AI Chat No Filter App

AI Chat No Filter App — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Rapid PHP Editor

    Rapid PHP Editor

    rapid PHP Editor is a PHP Editor that incorporates many functions such as AutoComplete, Syntax checker, debugger and many other tools for fast PHP development. Rapid PHP Editor also contain other development tools for helping on HTML, CSS, JavaScript and many other languages. Is part of a family of products covering most aspects of modern web development integrating as well many other capabilities used by developers. Some features: (X)HTML to HTML5 CSS to CSS3 Code intelligence Powerful search and replace Support for several frameworks Code beautifier FTP Explorer (FTP/SFTP/FTPS) File explorer Database explorer Code snippets Validators and Debuggers FAST, real fast Many other tools available (many more to describe all here) == History == Rapid PHP Editor was built using the Delphi programming language.

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  • Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act

    Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act

    The Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act, or SB 1047, was a failed 2024 California bill intended to "mitigate the risk of catastrophic harms from AI models so advanced that they are not yet known to exist". Specifically, the bill would have applied to models which cost more than $100 million to train and were trained using a quantity of computing power greater than 1026 integer or floating-point operations. SB 1047 would have applied to all AI companies doing business in California—the location of the company would not matter. The bill would have created protections for whistleblowers and required developers to perform risk assessments of their models prior to release, with guidance from the Government Operations Agency. It would also have established CalCompute, a University of California public cloud computing cluster for startups, researchers and community groups. == Background == The rapid increase in capabilities of AI systems in the 2020s, including the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, caused some researchers and members of the public to become concerned about the existential risks associated with increasingly powerful AI systems. Hundreds of tech executives and AI researchers, including two of the so-called "Godfathers of AI", Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, signed a statement in May 2023 calling for the mitigation of the "risk of extinction from AI" to be a global priority alongside "pandemics and nuclear war". However, the plausibility of these risks is still widely debated. Strong regulation of AI has been criticized for purportedly causing regulatory capture by large AI companies like OpenAI, a phenomenon in which regulation advances the interest of larger companies at the expense of smaller competition and the public in general, although OpenAI ended up opposing the bill. Other advocates of AI regulation aim to prevent bias and privacy violations, rather than existential risks. For example, some experts who view existential concerns as overblown and unrealistic view them as a distraction from near-term harms of AI like discriminatory automated decision making. In the face of existential concerns, technology companies have made voluntary commitments to conduct safety testing, for example at the AI Safety Summit and AI Seoul Summit. In 2023, not long before the bill was proposed, Governor Newsom of California and President Biden issued executive orders on artificial intelligence. State Senator Wiener said SB 1047 draws heavily on the Biden executive order, and is motivated by the absence of unified federal legislation on AI safety. Historically, California has passed regulation on several tech issues itself, including consumer privacy and net neutrality, in the absence of action by Congress. == History == === Proposal and voting === The bill was authored by State Senator Scott Wiener. Wiener first proposed AI legislation for California through an intent bill called SB 294, the Safety in Artificial Intelligence Act, in September 2023. On February 7, 2024, Wiener introduced SB 1047. On May 21, SB 1047 passed the Senate 32–1. The bill was significantly amended by Wiener on August 15, 2024, in response to industry advice. Amendments included adding clarifications, and removing the creation of a "Frontier Model Division" and the penalty of perjury. On August 28, the bill passed the State Assembly 48–16. Then, due to the amendments, the bill was once again voted on by the Senate, passing 30–9. === Veto by governor === On September 29, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill. The deadline for California lawmakers to overrule Newsom's veto was November 30, 2024. Newsom cited concerns over the bill's regulatory framework targeting only large AI models based on their computational size, while not taking into account whether the models are deployed in high-risk environments. Newsom emphasized that this approach could create a false sense of security, overlooking smaller models that might present equally significant risks. He acknowledged the need for AI safety protocols but stressed the importance of adaptability in regulation as AI technology continues to evolve rapidly. Governor Newsom also committed to working with technology experts, federal partners, and research institutions, including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, led by former California Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar; and Stanford University's Human-Centered AI (HAI) Institute, led by Dr. Fei-Fei Li. He announced plans to collaborate with these entities to advance responsible AI development, aiming to protect the public while fostering innovation. == Provisions == SB 1047 would have covered AI models with training compute over 1026 integer or floating-point operations and a cost of over $100 million. If a covered model is fine-tuned using more than $10 million, the resulting model would also have been covered. The bill would have defined critical harms with respect to four categories: Creation or use of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure causing mass casualties or at least $500 million of damage Autonomous crimes causing mass casualties or at least $500 million of damage Other harms of comparable severity Developers would have needed to create a "safety and security protocol" before training covered models. Before deployment, they would have submitted a statement of compliance, confirming they took reasonable care to take measures to prevent covered models that pose an unreasonable risk of critical harms. The statement would have included risk assessments and descriptions of their compliance process. These rules would have applied to both covered models and their derivatives, including post-training modifications, with annual third-party audits required starting in 2026. Safeguards to reduce risk included the ability to shut down the model, which has been variously described as a "kill switch" and "circuit breaker". Whistleblowing provisions would have protected employees who report safety problems and incidents. Additionally, SB 1047 would have created a public cloud computing cluster called CalCompute, associated with the University of California, to support startups, researchers, and community groups that lack large-scale computing resources. === Compliance and supervision === SB 1047 would have required developers, beginning January 1, 2026, to annually retain a third-party auditor to perform an independent audit of compliance with the requirements of the bill, as provided. The Government Operations Agency would have reviewed the results of safety tests and incidents, and issue guidance, standards, and best practices. The bill would have created a Board of Frontier Models to supervise the application of the bill by the Government Operations Agency. It is would be composed of 9 members. == Reception == === Subjects of debate === Proponents of the bill described its provisions as simple and narrowly focused, with Sen. Scott Weiner describing it as a "light-touch, basic safety bill". This was disputed by critics of the bill, who described the bill's language as vague and criticized it as consolidating power in the largest AI companies at the expense of smaller ones. Proponents, in turn, argued that the bill only applies to models trained using more than 1026 FLOPS and with over $100 million, or fine-tuned with more than $10 million, and that the threshold could be increased if needed. The penalty of perjury was also a subject of debate, and was eventually removed through an amendment. The scope of the "kill switch" requirement was also reduced, following concerns from open-source developers. The use of the term "reasonable assurance" in the bill was also controversial, and it was eventually amended to "reasonable care". Critics then argued that "reasonable care" imposed an excessive burden by requiring confidence that models could not be used to cause catastrophic harm; proponents claimed that the standard did not require certainty and that it already applied to AI developers under existing law. === Support and opposition === Individual supporters of the bill included Turing Award recipients Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, Elon Musk, Bill de Blasio, Kevin Esvelt, Dan Hendrycks, Vitalik Buterin, OpenAI whistleblowers Daniel Kokotajlo and William Saunders, Lawrence Lessig, Sneha Revanur, Stuart Russell, Jan Leike, actors Mark Ruffalo, Sean Astin, and Rosie Perez, Scott Aaronson, and Max Tegmark. Over 120 Hollywood celebrities, including Mark Hamill, Jane Fonda, and J. J. Abrams, also signed a statement in support of the bill. Max Tegmark likened the bill's focus on holding companies responsible for the harms caused by their models to the FDA requiring clinical trials before a company can release a drug to the market. Organizations sponsoring the bill included the Center for AI Safety, Economic Security California and Encode. The la

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  • Blockhead (thought experiment)

    Blockhead (thought experiment)

    Blockhead is a theoretical computer system invented as part of a thought experiment by philosopher Ned Block, which appeared in a paper titled "Psychologism and Behaviorism". Block did not personally name the computer in the paper. == Overview == In "Psychologism and Behaviorism", Block argues that the internal mechanism of a system is important in determining whether that system is intelligent and claims to show that a non-intelligent system could pass the Turing test. Block asks the reader to imagine a conversation lasting any given amount of time. He states that given the nature of language, there are a finite number of syntactically and grammatically correct sentences that can be used to start a conversation. Consequently, there is a limit to how many "sensible" responses can be made to the first sentence, then to the second sentence, and so on until the conversation ends. Block then asks the reader to imagine a computer which had been programmed with all the sentences in theory, if not in practice. Block argues that such a machine could continue a conversation with a person on any topic because the computer would be programmed with every sentence that it was possible to use so the computer would be able to pass the Turing test despite the fact that—according to Block—it was not intelligent. Block says that this does not show that there is only one correct internal structure for generating intelligence but simply that some internal structures do not generate intelligence. The argument is related to John Searle's Chinese room.

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  • IRCF360

    IRCF360

    Infrared Control Freak 360 (IRCF360) is a 360-degree proximity sensor and a motion sensing devices, developed by ROBOTmaker. The sensor is in BETA developers release as a low cost (software configurable) sensor for use within research, technical and hobby projects. == Overview == The 360-degree sensor was originally designed as a short range micro robot proximity sensor and mainly intended for Swarm robotics, Ant robotics, Swarm intelligence, autonomous Qaudcopter, Drone, UAV, multi-robot simulations e.g. Jasmine Project where 360 proximity sensing is required to avoid collision with other robots and for simple IR inter-robot communications. To overcome certain limitation with Infra-red (IR) proximity sensing (e.g. detection of dark surfaces) the sensing module includes ambient light sensing and basic tactile sensing functionality during forward movement sensing/probing providing photovore and photophobe robot swarm behaviours and characteristics. A project named Sensorium Project was started aimed at broadening the Sensors audience beyond its typical robot sensor usage. To demonstrate the sensor's functionality, opensource Java based Integrated Development Environments (IDE) are used, such as Arduino and Processing (programming language).

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  • Machine-learned interatomic potential

    Machine-learned interatomic potential

    Machine-learned interatomic potentials (MLIPs), or simply machine learning potentials (MLPs), are interatomic potentials constructed using machine learning. Beginning in the 1990s, researchers have employed such programs to construct interatomic potentials by mapping atomic structures to their potential energies. These potentials are referred to as MLIPs or MLPs. Such machine learning potentials promised to fill the gap between density functional theory, a highly accurate but computationally intensive modelling method, and empirically derived or intuitively-approximated potentials, which were far lighter computationally but substantially less accurate. Improvements in artificial intelligence technology heightened the accuracy of MLPs while lowering their computational cost, increasing the role of machine learning in fitting potentials. Machine learning potentials began by using neural networks to tackle low-dimensional systems. While promising, these models could not systematically account for interatomic energy interactions; they could be applied to small molecules in a vacuum, or molecules interacting with frozen surfaces, but not much else – and even in these applications, the models often relied on force fields or potentials derived empirically or with simulations. These models thus remained confined to academia. Modern neural networks construct highly accurate and computationally light potentials, as theoretical understanding of materials science was increasingly built into their architectures and preprocessing. Almost all are local, accounting for all interactions between an atom and its neighbor up to some cutoff radius. There exist some nonlocal models, but these have been experimental for almost a decade. For most systems, reasonable cutoff radii enable highly accurate results. Almost all neural networks intake atomic coordinates and output potential energies. For some, these atomic coordinates are converted into atom-centered symmetry functions. From this data, a separate atomic neural network is trained for each element; each atomic network is evaluated whenever that element occurs in the given structure, and then the results are pooled together at the end. This process – in particular, the atom-centered symmetry functions which convey translational, rotational, and permutational invariances – has greatly improved machine learning potentials by significantly constraining the neural network search space. Other models use a similar process but emphasize bonds over atoms, using pair symmetry functions and training one network per atom pair. Other models to learn their own descriptors rather than using predetermined symmetry-dictating functions. These models, called message-passing neural networks (MPNNs), are graph neural networks. Treating molecules as three-dimensional graphs (where atoms are nodes and bonds are edges), the model takes feature vectors describing the atoms as input, and iteratively updates these vectors as information about neighboring atoms is processed through message functions and convolutions. These feature vectors are then used to predict the final potentials. The flexibility of this method often results in stronger, more generalizable models. In 2017, the first-ever MPNN model (a deep tensor neural network) was used to calculate the properties of small organic molecules. == Gaussian Approximation Potential (GAP) == One popular class of machine-learned interatomic potential is the Gaussian Approximation Potential (GAP), which combines compact descriptors of local atomic environments with Gaussian process regression to machine learn the potential energy surface of a given system. To date, the GAP framework has been used to successfully develop a number of MLIPs for various systems, including for elemental systems such as carbon, silicon, phosphorus, and tungsten, as well as for multicomponent systems such as Ge2Sb2Te5 and austenitic stainless steel, Fe7Cr2Ni. == Equivariant graph neural networks == A significant limitation of early MPNNs was that they were not inherently equivariant to rotations and reflections of atomic structures — meaning predictions could change depending on how a molecule was oriented in space. Beginning around 2021, a new class of models addressed this by incorporating equivariance directly into the message-passing layers using spherical harmonics and irreducible representations. Notable examples include NequIP (2021), MACE (2022), and GemNet-OC (2022). These equivariant architectures proved substantially more data-efficient and accurate than their predecessors, and became the dominant paradigm for high-accuracy MLIPs. == Universal MLIPs and large-scale datasets == Early MLIPs were system-specific, trained on a few thousand structures of a single material. A major shift occurred with the creation of large, chemically diverse datasets enabling models that generalize across many elements, bonding environments, and application domains — so-called universal MLIPs. A key driver was the Open Catalyst Project (OC20, OC22), a collaboration between Meta AI (FAIR) and Carnegie Mellon University launched in 2020. OC20 comprises approximately 1.3 million DFT relaxations across 82 elements, designed to accelerate the discovery of catalysts for renewable energy applications. It was among the first datasets large enough to train GNNs that generalize across diverse chemical systems, and established a widely-used benchmark for the field. A subsequent dataset, Open Direct Air Capture (OpenDAC 2023 and OpenDAC 2025), applied the same approach to carbon capture, providing a large computational database of metal-organic frameworks and sorbent candidates evaluated for CO₂ capture, generated using nearly 400 million CPU hours of quantum chemistry calculations in collaboration with Georgia Tech. These datasets revealed a new challenge: the GNN architectures most effective for atomic simulations were memory-intensive, as they model higher-order interactions between triplets or quadruplets of atoms, making it difficult to scale model size. Graph Parallelism, introduced by Sriram et al. (ICLR 2022), addressed this by distributing a single input graph across multiple GPUs — a distinct strategy from data parallelism (which distributes training examples) or model parallelism (which distributes layers). This enabled training GNNs with hundreds of millions to billions of parameters for the first time. Building on these foundations, Meta FAIR released the Universal Model for Atoms (UMA) in 2025, trained on approximately 500 million unique 3D atomic structures spanning molecules, materials, and catalysts — the largest training run to date for an MLIP. UMA introduced a Mixture of Linear Experts (MoLE) architecture, enabling one model to learn from datasets generated by different DFT codes and settings without significant inference overhead. It matches or surpasses specialized models across catalysis, materials, and molecular benchmarks without task-specific fine-tuning, and has been described as marking a "pre/post-UMA" divide in the field. == Applications == Catalyst discovery: MLIPs have significantly accelerated the computational screening of heterogeneous catalysts by replacing expensive DFT relaxations with fast neural network surrogates. The Open Catalyst Project explicitly targets this application, aiming to identify new catalysts for green hydrogen production and other renewable energy reactions. Carbon capture: The OpenDAC project applies universal MLIPs to screening sorbent materials for direct air capture of CO₂, a key technology for climate change mitigation. AI-accelerated screening allows evaluation of orders of magnitude more candidate materials than traditional DFT workflows. Drug discovery and molecular design: MLIPs are increasingly used in pharmaceutical research to model molecular conformations and binding energies. The Open Molecules 2025 (OMol25) dataset, released by Meta FAIR in 2025, provides high-accuracy calculations for a large set of molecular systems to support this use case. Materials discovery: Universal MLIPs enable high-throughput screening of novel inorganic materials, including battery electrolytes, semiconductors, and superconductors, by rapidly estimating stability and properties across large chemical spaces.

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  • Philosophy of information

    Philosophy of information

    The philosophy of information (PI) is a branch of philosophy that studies topics relevant to information processing, representational system and consciousness, cognitive science, computer science, information science and information technology. It includes: the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. == History == The philosophy of information (PI) has evolved from the philosophy of artificial intelligence, logic of information, cybernetics, social theory, ethics and the study of language and information. === Logic of information === The logic of information, also known as the logical theory of information, considers the information content of logical signs and expressions along the lines initially developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. === Study of language and information === Later contributions to the field were made by Fred Dretske, Jon Barwise, Brian Cantwell Smith, and others. The Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) was founded at Stanford University in 1983 by philosophers, computer scientists, linguists, and psychologists, under the direction of John Perry and Jon Barwise. === P.I. === More recently this field has become known as the philosophy of information. The expression was coined in the 1990s by Luciano Floridi, who has published prolifically in this area with the intention of elaborating a unified and coherent, conceptual frame for the whole subject. == Definitions of "information" == The concept information has been defined by several theorists. Charles S. Peirce's theory of information was embedded in his wider theory of symbolic communication he called the semiotic, now a major part of semiotics. For Peirce, information integrates the aspects of signs and expressions separately covered by the concepts of denotation and extension, on the one hand, and by connotation and comprehension on the other. Donald M. MacKay says that information is a distinction that makes a difference. According to Luciano Floridi, four kinds of mutually compatible phenomena are commonly referred to as "information": Information about something (e.g. a train timetable) Information as something (e.g. DNA, or fingerprints) Information for something (e.g. algorithms or instructions) Information in something (e.g. a pattern or a constraint). == Philosophical directions == === Computing and philosophy === Recent creative advances and efforts in computing, such as semantic web, ontology engineering, knowledge engineering, and modern artificial intelligence provide philosophy with fertile ideas, new and evolving subject matters, methodologies, and models for philosophical inquiry. While computer science brings new opportunities and challenges to traditional philosophical studies, and changes the ways philosophers understand foundational concepts in philosophy, further major progress in computer science would only be feasible when philosophy provides sound foundations for areas such as bioinformatics, software engineering, knowledge engineering, and ontologies. Classical topics in philosophy, namely, mind, consciousness, experience, reasoning, knowledge, truth, morality and creativity are rapidly becoming common concerns and foci of investigation in computer science, e.g., in areas such as agent computing, software agents, and intelligent mobile agent technologies. According to Luciano Floridi " one can think of several ways for applying computational methods towards philosophical matters: Conceptual experiments in silico: As an innovative extension of an ancient tradition of thought experiment, a trend has begun in philosophy to apply computational modeling schemes to questions in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, and so on. Pancomputationalism: On this view, computational and informational concepts are considered to be so powerful that given the right level of abstraction, anything in the world could be modeled and represented as a computational system, and any process could be simulated computationally. Then, however, pancomputationalists have the hard task of providing credible answers to the following two questions: how can one avoid blurring all differences among systems? what would it mean for the system under investigation not to be an informational system (or a computational system, if computation is the same as information processing)?

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  • HTK (software)

    HTK (software)

    HTK (Hidden Markov Model Toolkit) is a proprietary software toolkit for handling HMMs. It is mainly intended for speech recognition, but has been used in many other pattern recognition applications that employ HMMs, including speech synthesis, character recognition and DNA sequencing. Originally developed at the Machine Intelligence Laboratory (formerly known as the Speech Vision and Robotics Group) of the Cambridge University Engineering Department (CUED), HTK is now being widely used among researchers who are working on HMMs.

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  • Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence

    Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence

    The Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law (also called Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence or AI convention) is an international treaty on artificial intelligence. It was adopted under the auspices of the Council of Europe (CoE) and signed on 5 September 2024. The treaty aims to ensure that the development and use of AI technologies align with fundamental human rights, democratic values, and the rule of law, addressing risks such as misinformation, algorithmic discrimination, and threats to public institutions. More than 50 countries, including the EU member states, have endorsed the Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence. == Background == The development of the Framework Convention on AI emerged in response to growing concerns over the ethical, legal, and societal impacts of artificial intelligence. The Council of Europe, which has historically played a key role in setting human rights standards across Europe, initiated discussions on AI governance in 2020, leading to the drafting of a binding legal framework. The process of creating the Framework Convention began in 2019 with the ad hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI) assessing the feasibility of the instrument. In 2022, the Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) took over the process, drafting and negotiating the text of the Convention. The treaty is designed to complement existing international human rights instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. == Structure and content == The Convention establishes fundamental principles for AI governance, including transparency, accountability, non-discrimination, and human rights protection through eight chapters and 26 articles. Adopted in 2024, this landmark treaty addresses AI governance through seven core principles and detailed implementation mechanisms. It mandates risk and impact assessments to mitigate potential harms and provides safeguards such as the right to challenge AI-driven decisions. It applies to public authorities and private entities acting on their behalf but excludes national security and defense activities. Implementation is overseen by a Conference of the Parties, ensuring compliance and international cooperation. Activities within the AI system lifecycle must adhere to seven fundamental principles, ensuring compliance with human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. The treaty also establishes remedies, procedural rights and safeguards, and risk and impact management requirements to promote accountability, transparency, and responsible AI development. The treaty consists of five chapters. Chapter I contains general provisions. Chapter II states the general obligation to protect human rights and the integrity of democratic processes and respect of the rule of law. The main principles and rights are contained in Chapter III, which consists of Articles 6 to 13. Chapter IV (Articles 14 to 15) sets up the legal remedies. Chapter V states the risk and impact management framework. Chapter VI facilitates the implementation criteria of the treaty. Chapter VII sets the co-operation and oversight mechanisms. Chapter VIII contains various concluding clauses. Article 1 declares the objectives of the treaty, to ensure that activities within the lifecycle of artificial intelligence systems are fully consistent with human rights, democracy and the rule of law. == Entry into force == The treaty will enter into force on the first day of the month following the expiration of a period of three months after the date on which five ratification made by five countries, including three member states of the Council of Europe. == Competing approaches == While the CoE's AI Convention represents a multilateral effort to regulate AI through a human rights-based approach, alternative frameworks have also been proposed. One notable example is the Munich Draft for a Convention on AI, Data and Human Rights, an initiative led by legal scholars and policymakers in Germany. The Munich Draft advocates for stronger safeguards against AI-related risks, emphasizing stricter data protection measures, accountability for AI developers, and explicit prohibitions on high-risk AI applications, such as mass surveillance and autonomous lethal weapons. Unlike the CoE convention, which focuses on balancing innovation with regulation, the Munich Draft takes a more precautionary stance, calling for tighter controls over AI deployment in sensitive domains. Other competing international efforts include the OECD’s AI Principles, the GPAI (Global Partnership on AI), and the European Union's AI Act, each of which offers different regulatory strategies to govern AI at regional and global levels. == Signatories == Signatories include Andorra, Canada, the European Union, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, the Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uruguay. == Endorsement == The treaty was widely endorsed by leading AI policy experts, including Stuart J. Russell, Virginia Dignum, Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem, Pascal Pichonnaz, Maria Helen Murphy, Angella Ndaka, Hannes Werthner, Katja Langenbucher, Gry Hasselbalch, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Kutoma Wakunuma, Gianclaudio Malgieri, Oreste Pollicino, Nagla Rizk, Giovanni Sartor, Lee Tiedrich, Ingrid Schneider, Eduardo Bertoni, Garry Kasparov, Merve Hikcok, and Marc Rotenberg. The treaty was also endorsed by notable political leaders, including Theodoros Roussopoulos, President of the Parliamentart Assembly in the Council of Europe, and Christopher Holmes, Member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom, and by the International Bar Association (IBA), and personally by Almudena Arpón de Mendívil, President of the IBA. The Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) has been carrying out a campaign to promote endorsement of the treaty by urging various countries to sign and ratify the treaty. The CAIDP further urged the countries to make a clear and firm commitment to ensure the full inclusion of the private sector under the treaty’s provisions.

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  • Auto-defrost

    Auto-defrost

    Auto-defrost, automatic defrost or self-defrosting is a technique which regularly defrosts the evaporator in a refrigerator or freezer. Appliances using this technique are often called frost free, frostless, or no-frost. == Mechanism == The defrost mechanism in a refrigerator heats the cooling element (evaporator coil) for a short period of time and melts the frost that has formed on it. The resulting water drains through a duct at the back of the unit. Defrosting is controlled by an electric or electronic timer. For every 6, 8, 10, 12 or 24 hours of compressor operation, it turns on a defrost heater for 15 minutes to half an hour. The defrost heater, having a typical power rating of 350W to 600W, is often mounted just below the evaporator in top and bottom-freezer models. It can also be located below and in the middle of the evaporator in side-by-side models. It may be protected from short circuits by means of fusible links. In older refrigerators, the timer runs continuously. In newer designs, the timer only runs while the compressor runs, so the longer the refrigerator door is closed, the less time the heater will run for and the more energy is saved. A defrost thermostat opens the heater circuit when the evaporator temperature rises above a preset temperature, 40°F (5°C) or more, thereby preventing excessive heating of the freezer compartment. The defrost timer is such that either the compressor or the defrost heater is on, but not both at the same time. Inside the freezer, air is circulated by means of one or more fans. In a typical design cold air from the freezer compartment is ducted to the fresh food compartment and circulated back into the freezer compartment. Air circulation helps sublimate any ice or frost that may form on frozen items in the freezer compartment. While defrosting, this fan is stopped to prevent heated-up air from reaching the food compartment. Instead of the normal cooling elements being embedded in the freezer liner, auto-defrost elements are behind or beneath the liner. This allows them to be heated for short periods of time to dispose of frost, without heating the contents of the freezer. Alternatively, some systems use the hot gas in the condenser to defrost the evaporator. This is done by means of a circuit that is cross-linked by a three-way valve. The hot gas quickly heats up the evaporator and defrosts it. This system is primarily used in commercial applications such as ice-cream displays. == Application == While this technique was originally applied to the refrigerator compartment, it was later used for freezer compartment as well. A combined refrigerator/freezer which applies self-defrosting to the refrigerator compartment only is usually called "partial frost free" or semi-automatic defrost (some brands call these "Auto Defrost" while Frigidaire referred to their semi-automatic models as "Cycla-Matic," Kelvinator often named these models as "Cyclic Defrost" ). These refrigerators usually have a pan underneath where water from the melted frost in the refrigerator section evaporates. Freezers with automatic defrosting and combined refrigerator/freezer units which also apply self defrosting to their freezer compartment are called "frost free". The latter usually feature an air connection between the two compartments with the air passage to the refrigerator compartment regulated by a damper. By this means, a controlled portion of the air coming from the freezer reaches the refrigerator. Some older models have no air circulation between their freezer and refrigerator sections. Instead, they use an independent cooling system (for example: an evaporator coil with a defrost heater and a circulating fan in the freezer and a cold-plate or open-coil evaporator in the refrigerator. "Frost-Free" refrigerator/freezer units usually use a heating element to defrost their evaporators, a pan to collect and evaporate water from the frost that melts from the cold plate and/or evaporator coil, a timer which turns off the compressor and turns on the defrost element usually from once to 4 times a day for periods usually ranging from 15 to 30 minutes, a defrost limiter thermostat that turns off the heating element before the temperature rises too much while the timer is still in its defrost phase. Some models also feature a drain heater to prevent ice from blocking the drain. Other early types of refrigerators also use hot gas defrost instead of electric heaters. These reverse the evaporator and condenser sides for the defrost cycle. Some newer refrigerator/freezer models have a computer that monitors how many times each door is opened and uses this data to control defrost scheduling thereby reducing power use. == Advantages == No need to manually defrost the frost buildup, therefore power consumption will not increase with time. Food packaging is easier to see. Most frozen food will not stick together. Smells are limited, especially in total frost-free appliances because the air always circulates. Better temperature management. == Disadvantages == The system can be more expensive to run when usage is high and if the fan continues or starts to run when the door is opened. A thermal cutout safety device is required to prevent overheating of the heating element. Increased electrical and mechanical complexity compared to a basic upright freezer or chest freezer, making it more prone to component failure. The temperature of the freezer contents rises during the defrosting cycles, especially if there is a light load in the freezer. This can cause "freezer burn" on articles placed in the freezer, from partially defrosting, then re-freezing On hot, humid days condensation will sometimes form around the refrigerator doors. Defrosting may not be completed by the time the defrost timer cycles back to normal operation (especially in hot, humid conditions with frequent door openings), leaving ice/frost on the evaporator coils. This condition can lead to "icing" which will interfere with the operation of the refrigerator. In laboratories, self-defrosting freezers must not be used to store certain delicate reagents such as enzymes, because the temperature cycling can degrade them. In addition, water can evaporate out of containers that do not have a very tight seal, altering the concentration of the reagents. Self-defrosting freezers should never be used to store flammable chemicals.

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  • Early-exit network

    Early-exit network

    Early-exit networks are a class of dynamic neural networks designed for efficient inference by allowing models to make confident predictions at intermediate layers, rather than processing the full network. Early-exit mechanisms are methods for deep neural networks that add intermediate classifiers, allowing inference to stop at earlier layers for inputs assessed as low uncertainty. Decisions to exit are typically based on confidence measures such as softmax-derived scores, classification margins, or entropy-based criteria, with the goal of reducing computational cost. These approaches are commonly paired with specialized training procedures and system-level optimizations to improve efficiency while preserving accuracy. The main idea behind the technology is to stop excessive calculations when a good answer can already be given with a high degree of probability, which can save both computation and time. Early-exit networks have also been extended with expert-based exit criteria, where intermediate classifiers are treated as multiple “experts” whose predictions and confidence scores can be aggregated to decide whether to stop computation early. Hardware implementations are also being developed.

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  • 20Q

    20Q

    20Q is a computerized game of twenty questions that began as a test in artificial intelligence (AI). It was invented by Robin Burgener in 1988. The game was made handheld by Radica in 2003, but was discontinued in 2011 because Techno Source took the license for 20Q handheld devices. The game 20Q is based on the spoken parlor game known as twenty questions, and is both a website and a handheld device. 20Q asks the player to think of something and will then try to guess what they are thinking of with twenty yes-or-no questions. If it fails to guess in 20 questions, it will ask an additional 5 questions. If it fails to guess even with 25 (or 30) questions, the player is declared the winner. Sometimes the first guess of the object can be asked at question 14. == Principle and history == The principle is that the player thinks of something and the 20Q artificial intelligence asks a series of questions before guessing what the player is thinking. This artificial intelligence learns on its own with the information relayed back to the players who interact with it, and is not programmed. The player can answer these questions with: Yes, No, Unknown, and Sometimes. The experiment is based on the classic word game of Twenty Questions, and on the computer game "Animals," popular in the early 1970s, which used a somewhat simpler method to guess an animal. The 20Q AI uses an artificial neural network to pick the questions and to guess. After the player has answered the twenty questions posed (sometimes fewer), 20Q makes a guess. If it is incorrect, it asks more questions, then guesses again. It makes guesses based on what it has learned; it is not programmed with information or what the inventor thinks. Answers to any question are based on players’ interpretations of the questions asked. Newer editions were made for different categories, such as music 20Q which has the player think of a song, and Harry Potter 20Q, which has the player think of something from the world of the Harry Potter series. The 20Q AI can draw its own conclusions on how to interpret the information. It can be described as more of a folk taxonomy than a taxonomy. Its knowledge develops with every game played. In this regard, the online version of the 20Q AI can be inaccurate because it gathers its answers from what people think rather than from what people know. Limitations of taxonomy are often overcome by the AI itself because it can learn and adapt. For example, if the player was thinking of a "Horse" and answered "No" to the question "Is it an animal?," the AI will, nevertheless, guess correctly, despite being told that a horse is not an animal. Patent applications in the US and Europe were submitted in 2005. In August 2014, 20Q.net Inc., with Brashworks Studios, developed and released an iOS iPad version available at the Apple iTunes store. == Game show == On June 13, 2009, GSN began a TV version of the game, hosted by Cat Deeley, with Hal Sparks as the voice of Mr. Q.

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  • Parallel terraced scan

    Parallel terraced scan

    The parallel terraced scan is a multi-agent based search technique that is basic to cognitive architectures, such as Copycat, Letter-string, the Examiner, Tabletop, and others. It was developed by John Rehling and Douglas Hofstadter at the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition at Indiana University, Bloomington. The parallel terraced scan builds on the concepts of the workspace, coderack, conceptual memory, and temperature. According to Hofstadter the parallel and random nature of the processing captures aspects of human cognition.

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  • Princh

    Princh

    Princh is a Danish software company, which is headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark. Founded in 2015, Princh develops cloud printing and electronic payment products. The company is headquartered in the city of Aarhus. While utilizing a smartphone or web app, users can locate a nearby printer to their current location, get directions to access said printer, and/or authorize a print and pay for the print job in question. The product is available as a native mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as on web and desktop products for businesses and libraries. The app connects a network of printer owners and users around the world. Princh supports an array of printable files. == History == The company was founded in 2015. The company is currently based in the southern part of Aarhus. The Princh printing service was officially launched on June 23, 2015. Currently, Princh is available as a service in a multitude of locations such as print shops, libraries, hotels, or universities. Princh is a popular printing and payment product among libraries and can among other places be found in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, United Kingdom, United States, and Canada. == How it works == With the Princh app, users will be able to locate their nearest printer. Once the user is at the printer, the user chooses the document to be printed out and shares it with the Princh app. The user then selects the desired nearby printer entering the printer ID number or scanning the QR-code located on top of the printer, pays electronically and the print job is processed by the printer. Printer owners get access to a personal control panel where they can set printing prices and monitor all Princh activity for their business. == Notes and references ==

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  • R2ML

    R2ML

    The REWERSE Rule Markup Language (R2ML) is developed by the REWERSE Working Group I1 for the purpose of rules interchange between different systems and tools. == Scope == An XML based rule language; Support for: integrity rules, derivation rules, production rules and reaction rules; Integrate functional languages (such as OCL) with Datalog languages (such as SWRL); Serialization and interchange of rules by specific software tools; Integrating rule reasoning with actual server side technologies; Deploying, publishing and communicating rules in a network. == Design principles == Modeled using MDA; Rule concepts defined with the help of MOF/UML; Required to accommodate: Web naming concepts, such as URIs and XML namespaces; The ontological distinction between objects and data values; The datatype concepts of RDF and user-defined datatypes; Actions (following OMG PRR submission); Events; EBNF abstract syntax; XML based concrete syntax validated by an XML Schema; Allowing different semantics for rules.

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  • Repertory grid

    Repertory grid

    The repertory grid is an interviewing technique which uses nonparametric factor analysis to determine an idiographic measure of personality. It was devised by George Kelly in around 1955 and is based on his personal construct theory of personality. == Introduction == The repertory grid is a technique for identifying the ways that a person construes (interprets or gives meaning to) his or her experience. It provides information from which inferences about personality can be made, but it is not a personality test in the conventional sense. It is underpinned by the personal construct theory developed by George Kelly, first published in 1955. A grid consists of four parts: A topic: it is about some part of the person's experience. A set of elements, which are examples or instances of the topic. Working as a clinical psychologist, Kelly was interested in how his clients construed people in the roles they adopted towards the client, and so, originally, such terms as "my father", "my mother", "an admired friend" and so forth were used. Since then, the grid has been used in much wider settings (educational, occupational, organisational) and so any well-defined set of words, phrases, or even brief behavioral vignettes can be used as elements. For example, to see how a person construes the purchase of a car, a list of vehicles within that person's price range could be a set of elements. A set of constructs. These are the basic terms that the client uses to make sense of the elements, and are always expressed as a contrast. Thus the meaning of "good" depends on whether you intend to say "good versus poor", as if you were construing a theatrical performance, or "good versus evil", as if you were construing the moral or ontological status of some more fundamental experience. A set of ratings of elements on constructs. Each element is positioned between the two extremes of the construct using a 5- or 7-point rating scale system; this is done repeatedly for all the constructs that apply; and thus its meaning to the client is modeled, and statistical analysis varying from simple counting, to more complex multivariate analysis of meaning, is made possible. Constructs are regarded as personal to the client, who is psychologically similar to other people depending on the extent to which they would tend to use similar constructs, and similar ratings, in relating to a particular set of elements. The client is asked to consider the elements three at a time, and to identify a way in which two of the elements might be seen as alike, but distinct from, contrasted to, the third. For example, in considering a set of people as part of a topic dealing with personal relationships, a client might say that the element "my father" and the element "my boss" are similar because they are both fairly tense individuals, whereas the element "my wife" is different because she is "relaxed". And so we identify one construct that the individual uses when thinking about people: whether they are "tense as distinct from relaxed". In practice, good grid interview technique would delve a little deeper and identify some more behaviorally explicit description of "tense versus relaxed". All the elements are rated on the construct, further triads of elements are compared and further constructs elicited, and the interview would continue until no further constructs are obtained. == Using the repertory grid == Careful interviewing to identify what the individual means by the words initially proposed, using a 5-point rating system could be used to characterize the way in which a group of fellow-employees are viewed on the construct "keen and committed versus energies elsewhere", a 1 indicating that the left pole of the construct applies ("keen and committed") and a 5 indicating that the right pole of the construct applies ("energies elsewhere"). On being asked to rate all of the elements, our interviewee might reply that Tom merits a 2 (fairly keen and committed), Mary a 1 (very keen and committed), and Peter a 5 (his energies are very much outside the place of employment). The remaining elements (another five people, for example) are then rated on this construct. Typically (and depending on the topic) people have a limited number of genuinely different constructs for any one topic: 6 to 16 are common when they talk about their job or their occupation, for example. The richness of people's meaning structures comes from the many different ways in which a limited number of constructs can be applied to individual elements. A person may indicate that Tom is fairly keen, very experienced, lacks social skills, is a good technical supervisor, can be trusted to follow complex instructions accurately, has no sense of humour, will always return a favour but only sometimes help his co-workers, while Mary is very keen, fairly experienced, has good social and technical supervisory skills, needs complex instructions explained to her, appreciates a joke, always returns favours, and is very helpful to her co-workers: these are two very different and complex pictures, using just 8 constructs about a person's co-workers. Important information can be obtained by including self-elements such as "Myself as I am now"; "Myself as I would like to be" among other elements, where the topic permits. == Analysis of results == A single grid can be analysed for both content (eyeball inspection) and structure (cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and a variety of structural indices relating to the complexity and range of the ratings being the chief techniques used). Sets of grids are dealt with using one or other of a variety of content analysis techniques. A range of associated techniques can be used to provide precise, operationally defined expressions of an interviewee's constructs, or a detailed expression of the interviewee's personal values, and all of these techniques are used in a collaborative way. The repertory grid is emphatically not a standardized "psychological test"; it is an exercise in the mutual negotiation of a person's meanings. The repertory grid has found favour among both academics and practitioners in a great variety of fields because it provides a way of describing people's construct systems (loosely, understanding people's perceptions) without prejudging the terms of reference—a kind of personalized grounded theory. Unlike a conventional rating-scale questionnaire, it is not the investigator but the interviewee who provides the constructs on which a topic is rated. Market researchers, trainers, teachers, guidance counsellors, new product developers, sports scientists, and knowledge capture specialists are among the users who find the technique (originally developed for use in clinical psychology) helpful. == Relationship to other tools == In the book Personal Construct Methodology, researchers Brian R. Gaines and Mildred L.G. Shaw noted that they "have also found concept mapping and semantic network tools to be complementary to repertory grid tools and generally use both in most studies" but that they "see less use of network representations in PCP [personal construct psychology] studies than is appropriate". They encouraged practitioners to use semantic network techniques in addition to the repertory grid.

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