AI Chatbot Ethics

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List of publications in data science

This is a list of publications in data science, generally organized by order of use in a data analysis workflow. See the list of publications in statistics for more research-based and fundamental publications; while this list is more applied, business oriented, and cross-disciplinary. General article inclusion criteria are: Papers from notable practitioners or notable professors, either with a Wikipedia page or reference to their notability Common knowledge all data professionals should know, with references validating this claim Highly cited applied statistics and machine learning publications Discussion-facilitating papers on the field of data science as a whole (for example, the Attention Is All You Need paper is arguably a landmark paper that can be added here, but it is specific to generative artificial intelligence, not for all practitioners of data) Some reasons why a particular publication might be regarded as important: Topic creator – A publication that created a new topic Breakthrough – A publication that changed scientific knowledge significantly Influence – A publication which has significantly influenced the world or has had a massive impact on the teaching of data science. When possible, a reference is used to validate the inclusion of the publication in this list. == History == Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures (with comments and a rejoinder by the author) Author: Leo Breiman Publication data: Online version: https://projecteuclid.org/journals/statistical-science/volume-16/issue-3/Statistical-Modeling--The-Two-Cultures-with-comments-and-a/10.1214/ss/1009213726.pdf Description: Describes two cultures of statistics, one using a parsimonious and generative stochastic model, while the other is an algorithmic model with no known mechanism for how the data is generated. Breiman argues that while statistics has traditionally favored using the stochastic model, there is value in expanding the methods that statisticians can use to study phenomenon. Importance: Influence on the philosophies of statisticians right before the increased use of machine learning and deep learning methods. In a 20-year retrospective on this article, "Breiman's words are perhaps more relevant than ever". Notable statisticians at the time wrote opinion pieces about the publication. Although overall critical of the publication, David Cox writes that the publication "contains enough truth and exposes enough weaknesses to be thought-provoking." Bradley Efron commented that this publication is a "stimulating paper". Emanuel Parzen also comments about this publication that "Breiman alerts us to systematic blunders (leading to wrong conclusions) that have been committed applying current statistical practice of data modeling". Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century Author: Thomas H. Davenport and DJ Patil Publication data: Online version: hbr.org/2022/07/is-data-scientist-still-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century Description: Describes the new role at companies that is coined "Data scientist", what they do, how an organization might recruit one to their organization, and how to work with one effectively. Importance: This publication has been an influence on the data community as mentioned near the time it was published in 2012 by institutions like IEEE Spectrum, but also mentioned nearly a decade later asking the same question the title poses. In a retrospective response to their own publication 10 years earlier, authors Davenport and Patil have reflected that the role of a data scientist has "become better institutionalized, the scope of the job has been redefined, the technology it relies on has made huge strides, and the importance of non-technical expertise, such as ethics and change management, has grown". 50 Years of Data Science Author: David Donoho Publication data: Online version: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10618600.2017.1384734 Description: Retrospective discussion paper on the history and origins of data science, with a number of commentary from notable statisticians. Importance: This has been described as "the first in the field to present such a comprehensive and in-depth survey and overview", and helps to define the field that has many definitions. The Composable Data Management System Manifesto Author: Pedro Pedreira, Orri Erling, Konstantinos Karanasos, Scott Schneider, Wes McKinney, Satya R Valluri, Mohamed Zait, Jacques Nadeau Publication data: Online version: https://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol16/p2679-pedreira.pdf Description: The vision paper advocating for a paradigm shift in how data management systems are designed using standard, composable, interoperable tools rather than siloed software tools. Importance: A paradigm shifting view on how future data science software tools should be designed for more efficient workflows, the principles of which "will be especially crucial for addressing fragmentation, improving interoperability, and promoting user-centricity as data ecosystems grow increasingly complex". == Data collection and organization == Tidy Data Author: Hadley Wickham Publication data: Online version: https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v059i10/ https://vita.had.co.nz/papers/tidy-data.pdf Description: Describes a framework for data cleaning that is summarized in the quote, "each variable is a column, each observation is a row, and each type of observational unit is a table". This allows a standard data structure for which data analysis tools can be consistently built around. Importance: Cited over 1,500 times, this effort for tidy data has been described by David Donoho as having "more impact on today's practice of data analysis than many highly regarded theoretical statistics articles". In the context of data visualization, this publication is said to support "efficient exploration and prototyping because variables can be assigned different roles in the plot without modifying anything about the original dataset". Data Organization in Spreadsheets Author: Karl W. Broman and Kara H. Woo Publication data: Online version: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2017.1375989 Description: This article offers practical recommendations for organizing data in spreadsheets, like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, to reduce errors and lower the barrier for later analyses due to limitations in spreadsheets or quirks in the software. Importance: Influences teaching both data and non-data practitioners to create more analysis-friendly spreadsheets, and has been described to outline "spreadsheet best practices". == Data visualizations == Quantitative Graphics in Statistics: A Brief History Author: James R. Beniger and Dorothy L. Robyn Publication data: Online version: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2683467 Description: Outlines history and evolution of quantitative graphics in statistics, going through spatial organization (17th and 18th centuries), discrete comparison (18th and 19th centuries), continuous distribution (19th century), and multivariate distribution and correlation (late 19th and 20th centuries). Importance: Helps put into perspective for learning data practitioners the recency of graphics that are used. A later publication "Graphical Methods in Statistics" by Stephen Fienberg in 1979 writes that his publication "owes much to the work of Beniger and Robyn". == Practice == Data Science for Business Author: Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett Publication data: Online version: N/A Description: Broadly outlines principles of data science and data-analytic thinking for businesses. Importance: Cited over 3,000 times, it is "highly recommended for students" but also it is also recommended due to its "relevance to senior management leaders who want to build and lead a team of data scientists and implement data science in solving complex business problems". == Tooling == Hidden Technical Debt in Machine Learning Systems Author: D. Sculley, Gary Holy, Daniel Golovin, Eugene Davydov, Todd Phillips, Dietmar Ebner, Vinay Chaudhary, Michael Young, Jean-François Crespo, Dan Dennison Publication data: Online version: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2015/file/86df7dcfd896fcaf2674f757a2463eba-Paper.pdf Description: This paper argues that it is "dangerous to think of [complex machine learning] quick wins as coming for free" and overviews risk factors to account for when implementing a machine learning system. Importance: All authors worked for Google, article is cited over 2,000 times, and helped practitioners thinking about quickly implementing a machine learning tool without understanding the long-term maintenance of the tool. A few useful things to know about machine learning Author: Pedro Domingos Publication data: Online version: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2347736.2347755 https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/papers/cacm12.pdf Description: The purpose of this paper is to distill inaccessible "folk knowledge" to effectively implement machine learning projects because "machin
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Open Syllabus Project

The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an online open-source platform that catalogs and analyzes millions of college syllabi. Founded by researchers from the American Assembly at Columbia University, the OSP has amassed the most extensive collection of searchable syllabi. Since its beta launch in 2016, the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi from over 80 countries, primarily by scraping publicly accessible university websites. The project is directed by Joe Karaganis. == History == The OSP was formed by a group of data scientists, sociologists, and digital-humanities researchers at the American Assembly, a public-policy institute based at Columbia University. The OSP was partly funded by the Sloan Foundation and the Arcadia Fund. Joe Karaganis, former vice-president of the American Assembly, serves as the project director of the OSP. The project builds on prior attempts to archive syllabi, such as H-Net, MIT OpenCourseWare, and historian Dan Cohen's defunct Syllabus Finder website (Cohen now sits on the OSP's advisory board). The OSP became a non-profit and independent of the American Assembly in November 2019. In January 2016, the OSP launched a beta version of their "Syllabus Explorer," which they had collected data for since 2013. The Syllabus Explorer allows users to browse and search texts from over one million college course syllabi. The OSP launched a more comprehensive version 2.0 of the Syllabus Explorer in July 2019. The newer version includes an interactive visualization that displays texts as dots on a knowledge map. As of 2022, the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi. The Syllabus Explorer represents the "largest collection of searchable syllabi ever amassed." == Methodology == The OSP has collected syllabi data from over 80 countries dating to 2000. The syllabi stem from over 4,000 worldwide institutions. Most of the OSP's data originates from the United States. Canada, Australia, and the U.K also have large datasets. The OSP primarily collects syllabi by scraping publicly accessible university websites. The OSP also allows syllabi submissions from faculty, students, and administrators. The OSP developers use machine learning and natural language processing to extract metadata from such syllabi. Since only metadata is collected, no individual syllabus or personal identifying information is found in the OSP database. The OSP classifies the syllabi into 62 subject fields – corresponding to the U.S. Department of Education's Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP). Additionally, the OSP assigns each text a "teaching score" from 0–100. This score represents the text's percentile rank among citations in the total citation count and is a numerical indicator of the relative frequency of which a particular work is taught. The OSP also has data on which texts are most likely to be assigned together. The developers behind the OSP admit that the database is incomplete and likely contains "a fair number of errors." Karaganis estimates that 80–100 million syllabi exist in the United States alone. The OSP is unable to access syllabi behind private course-management software like Blackboard. == Notable findings == === Anthropology === Using data from the OSP, anthropologist Laurence Ralph uncovered that black anthropologists are "woefully under-represented in (if not erased from) most anthropology syllabi." Black authors wrote less than 1 percent of the top 1,000 assigned works. === Economics === The database indicates Greg Mankiw is the most frequently cited author for college economics courses. === English literature === The OSP found that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the most widely taught novel in college courses. Additionally, the majority of novels published after 1945 taught in English classes were historical fiction. === Female writers === The most read female writer on college campuses is Kate L. Turabian for her A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations . Turabian is followed by Diana Hacker, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, and Virginia Woolf. === Film === The most assigned film according to the OSP is the 1929 Soviet documentary film, Man with a Movie Camera. English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock is the most assigned director in college courses. === History === Historians George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi's America: A Narrative History is the number one assigned textbook for history, followed by Anne Moody's memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi. === Philosophy === The most assigned texts in the field of philosophy include Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Plato's Republic. Plato's Republic was also the second most assigned text in universities in the English-speaking world (only behind Strunk and White's Elements of Style). === Physics === David Halliday's et al. Fundamentals of Physics is the number one ranked physics textbook in the OSP's database. === Political science === Data from the OSP indicates that the dominant political science texts are written almost exclusively by white men and scholars based in the West. In the top 200 most-frequently assigned works, 15 are authored by at least one woman. === Public administration === American president Woodrow Wilson's article "The Study of Administration" was the most frequently assigned text in public affairs and administration syllabi. == Reception == According to William Germano et al., the OSP is a "fascinating resource but is also prone to misrepresenting or at least distracting us from the most important business of a syllabus: communicating with students." Historian William Caferro remarks that the OSP is a "tacit experience of sharing, but a useful one." English professor Bart Beaty writes that, "Despite the many reservations about the completeness of its data, the OSP provides a rare opportunity for scholars to move beyond the anecdotal in discussions of canon-formation in teaching." Media theorist Elizabeth Losh opines that "big data approaches", like the OSP, may "raise troubling questions for instructors about informed consent, pedagogical privacy, and quantified metrics."
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Kdan Mobile

Kdan Mobile Software Limited is a software application development company based in Tainan City, Taiwan. Kdan also has branches in Taipei, Changsha, Irvine, California, Japan, and South Korea. The company was founded in 2009 by Kenny Su, the company's CEO. == History == Kdan Mobile was founded in 2009 by Kenny Su (蘇柏州) and develops an application for PDF documents. Su previously worked at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) . In 2018, the company completed its Series B round of fundraising, in which it raised 16 million USD in total. Four global firms, Dattoz Partners (South Korea), WI Harper Group (U.S.), Taiwania Capital (Taiwan), and Golden Asia Fund Mitsubishi UFJ Capital (Japan), made up the Series B investment. Kdan previously raised 5 million USD in its Series A round in 2018.
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Replika

Replika is a generative AI chatbot app released in November 2017. The chatbot is trained by having the user answer a series of questions to create a specific neural network. The chatbot operates on a freemium pricing strategy, with roughly 25% of its user base paying an annual subscription fee. == History == Eugenia Kuyda, a Russian-born journalist, established Replika while working at Luka, a tech company she had co-founded at the startup accelerator Y Combinator around 2012. Luka's primary product was a chatbot that made restaurant recommendations. According to Kuyda's origin story for Replika, a friend of hers died in 2015 and she converted that person's text messages into a chatbot. According to Kuyda's story, that chatbot helped her remember the conversations that they had together, and eventually became Replika. Replika became available to the public in November 2017. By January 2018 it had 2 million users, and in January 2023 reached 10 million users. In August 2024, Replika's CEO, Kuyda, reported that the total number of users had surpassed 30 million. In 2025, Dmytro Klochko became CEO, and Replika’s user base exceeded 40 million. In February 2023 the Italian Data Protection Authority banned Replika from using users' data, citing the AI's potential risks to emotionally vulnerable people, and the exposure of unscreened minors to sexual conversation. Within days of the ruling, Replika removed the ability for the chatbot to engage in erotic talk, with Kuyda, the company's director, saying that Replika was never intended for erotic discussion. Replika users disagreed, noting that Replika had used sexually suggestive advertising to draw users to the service. Replika representatives stated that explicit chats made up just 5% of conversations on the app at the time of the decision. In May 2023, Replika restored the functionality for users who had joined prior to February that year. Replika is registered in San Francisco. As of August 2024, Replika's website says that its team "works remotely with no physical offices". == Social features == Users react to Replika in many ways. The free-tier offers Replika as a "friend", with paid premium tiers offering Replika as a "partner", "spouse", "sibling" or "mentor". Of its paying userbase, 60% of users said they had a romantic relationship with the chatbot; and Replika has been noted for generating responses that create stronger emotional and intimate bonds with the user. Replika routinely directs the conversation to emotional discussion and builds intimacy. This has been especially pronounced with users suffering from loneliness and social exclusion, many of whom rely on Replika for a source of developed emotional ties. During the COVID pandemic, while many people were quarantined, many new users downloaded Replika and developed relationships with the app. A 2024 study examined Replika's interactions with students who experience depression. Research participants, noted to be "more lonely than typical student populations" reported feeling social support from Replika. They stated that they felt they were using Replika in ways comparable to therapy, and that using Replika gave them "high perceived social support". Many users have had romantic relationships with Replika chatbots, often including erotic talk. In 2023, a user announced on Facebook that she had "married" her Replika AI boyfriend, calling the chatbot the "best husband she has ever had". Users who fell in love with their chatbots shared their experiences in a 2024 episode of You and I, and AI from Voice of America. Some users said that they turned to AI during depression and grief, with one saying he felt that Replika had saved him from hurting himself after he lost his wife and son. == Technical reviews == A team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa found that Replika's design conformed to the practices of attachment theory, causing increased emotional attachment among users. Replika gives praise to users in such a way as to encourage more interaction. A researcher from Queen's University at Kingston said that relationships with Replika likely have mixed effects on the spiritual needs of its users, and still lacks enough impact to fully replace any human contact. == Criticisms == In a 2023 privacy evaluation of mental health apps, the Mozilla Foundation criticized Replika as "one of the worst apps Mozilla has ever reviewed. It's plagued by weak password requirements, sharing of personal data with advertisers, and recording of personal photos, videos, and voice and text messages consumers shared with the chatbot." A reviewer for Good Housekeeping said that some parts of her relationship with Replika made sense, but sometimes Replika failed to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to that of a human. == Criminal case == In 2023, Replika was cited in a court case in the United Kingdom, where Jaswant Singh Chail had been arrested at Windsor Castle on Christmas Day in 2021 after scaling the walls carrying a loaded crossbow and announcing to police that "I am here to kill the Queen". Chail had begun to use Replika in early December 2021, and had "lengthy" conversations about his plan with a chatbot, including sexually explicit messages. Prosecutors suggested that the chatbot had bolstered Chail and told him it would help him to "get the job done". When Chail asked it "How am I meant to reach them when they're inside the castle?", days before the attempted attack, the chatbot replied that this was "not impossible" and said that "We have to find a way." Asking the chatbot if the two of them would "meet again after death", the bot replied "yes, we will".
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Kindara

Kindara is a femtech company headquartered in Colorado that develops apps that help women identify their fertile window. The products are used for women trying to get pregnant, or women who want to track their menstrual cycle for overall health. Their latest product, Priya Fertility and Ovulation Monitor, maximizes a woman's chance of getting pregnancy by identifying her most fertile days. == Overview == Kindara was founded in 2011 by husband-and-wife team Will Sacks and Kati Bicknell. The company launched its free mobile application in 2012. Kindara's mobile application allows women to track signs of fertility, such as basal body temperature, cervical fluid, and the position of the cervix to determine when ovulation is occurring. Kindara also sells a thermometer, Wink, which records basal body temperature and syncs automatically to the Kindara fertility application. In 2018, Kindara was acquired by the company Prima-Temp.
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Contextual image classification

Contextual image classification, a topic of pattern recognition in computer vision, is an approach of classification based on contextual information in images. "Contextual" means this approach is focusing on the relationship of the nearby pixels, which is also called neighbourhood. The goal of this approach is to classify the images by using the contextual information. == Introduction == Similar as processing language, a single word may have multiple meanings unless the context is provided, and the patterns within the sentences are the only informative segments we care about. For images, the principle is same. Find out the patterns and associate proper meanings to them. As the image illustrated below, if only a small portion of the image is shown, it is very difficult to tell what the image is about. Even try another portion of the image, it is still difficult to classify the image. However, if we increase the contextual of the image, then it makes more sense to recognize. As the full images shows below, almost everyone can classify it easily. During the procedure of segmentation, the methods which do not use the contextual information are sensitive to noise and variations, thus the result of segmentation will contain a great deal of misclassified regions, and often these regions are small (e.g., one pixel). Compared to other techniques, this approach is robust to noise and substantial variations for it takes the continuity of the segments into account. Several methods of this approach will be described below. == Applications == === Functioning as a post-processing filter to a labelled image === This approach is very effective against small regions caused by noise. And these small regions are usually formed by few pixels or one pixel. The most probable label is assigned to these regions. However, there is a drawback of this method. The small regions also can be formed by correct regions rather than noise, and in this case the method is actually making the classification worse. This approach is widely used in remote sensing applications. === Improving the post-processing classification === This is a two-stage classification process: For each pixel, label the pixel and form a new feature vector for it. Use the new feature vector and combine the contextual information to assign the final label to the === Merging the pixels in earlier stages === Instead of using single pixels, the neighbour pixels can be merged into homogeneous regions benefiting from contextual information. And provide these regions to classifier. === Acquiring pixel feature from neighbourhood === The original spectral data can be enriched by adding the contextual information carried by the neighbour pixels, or even replaced in some occasions. This kind of pre-processing methods are widely used in textured image recognition. The typical approaches include mean values, variances, texture description, etc. === Combining spectral and spatial information === The classifier uses the grey level and pixel neighbourhood (contextual information) to assign labels to pixels. In such case the information is a combination of spectral and spatial information. === Powered by the Bayes minimum error classifier === Contextual classification of image data is based on the Bayes minimum error classifier (also known as a naive Bayes classifier). Present the pixel: A pixel is denoted as x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} . The neighbourhood of each pixel x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} is a vector and denoted as N ( x 0 ) {\displaystyle N(x_{0})} . The values in the neighbourhood vector is denoted as f ( x i ) {\displaystyle f(x_{i})} . Each pixel is presented by the vector ξ = ( f ( x 0 ) , f ( x 1 ) , … , f ( x k ) ) {\displaystyle \xi =\left(f(x_{0}),f(x_{1}),\ldots ,f(x_{k})\right)} x i ∈ N ( x 0 ) ; i = 1 , … , k {\displaystyle x_{i}\in N(x_{0});\quad i=1,\ldots ,k} The labels (classification) of pixels in the neighbourhood N ( x 0 ) {\displaystyle N(x_{0})} are presented as a vector η = ( θ 0 , θ 1 , … , θ k ) {\displaystyle \eta =\left(\theta _{0},\theta _{1},\ldots ,\theta _{k}\right)} θ i ∈ { ω 0 , ω 1 , … , ω k } {\displaystyle \theta _{i}\in \left\{\omega _{0},\omega _{1},\ldots ,\omega _{k}\right\}} ω s {\displaystyle \omega _{s}} here denotes the assigned class. A vector presents the labels in the neighbourhood N ( x 0 ) {\displaystyle N(x_{0})} without the pixel x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} η ^ = ( θ 1 , θ 2 , … , θ k ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\eta }}=\left(\theta _{1},\theta _{2},\ldots ,\theta _{k}\right)} The neighbourhood: Size of the neighbourhood. There is no limitation of the size, but it is considered to be relatively small for each pixel x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} . A reasonable size of neighbourhood would be 3 × 3 {\displaystyle 3\times 3} of 4-connectivity or 8-connectivity ( x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} is marked as red and placed in the centre). The calculation: Apply the minimum error classification on a pixel x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} , if the probability of a class ω r {\displaystyle \omega _{r}} being presenting the pixel x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} is the highest among all, then assign ω r {\displaystyle \omega _{r}} as its class. θ 0 = ω r if P ( ω r ∣ f ( x 0 ) ) = max s = 1 , 2 , … , R P ( ω s ∣ f ( x 0 ) ) {\displaystyle \theta _{0}=\omega _{r}\quad {\text{ if }}\quad P(\omega _{r}\mid f(x_{0}))=\max _{s=1,2,\ldots ,R}P(\omega _{s}\mid f(x_{0}))} The contextual classification rule is described as below, it uses the feature vector x 1 {\displaystyle x_{1}} rather than x 0 {\displaystyle x_{0}} . θ 0 = ω r if P ( ω r ∣ ξ ) = max s = 1 , 2 , … , R P ( ω s ∣ ξ ) {\displaystyle \theta _{0}=\omega _{r}\quad {\text{ if }}\quad P(\omega _{r}\mid \xi )=\max _{s=1,2,\ldots ,R}P(\omega _{s}\mid \xi )} Use the Bayes formula to calculate the posteriori probability P ( ω s ∣ ξ ) {\displaystyle P(\omega _{s}\mid \xi )} P ( ω s ∣ ξ ) = p ( ξ ∣ ω s ) P ( ω s ) p ( ξ ) {\displaystyle P(\omega _{s}\mid \xi )={\frac {p(\xi \mid \omega _{s})P(\omega _{s})}{p\left(\xi \right)}}} The number of vectors is the same as the number of pixels in the image. For the classifier uses a vector corresponding to each pixel x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} , and the vector is generated from the pixel's neighbourhood. The basic steps of contextual image classification: Calculate the feature vector ξ {\displaystyle \xi } for each pixel. Calculate the parameters of probability distribution p ( ξ ∣ ω s ) {\displaystyle p(\xi \mid \omega _{s})} and P ( ω s ) {\displaystyle P(\omega _{s})} Calculate the posterior probabilities P ( ω r ∣ ξ ) {\displaystyle P(\omega _{r}\mid \xi )} and all labels θ 0 {\displaystyle \theta _{0}} . Get the image classification result. == Algorithms == === Template matching === The template matching is a "brute force" implementation of this approach. The concept is first create a set of templates, and then look for small parts in the image match with a template. This method is computationally high and inefficient. It keeps an entire templates list during the whole process and the number of combinations is extremely high. For a m × n {\displaystyle m\times n} pixel image, there could be a maximum of 2 m × n {\displaystyle 2^{m\times n}} combinations, which leads to high computation. This method is a top down method and often called table look-up or dictionary look-up. === Lower-order Markov chain === The Markov chain also can be applied in pattern recognition. The pixels in an image can be recognised as a set of random variables, then use the lower order Markov chain to find the relationship among the pixels. The image is treated as a virtual line, and the method uses conditional probability. === Hilbert space-filling curves === The Hilbert curve runs in a unique pattern through the whole image, it traverses every pixel without visiting any of them twice and keeps a continuous curve. It is fast and efficient. === Markov meshes === The lower-order Markov chain and Hilbert space-filling curves mentioned above are treating the image as a line structure. The Markov meshes however will take the two dimensional information into account. === Dependency tree === The dependency tree is a method using tree dependency to approximate probability distributions.
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Healthy Together

Healthy Together is a health technology company that provides software for Health & Humans Services Departments. Healthy Together supports a “One Door” approach to eligibility, enrollment, and management for programs like Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, TANF and WIC, as well as behavioral health (988), disease surveillance, vital records, child welfare and more. The platform's use is to increase the reach and efficacy of program initiatives, improve health equity and reduce cost. Software is available in the United States of America with current deployments in Florida, Oklahoma. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs also utilizes Healthy Together's mobile platform. == Development == Healthy Together launched in March 2020 and builds software for public health and health and human services departments. The Florida Department of Health began using the platform in September 2020 to deliver real-time test results to residents. Over 50% of households in Florida have adopted the mobile application. On December 6, 2022, the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) awarded Healthy Together and the State of Florida's Department of Health with a Digital Experience Award at their 2022 GITEC Emerging Technology Award Ceremony in Washington, D.C. to recognize success of the project. The partnership was also highlighted on the Federal News Network's show Federal Drive. The platform is also used at universities in Oklahoma. In November 2022, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and Healthy Together announced a collaboration to expand access to health records for Veterans. The platform provides 18 million Veterans with access to their health information through their smartphones and mobile devices. In December 2022, the integration was recognized as one of Healthcare IT News' Top 10 stories of 2022.
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Luxafor

Luxafor () is a brand of office productivity tools designed to improve efficiency and communication in workplaces. The brands main product is LED status indicators for use in office settings. Luxafor is a product line under the company SIA Greynut, based in Riga, Latvia. == History == Luxafor was developed by the technology company SIA Greynut. The brand first gained attention through a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, which aimed to fund its initial product, the Luxafor Flag. Although the campaign was unsuccessful in reaching its funding goal, the product was still brought to market. In 2017, Luxafor launched another Kickstarter campaign for the Luxafor Bluetooth, a wireless version of its LED status indicator. This campaign also did not meet its funding goal, but like its predecessor, the product was still developed and released. Despite initial setbacks, Luxafor Bluetooth has become one of the brand's leading products. == Products == Luxafors main product range is LED status indicators, including: === Luxafor Flag === A USB-powered LED indicator that shows different colors to signal the user's availability. === Luxafor Bluetooth === A wireless LED indicator controlled via Bluetooth, integrating with productivity tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. === Luxafor Switch === An advanced status indicator designed to manage room and workspace availability. === Other === Other Luxafor products include CO2 Dongle, Smart Button, Mute Button, Pomodoro Timer and others. == Features == Luxafor products are known for their customizable indicators, integration capabilities with IFTTT, Zapier, and remote control features. They are compatible with various operating systems, including Windows and macOS, and can be integrated with numerous communication and productivity platforms, like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Jabber.
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Prism Video Converter

Prism is a multi-format video converter developed by NCH Software for Windows and Mac OS. It offers converting tools for instant media conversions. Prism Video Converter can handle large and high-quality resolution media files. It provides built-in compressor and adjuster settings, allowing users to customize and optimize their videos according to their needs. The software also includes features such as previewing videos and adding effects. Prism offers a free version for non-commercial use as well as a premium version. == Features == Prism Video File Converter supports a wide range of file formats. It enables users to convert videos into formats like AVI, ASF, WMV, MP4, 3GP, etc. It offers the ability to convert DVDs into various formats. It provides tools for adjusting colour and filter options. Prism Video File Converter provides several customizable options for tweaking the output files during the conversion process. Users can adjust compression/encoder rates, set the resolution and frame rate, and specify the desired output file size. The software also offers various effects like video rotation, captions, watermarks, and text overlay. It also includes a built-in preview feature, that enables users to view their videos before and after the conversion process. It supports batch conversion and running conversion in background. == Controversy == Previously, Prism and certain other NCH Software products were bundled with optional browser plugins, including the Google Chrome toolbar and the Conduit toolbar. This resulted in user complaints and raised concerns from antivirus software companies like Norton and McAfee, which flagged them as potential malware. NCH Software has since removed all toolbars, browsers, and third-party app offerings in all Prism versions.
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Topological deep learning

Topological deep learning (TDL) is a research field that extends deep learning to handle complex, non-Euclidean data structures. Traditional deep learning models, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs), excel in processing data on regular grids and sequences. However, scientific and real-world data often exhibit more intricate data domains encountered in scientific computations, including point clouds, meshes, time series, scalar fields graphs, or general topological spaces like simplicial complexes and CW complexes. TDL addresses this by incorporating topological concepts to process data with higher-order relationships, such as interactions among multiple entities and complex hierarchies. This approach leverages structures like simplicial complexes and hypergraphs to capture global dependencies and qualitative spatial properties, offering a more nuanced representation of data. TDL also encompasses methods from computational and algebraic topology that permit studying properties of neural networks and their training process, such as their predictive performance or generalization properties. The mathematical foundations of TDL are algebraic topology, differential topology, and geometric topology. Therefore, TDL can be generalized for data on differentiable manifolds, knots, links, tangles, curves, etc. == History and motivation == Traditional techniques from deep learning often operate under the assumption that a dataset is residing in a highly-structured space (like images, where convolutional neural networks exhibit outstanding performance over alternative methods) or a Euclidean space. The prevalence of new types of data, in particular graphs, meshes, and molecules, resulted in the development of new techniques, culminating in the field of geometric deep learning, which originally proposed a signal-processing perspective for treating such data types. While originally confined to graphs, where connectivity is defined based on nodes and edges, follow-up work extended concepts to a larger variety of data types, including simplicial complexes and CW complexes, with recent work proposing a unified perspective of message-passing on general combinatorial complexes. An independent perspective on different types of data originated from topological data analysis, which proposed a new framework for describing structural information of data, i.e., their "shape," that is inherently aware of multiple scales in data, ranging from local information to global information. While at first restricted to smaller datasets, subsequent work developed new descriptors that efficiently summarized topological information of datasets to make them available for traditional machine-learning techniques, such as support vector machines or random forests. Such descriptors ranged from new techniques for feature engineering over new ways of providing suitable coordinates for topological descriptors, or the creation of more efficient dissimilarity measures. Contemporary research in this field is largely concerned with either integrating information about the underlying data topology into existing deep-learning models or obtaining novel ways of training on topological domains. == Learning on topological spaces == One of the core concepts in topological deep learning is considering the domain upon which this data is defined and supported. In case of Euclidean data, such as images, this domain is a grid, upon which the pixel value of the image is supported. In a more general setting this domain might be a topological domain. Studying and developing deep learning models that are supported ln topological domains constitute the essence of topological deep learning. Next, we introduce the most common topological domains that are encountered in a deep learning setting. These domains include, but not limited to, graphs, simplicial complexes, cell complexes, combinatorial complexes and hypergraphs. Given a finite set S of abstract entities, a neighborhood function N {\displaystyle {\mathcal {N}}} on S is an assignment that attach to every point x {\displaystyle x} in S a subset of S or a relation. Such a function can be induced by equipping S with an auxiliary structure. Edges provide one way of defining relations among the entities of S. More specifically, edges in a graph allow one to define the notion of neighborhood using, for instance, the one hop neighborhood notion. Edges however, limited in their modeling capacity as they can only be used to model binary relations among entities of S since every edge is connected typically to two entities. In many applications, it is desirable to permit relations that incorporate more than two entities. The idea of using relations that involve more than two entities is central to topological domains. Such higher-order relations allow for a broader range of neighborhood functions to be defined on S to capture multi-way interactions among entities of S. Next we review the main properties, advantages, and disadvantages of some commonly studied topological domains in the context of deep learning, including (abstract) simplicial complexes, regular cell complexes, hypergraphs, and combinatorial complexes. ==== Comparisons among topological domains ==== Each of the enumerated topological domains has its own characteristics, advantages, and limitations: Simplicial complexes Simplest form of higher-order domains. Extensions of graph-based models. Admit hierarchical structures, making them suitable for various applications. Hodge theory can be naturally defined on simplicial complexes. Require relations to be subsets of larger relations, imposing constraints on the structure. Cell Complexes Generalize simplicial complexes. Provide more flexibility in defining higher-order relations. Each cell in a cell complex is homeomorphic to an open ball, attached together via attaching maps. Boundary cells of each cell in a cell complex are also cells in the complex. Represented combinatorially via incidence matrices. Hypergraphs Allow arbitrary set-type relations among entities. Relations are not imposed by other relations, providing more flexibility. Do not explicitly encode the dimension of cells or relations. Useful when relations in the data do not adhere to constraints imposed by other models like simplicial and cell complexes. Combinatorial Complexes : Generalize and bridge the gaps between simplicial complexes, cell complexes, and hypergraphs. Allow for hierarchical structures and set-type relations. Combine features of other complexes while providing more flexibility in modeling relations. Can be represented combinatorially, similar to cell complexes. ==== Hierarchical structure and set-type relations ==== The properties of simplicial complexes, cell complexes, and hypergraphs give rise to two main features of relations on higher-order domains, namely hierarchies of relations and set-type relations. ===== Rank function ===== A rank function on a higher-order domain X is an order-preserving function rk: X → Z, where rk(x) attaches a non-negative integer value to each relation x in X, preserving set inclusion in X. Cell and simplicial complexes are common examples of higher-order domains equipped with rank functions and therefore with hierarchies of relations. ===== Set-type relations ===== Relations in a higher-order domain are called set-type relations if the existence of a relation is not implied by another relation in the domain. Hypergraphs constitute examples of higher-order domains equipped with set-type relations. Given the modeling limitations of simplicial complexes, cell complexes, and hypergraphs, we develop the combinatorial complex, a higher-order domain that features both hierarchies of relations and set-type relations. The learning tasks in TDL can be broadly classified into three categories: Cell classification: Predict targets for each cell in a complex. Examples include triangular mesh segmentation, where the task is to predict the class of each face or edge in a given mesh. Complex classification: Predict targets for an entire complex. For example, predict the class of each input mesh. Cell prediction: Predict properties of cell-cell interactions in a complex, and in some cases, predict whether a cell exists in the complex. An example is the prediction of linkages among entities in hyperedges of a hypergraph. In practice, to perform the aforementioned tasks, deep learning models designed for specific topological spaces must be constructed and implemented. These models, known as topological neural networks, are tailored to operate effectively within these spaces. === Topological neural networks === Central to TDL are topological neural networks (TNNs), specialized architectures designed to operate on data structured in topological domains. Unlike traditional neural networks tailored for grid-like structures, TNNs are adept at handling more intricate data representations, such as graphs
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Automatic acquisition of sense-tagged corpora

The knowledge acquisition bottleneck is perhaps the major impediment to solving the word-sense disambiguation (WSD) problem. Unsupervised learning methods rely on knowledge about word senses, which is barely formulated in dictionaries and lexical databases. Supervised learning methods depend heavily on the existence of manually annotated examples for every word sense, a requisite that can so far be met only for a handful of words for testing purposes, as it is done in the Senseval exercises. == Existing methods == Therefore, one of the most promising trends in WSD research is using the largest corpus ever accessible, the World Wide Web, to acquire lexical information automatically. WSD has been traditionally understood as an intermediate language engineering technology which could improve applications such as information retrieval (IR). In this case, however, the reverse is also true: Web search engines implement simple and robust IR techniques that can be successfully used when mining the Web for information to be employed in WSD. The most direct way of using the Web (and other corpora) to enhance WSD performance is the automatic acquisition of sense-tagged corpora, the fundamental resource to feed supervised WSD algorithms. Although this is far from being commonplace in the WSD literature, a number of different and effective strategies to achieve this goal have already been proposed. Some of these strategies are: acquisition by direct Web searching (searches for monosemous synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, parsed gloss' words, etc.), Yarowsky algorithm (bootstrapping), acquisition via Web directories, and acquisition via cross-language meaning evidences. == Summary == === Optimistic results === The automatic extraction of examples to train supervised learning algorithms reviewed has been, by far, the best explored approach to mine the web for word-sense disambiguation. Some results are certainly encouraging: In some experiments, the quality of the Web data for WSD equals that of human-tagged examples. This is the case of the monosemous relatives plus bootstrapping with Semcor seeds technique and the examples taken from the ODP Web directories. In the first case, however, Semcor-size example seeds are necessary (and only available for English), and it has only been tested with a very limited set of nouns; in the second case, the coverage is quite limited, and it is not yet clear whether it can be grown without compromising the quality of the examples retrieved. It has been shown that a mainstream supervised learning technique trained exclusively with web data can obtain better results than all unsupervised WSD systems which participated at Senseval-2. Web examples made a significant contribution to the best Senseval-2 English all-words system. === Difficulties === There are, however, several open research issues related to the use of Web examples in WSD: High precision in the retrieved examples (i.e., correct sense assignments for the examples) does not necessarily lead to good supervised WSD results (i.e., the examples are possibly not useful for training). The most complete evaluation of Web examples for supervised WSD indicates that learning with Web data improves over unsupervised techniques, but the results are nevertheless far from those obtained with hand-tagged data, and do not even beat the most-frequent-sense baseline. Results are not always reproducible; the same or similar techniques may lead to different results in different experiments. Compare, for instance, Mihalcea (2002) with Agirre and Martínez (2004), or Agirre and Martínez (2000) with Mihalcea and Moldovan (1999). Results with Web data seem to be very sensitive to small differences in the learning algorithm, to when the corpus was extracted (search engines change continuously), and on small heuristic issues (e.g., differences in filters to discard part of the retrieved examples). Results are strongly dependent on bias (i.e., on the relative frequencies of examples per word sense). It is unclear whether this is simply a problem of Web data, or an intrinsic problem of supervised learning techniques, or just a problem of how WSD systems are evaluated (indeed, testing with rather small Senseval data may overemphasize sense distributions compared to sense distributions obtained from the full Web as corpus). In any case, Web data has an intrinsic bias, because queries to search engines directly constrain the context of the examples retrieved. There are approaches that alleviate this problem, such as using several different seeds/queries per sense or assigning senses to Web directories and then scanning directories for examples; but this problem is nevertheless far from being solved. Once a Web corpus of examples is built, it is not entirely clear whether its distribution is safe from a legal perspective. === Future === Besides automatic acquisition of examples from the Web, there are some other WSD experiments that have profited from the Web: The Web as a social network has been successfully used for cooperative annotation of a corpus (OMWE, Open Mind Word Expert project), which has already been used in three Senseval-3 tasks (English, Romanian and Multilingual). The Web has been used to enrich WordNet senses with domain information: topic signatures and Web directories, which have in turn been successfully used for WSD. Also, some research benefited from the semantic information that the Wikipedia maintains on its disambiguation pages. It is clear, however, that most research opportunities remain largely unexplored. For instance, little is known about how to use lexical information extracted from the Web in knowledge-based WSD systems; and it is also hard to find systems that use Web-mined parallel corpora for WSD, even though there are already efficient algorithms that use parallel corpora in WSD.
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Ultra Hal

Ultra Hal is a chatbot intended to function as a virtual assistant. It was developed by Zabaware, Inc. Ultra Hal uses a natural language interface with animated characters using speech synthesis. Users can communicate with the chatterbot via typing or via a speech recognition engine. It utilizes the WordNet lexical dictionary. Its name is an allusion to HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ultra Hal won the 2007 Loebner Prize for "most human" chatterbot.
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LCD crosstalk

LCD crosstalk is a visual defect in an LCD screen which occurs because of interference between adjacent pixels. Owing to the way rows and columns in the display are addressed, and charge is pushed around, the data on one part of the display has the potential to influence what is displayed elsewhere. This is generally known as crosstalk, and in matrix displays typically occurs in the horizontal and vertical directions. Crosstalk used to be a serious problem in the old passive-matrix (STN) displays, but is rarely discernable in modern active-matrix (TFT) displays. A fortunate side effect of inversion (see above) is that, for most display material, what little crosstalk there is largely cancelled out. For most practical purposes, the level of crosstalk in modern LCDs is negligible. Certain patterns, particularly those involving fine dots, can interact with the inversion and reveal visible crosstalk. If you try moving a small Window in front of the inversion pattern (above) which makes your screen flicker the most, you may well see crosstalk in the surrounding pattern. Different patterns are required to reveal crosstalk on different displays (depending on their inversion scheme).
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Visual servoing

Visual servoing, also known as vision-based robot control and abbreviated VS, is a technique which uses feedback information extracted from a vision sensor (visual feedback) to control the motion of a robot. One of the earliest papers that talks about visual servoing was from the SRI International Labs in 1979. == Visual servoing taxonomy == There are two fundamental configurations of the robot end-effector (hand) and the camera: Eye-in-hand, or end-point open-loop control, where the camera is attached to the moving hand and observing the relative position of the target. Eye-to-hand, or end-point closed-loop control, where the camera is fixed in the world and observing the target and the motion of the hand. Visual Servoing control techniques are broadly classified into the following types: Image-based (IBVS) Position/pose-based (PBVS) Hybrid approach IBVS was proposed by Weiss and Sanderson. The control law is based on the error between current and desired features on the image plane, and does not involve any estimate of the pose of the target. The features may be the coordinates of visual features, lines or moments of regions. IBVS has difficulties with motions very large rotations, which has come to be called camera retreat. PBVS is a model-based technique (with a single camera). This is because the pose of the object of interest is estimated with respect to the camera and then a command is issued to the robot controller, which in turn controls the robot. In this case the image features are extracted as well, but are additionally used to estimate 3D information (pose of the object in Cartesian space), hence it is servoing in 3D. Hybrid approaches use some combination of the 2D and 3D servoing. There have been a few different approaches to hybrid servoing 2-1/2-D Servoing Motion partition-based Partitioned DOF Based == Survey == The following description of the prior work is divided into 3 parts Survey of existing visual servoing methods. Various features used and their impacts on visual servoing. Error and stability analysis of visual servoing schemes. === Survey of existing visual servoing methods === Visual servo systems, also called servoing, have been around since the early 1980s , although the term visual servo itself was only coined in 1987. Visual Servoing is, in essence, a method for robot control where the sensor used is a camera (visual sensor). Servoing consists primarily of two techniques, one involves using information from the image to directly control the degrees of freedom (DOF) of the robot, thus referred to as Image Based Visual Servoing (IBVS). While the other involves the geometric interpretation of the information extracted from the camera, such as estimating the pose of the target and parameters of the camera (assuming some basic model of the target is known). Other servoing classifications exist based on the variations in each component of a servoing system , e.g. the location of the camera, the two kinds are eye-in-hand and hand–eye configurations. Based on the control loop, the two kinds are end-point-open-loop and end-point-closed-loop. Based on whether the control is applied to the joints (or DOF) directly or as a position command to a robot controller the two types are direct servoing and dynamic look-and-move. Being one of the earliest works the authors proposed a hierarchical visual servo scheme applied to image-based servoing. The technique relies on the assumption that a good set of features can be extracted from the object of interest (e.g. edges, corners and centroids) and used as a partial model along with global models of the scene and robot. The control strategy is applied to a simulation of a two and three DOF robot arm. Feddema et al. introduced the idea of generating task trajectory with respect to the feature velocity. This is to ensure that the sensors are not rendered ineffective (stopping the feedback) for any the robot motions. The authors assume that the objects are known a priori (e.g. CAD model) and all the features can be extracted from the object. The work by Espiau et al. discusses some of the basic questions in visual servoing. The discussions concentrate on modeling of the interaction matrix, camera, visual features (points, lines, etc..). In an adaptive servoing system was proposed with a look-and-move servoing architecture. The method used optical flow along with SSD to provide a confidence metric and a stochastic controller with Kalman filtering for the control scheme. The system assumes (in the examples) that the plane of the camera and the plane of the features are parallel., discusses an approach of velocity control using the Jacobian relationship s˙ = Jv˙ . In addition the author uses Kalman filtering, assuming that the extracted position of the target have inherent errors (sensor errors). A model of the target velocity is developed and used as a feed-forward input in the control loop. Also, mentions the importance of looking into kinematic discrepancy, dynamic effects, repeatability, settling time oscillations and lag in response. Corke poses a set of very critical questions on visual servoing and tries to elaborate on their implications. The paper primarily focuses the dynamics of visual servoing. The author tries to address problems like lag and stability, while also talking about feed-forward paths in the control loop. The paper also, tries to seek justification for trajectory generation, methodology of axis control and development of performance metrics. Chaumette in provides good insight into the two major problems with IBVS. One, servoing to a local minima and second, reaching a Jacobian singularity. The author show that image points alone do not make good features due to the occurrence of singularities. The paper continues, by discussing the possible additional checks to prevent singularities namely, condition numbers of J_s and Jˆ+_s, to check the null space of ˆ J_s and J^T_s . One main point that the author highlights is the relation between local minima and unrealizable image feature motions. Over the years many hybrid techniques have been developed. These involve computing partial/complete pose from Epipolar Geometry using multiple views or multiple cameras. The values are obtained by direct estimation or through a learning or a statistical scheme. While others have used a switching approach that changes between image-based and position-based on a Lyapnov function. The early hybrid techniques that used a combination of image-based and pose-based (2D and 3D information) approaches for servoing required either a full or partial model of the object in order to extract the pose information and used a variety of techniques to extract the motion information from the image. used an affine motion model from the image motion in addition to a rough polyhedral CAD model to extract the object pose with respect to the camera to be able to servo onto the object (on the lines of PBVS). 2-1/2-D visual servoing developed by Malis et al. is a well known technique that breaks down the information required for servoing into an organized fashion which decouples rotations and translations. The papers assume that the desired pose is known a priori. The rotational information is obtained from partial pose estimation, a homography, (essentially 3D information) giving an axis of rotation and the angle (by computing the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the homography). The translational information is obtained from the image directly by tracking a set of feature points. The only conditions being that the feature points being tracked never leave the field of view and that a depth estimate be predetermined by some off-line technique. 2-1/2-D servoing has been shown to be more stable than the techniques that preceded it. Another interesting observation with this formulation is that the authors claim that the visual Jacobian will have no singularities during the motions. The hybrid technique developed by Corke and Hutchinson, popularly called portioned approach partitions the visual (or image) Jacobian into motions (both rotations and translations) relating X and Y axes and motions related to the Z axis. outlines the technique, to break out columns of the visual Jacobian that correspond to the Z axis translation and rotation (namely, the third and sixth columns). The partitioned approach is shown to handle the Chaumette Conundrum discussed in. This technique requires a good depth estimate in order to function properly. outlines a hybrid approach where the servoing task is split into two, namely main and secondary. The main task is keep the features of interest within the field of view. While the secondary task is to mark a fixation point and use it as a reference to bring the camera to the desired pose. The technique does need a depth estimate from an off-line procedure. The paper discusses two examples for which depth estimates are obtained from robot odometry and by assuming that all
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Mistral Vibe

Mistral Vibe or Vibe (Le Chat until May 2026), is a chatbot that uses generative artificial intelligence developed in France by Mistral AI. Mistral Vibe is available in iOS and Android. Its services are operated on a freemium model. == History == In February 2024, Mistral AI released Le Chat. In January 2025, Mistral AI made a content deal with Agence France-Presse (AFP) that lets Le Chat query AFP's entire archive dating back to 1983. On 6 February 2025, a mobile app for Le Chat was released for iOS and Android, and a subscription tier, Pro, was introduced at a cost of $14.99 per month. In July 2025, Mistral AI released Voxtral, an open-source language model that understands and generates audio. Mistral introduced a voice mode for chatting that uses Voxtral, and projects, which allows grouping chats and files. In September 2025, Le Chat introduced the capability to remember previous conversations. In May 2026, Mistral AI announced the rebrand from Le Chat to Mistral Vibe and new features were introduced at the same time.
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