takes just five minutes to solve a problem that takes traditional supercomputers ten septillion years. However, experts say Willow is, for now, a largely experimental device.

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  Joox

  Joox (stylised in all caps) is a music streaming service owned by Tencent, launched in January 2015. Joox is the biggest music streaming app in Asian markets such as Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and also in South Africa before it was shut down in early 2022. Joox is a freemium service, providing most of its songs free, while some songs are only available for premium users, offered via paid subscriptions or by doing different tasks offered. In 2017, Joox launched their service in their first non-Asian market, South Africa, which for an unknown reason shut down five years later. The service now accounts for more than 50% of all music streaming app downloads in their Asian markets. The number of music-streaming users in Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia was expected to reach 87 million by 2020. == Background == Before the emergence of Joox, Tencent owned QQ Music, one of the largest music streaming and download service in China. In 2015, they introduced Joox as their expansion of music services to overseas market instead of mainland China, starting first in Hong Kong. Instead of providing free services by playing audio ads to users like Spotify, another major music service, Joox focused on banner ads, splash ads and other advertising methods such as category playlists and in-app skins. They claimed it as a success. Joox offered their premium VIP access to DStv subscribers free of charge. DStv is the sister company to Tencent and is the primary pay-TV provider in South Africa. In November 2021, it was announced that Joox will stop streaming in South Africa in March 2022.

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  Google Nest

  Google Nest, formerly branded Google Home, is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks. The Nest brand name was originally owned by Nest Labs, co-founded by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers in 2010. Its flagship product, which was the company's first offering, is the Nest Learning Thermostat, introduced in 2011. The product is programmable, self-learning, sensor-driven, and Wi-Fi-enabled: features that are often found in other Nest products. It was followed by the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in October 2013. After its acquisition of Dropcam in 2014, the company introduced its Nest Cam branding of security cameras beginning in June 2015. The company quickly expanded to more than 130 employees by the end of 2012. Google acquired Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion in January 2014, when the company employed 280. As of late 2015, Nest employs more than 1,100 and added a primary engineering center in Seattle. After Google reorganized itself under the holding company Alphabet Inc., Nest operated independently of Google from 2015 to 2018. However, in 2018, Nest was merged into Google's home-devices unit led by Rishi Chandra, effectively ceasing to exist as a separate business. In July 2018, it was announced that all Google Home electronics products will henceforth be marketed under the brand Google Nest. == History == === Nest Labs before acquisition by Google === Nest Labs was founded in 2010 by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers. The idea came when Fadell was building a vacation home and found all of the available thermostats on the market to be inadequate, motivated to bring something better on the market. Early investors in Nest Labs included Shasta Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. === Acquisition by Google of Nest Labs, Dropcam, and Revolv === On January 13, 2014, Google announced plans to acquire Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash. Google completed the acquisition the next day, on January 14, 2014. The company would operate independently from Google's other businesses. In June 2014, it was announced that Nest would buy camera startup Dropcam for $555 million. With the purchase, Dropcam became integrated with other Nest products; if the Protect alarm is triggered, the Dropcam can automatically start recording, and the Thermostat can use Dropcam to sense for motion. In September 2014, the Nest Thermostat and Nest Protect (a smoke alarm) became available in Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Initially, they were sold in approximately 400 stores across Europe, with another 150 stores to be added by the end of the year. In June 2015, the new Nest Cam, replacing the Dropcam, was announced, together with the second generation of the Nest Protect; there were internal reports that sales of the rebranded camera fell. On October 24, 2014, Nest both acquired the hub service Revolv, and discontinued its product line, gaining the expertise of Revolv's staff. === Nest as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. === In August 2015, Google announced that it would restructure its operations under a new parent company, Alphabet Inc., with Nest being separated from Google as a subsidiary of the new holding company. In January 2016, some Nest thermostats stopped working, a fault attributed to a software update from two weeks earlier. There were no lawsuits, individual or class-action, due to an arbitration clause in the contract. All Revolv smart hubs, costing several hundred dollars, were deliberately remotely bricked on May 15, 2016; notice was posted on the company's website in February. The story became news on April 4. The "lifetime subscription" to Revolv's online service, which had been sold with the hub, was defined by Nest to be the lifetime of the device, which ended May 15. Nest's decision to brick the hubs, and its "acerbic" corporate culture, faced substantial criticism from within Google/Alphabet and in press coverage. Many of Nest's staffers came from Dropcam and Revolv, and by November 2015, about 70 of about 1000 staffers had quit, causing management concern. Some countermeasures had been taken in takeover deals, to financially discourage senior people from leaving before set dates. Of the ~100 Dropcam staffers, about half had left by March 2016, when former Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy (who left 8 months after the takeover) wrote a post openly regretting selling his company to Nest. He stated that about 500 people had left (of a 1200-person staff). On June 6, 2016, Tony Fadell, the Nest CEO, announced in a blog post that he was leaving the company he founded with Matt Rogers and stepping into an "advisory" role. At this point the Nest acquisition was described by some press as a "disaster" for Google. As of mid-June 2016, Nest's problems were considered symptomatic of the limited market for home automation. According to Frank Gillet of Forrester Research, only 6% of American households possessed internet-connected devices such as appliances, home-monitoring systems, speakers, or lighting. He also predicted this percentage would grow to only 15% by 2021. Furthermore, 72% of respondents in a 2016 British survey conducted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers did not foresee adopting smart-home technology over the next two to five years. === Nest as a part of Google hardware division === On February 7, 2018, it was announced by hardware head Rick Osterloh that Nest had been merged into Google's hardware division, directly alongside units such as Google Home and Chromecast. It would retain its separate Palo Alto headquarters, but Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz would now report to Osterloh, and there were plans for tighter integration with Google platforms and software such as Google Assistant in future products. Shortly after the announcement, co-founder and chief product officer Matt Rogers announced his plans to leave the company. On July 18, 2018, Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz stepped down. Nest was merged with Google's home devices team, led by Rishi Chandra. During the Google I/O keynote on May 7, 2019, it was announced that Google Nest will now serve as the blanket branding for all of Google's home products. The Google Home Hub was retroactively renamed Google Nest Hub, while a new and larger version of the product is now available called the Nest Hub Max with both a larger screen and an amplified speaker, for a greater low-end audio experience. Also, product lines such as Chromecast, Google Home, and Google Wifi will now be marketed under the Google Nest brand. In addition, Nest began to deprecate its own internal platforms, announcing the discontinuation of the existing "Works with Nest" program in favor of Google Assistant going forward, and pushing users to migrate themselves from Nest's account system to Google accounts. Google published Nest-specific privacy information outlining a commitment to transparency, not selling personal information, and giving users control of their data. In February 2019, a privacy incident affecting the Google Nest Guard system came about. The controversy stemmed from the fact that Nest Guard, a security device that was part of the Nest Secure system, contained a hidden microphone that was not disclosed in any product specifications. It resulted in a public relations failure. === Partnership with ADT === In August 2020 Google announced intent to invest $450 million in ADT Inc. for a 6.6% stake in the company. The companies intend to integrate Nest devices with ADT's security monitoring services and eventually make them the “cornerstone of ADT’s smart home offering”, according to Nest. Upon the announcement, the shares of ADT doubled in value and hit all-time high of $17.21. === Use with Amazon Alexa === As of mid-2022, Google's newer Nest cameras will now work with Amazon Alexa devices such as Amazon Echo Show, Fire TV, and Fire Tablet to view captured security camera footage. === End of support policies === On October 25, 2025, software support was ended for the 1st and 2nd generation Nest Learning Thermostats. In addition, most of the smart functionality including the Home Away features, notifications, and carbon monoxide sensor became inoperative as they were dependent on connection with Google servers. By mid-November, third-party software solutions became available to restore functionality to affected thermostats. == Products == === Nest Learning Thermostat === The Nest Learning Thermostat is an electronic, programmable, and self-learning Wi-Fi-enabled thermostat that optimizes heating and cooling of homes and businesses to conserve energy. It is based on a machine-learning algorithm: for the first weeks users have to regulate the thermostat in order to provide the reference data set. Nest can then learn people's schedules, at which temperature they are used to and when. Using built-in sensors and phones' locations it can

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  ML.NET

  ML.NET is a free software machine learning library for the C# and F# programming languages. It also supports Python models when used together with NimbusML. The preview release of ML.NET included transforms for feature engineering like n-gram creation, and learners to handle binary classification, multi-class classification, and regression tasks. Additional ML tasks like anomaly detection and recommendation systems have since been added, and other approaches like deep learning will be included in future versions. == Machine learning == ML.NET brings model-based Machine Learning analytic and prediction capabilities to existing .NET developers. The framework is built upon .NET Core and .NET Standard inheriting the ability to run cross-platform on Linux, Windows and macOS. Although the ML.NET framework is new, its origins began in 2002 as a Microsoft Research project named TMSN (text mining search and navigation) for use internally within Microsoft products. It was later renamed to TLC (the learning code) around 2011. ML.NET was derived from the TLC library and has largely surpassed its parent says Dr. James McCaffrey, Microsoft Research. Developers can train a Machine Learning Model or reuse an existing Model by a 3rd party and run it on any environment offline. This means developers do not need to have a background in Data Science to use the framework. Support for the open-source Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) Deep Learning model format was introduced from build 0.3 in ML.NET. The release included other notable enhancements such as Factorization Machines, LightGBM, Ensembles, LightLDA transform and OVA. The ML.NET integration of TensorFlow is enabled from the 0.5 release. Support for x86 & x64 applications was added to build 0.7 including enhanced recommendation capabilities with Matrix Factorization. A full roadmap of planned features have been made available on the official GitHub repo. The first stable 1.0 release of the framework was announced at Build (developer conference) 2019. It included the addition of a Model Builder tool and AutoML (Automated Machine Learning) capabilities. Build 1.3.1 introduced a preview of Deep Neural Network training using C# bindings for Tensorflow and a Database loader which enables model training on databases. The 1.4.0 preview added ML.NET scoring on ARM processors and Deep Neural Network training with GPU's for Windows and Linux. === Performance === Microsoft's paper on machine learning with ML.NET demonstrated it is capable of training sentiment analysis models using large datasets while achieving high accuracy. Its results showed 95% accuracy on Amazon's 9GB review dataset. === Model builder === The ML.NET CLI is a Command-line interface which uses ML.NET AutoML to perform model training and pick the best algorithm for the data. The ML.NET Model Builder preview is an extension for Visual Studio that uses ML.NET CLI and ML.NET AutoML to output the best ML.NET Model using a GUI. === Model explainability === AI fairness and explainability has been an area of debate for AI Ethicists in recent years. A major issue for Machine Learning applications is the black box effect where end users and the developers of an application are unsure of how an algorithm came to a decision or whether the dataset contains bias. Build 0.8 included model explainability API's that had been used internally in Microsoft. It added the capability to understand the feature importance of models with the addition of 'Overall Feature Importance' and 'Generalized Additive Models'. When there are several variables that contribute to the overall score, it is possible to see a breakdown of each variable and which features had the most impact on the final score. The official documentation demonstrates that the scoring metrics can be output for debugging purposes. During training & debugging of a model, developers can preview and inspect live filtered data. This is possible using the Visual Studio DataView tools. === Infer.NET === Microsoft Research announced the popular Infer.NET model-based machine learning framework used for research in academic institutions since 2008 has been released open source and is now part of the ML.NET framework. The Infer.NET framework utilises probabilistic programming to describe probabilistic models which has the added advantage of interpretability. The Infer.NET namespace has since been changed to Microsoft.ML.Probabilistic consistent with ML.NET namespaces. === NimbusML Python support === Microsoft acknowledged that the Python programming language is popular with Data Scientists, so it has introduced NimbusML the experimental Python bindings for ML.NET. This enables users to train and use machine learning models in Python. It was made open source similar to Infer.NET. === Machine learning in the browser === ML.NET allows users to export trained models to the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) format. This establishes an opportunity to use models in different environments that don't use ML.NET. It would be possible to run these models in the client side of a browser using ONNX.js, a JavaScript client-side framework for deep learning models created in the Onnx format. === AI School Machine Learning Course === Along with the rollout of the ML.NET preview, Microsoft rolled out free AI tutorials and courses to help developers understand techniques needed to work with the framework.

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