AI For Students Anthropic

AI For Students Anthropic — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Sentence extraction

    Sentence extraction

    Sentence extraction is a technique used for automatic summarization of a text. In this shallow approach, statistical heuristics are used to identify the most salient sentences of a text. Sentence extraction is a low-cost approach compared to more knowledge-intensive deeper approaches which require additional knowledge bases such as ontologies or linguistic knowledge. In short, sentence extraction works as a filter that allows only meaningful sentences to pass. The major downside of applying sentence-extraction techniques to the task of summarization is the loss of coherence in the resulting summary. Nevertheless, sentence extraction summaries can give valuable clues to the main points of a document and are frequently sufficiently intelligible to human readers. == Procedure == Usually, a combination of heuristics is used to determine the most important sentences within the document. Each heuristic assigns a (positive or negative) score to the sentence. After all heuristics have been applied, the highest-scoring sentences are included in the summary. The individual heuristics are weighted according to their importance. === Early approaches and some sample heuristics === Seminal papers which laid the foundations for many techniques used today have been published by Hans Peter Luhn in 1958 and H. P Edmundson in 1969. Luhn proposed to assign more weight to sentences at the beginning of the document or a paragraph. Edmundson stressed the importance of title-words for summarization and was the first to employ stop-lists in order to filter uninformative words of low semantic content (e.g. most grammatical words such as of, the, a). He also distinguished between bonus words and stigma words, i.e. words that probably occur together with important (e.g. the word form significant) or unimportant information. His idea of using key-words, i.e. words which occur significantly frequently in the document, is still one of the core heuristics of today's summarizers. With large linguistic corpora available today, the tf–idf value which originated in information retrieval, can be successfully applied to identify the key words of a text: If for example the word cat occurs significantly more often in the text to be summarized (TF = "term frequency") than in the corpus (IDF means "inverse document frequency"; here the corpus is meant by document), then cat is likely to be an important word of the text; the text may in fact be a text about cats.

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  • Developmental robotics

    Developmental robotics

    Developmental robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a scientific field which aims at studying the developmental mechanisms, architectures and constraints that allow lifelong and open-ended learning of new skills and new knowledge in embodied machines. As in human children, learning is expected to be cumulative and of progressively increasing complexity, and to result from self-exploration of the world in combination with social interaction. The typical methodological approach consists in starting from theories of human and animal development elaborated in fields such as developmental psychology, neuroscience, developmental and evolutionary biology, and linguistics, then to formalize and implement them in robots, sometimes exploring extensions or variants of them. The experimentation of those models in robots allows researchers to confront them with reality, and as a consequence, developmental robotics also provides feedback and novel hypotheses on theories of human and animal development. Developmental robotics is related to but differs from evolutionary robotics (ER). ER uses populations of robots that evolve over time, whereas DevRob is interested in how the organization of a single robot's control system develops through experience, over time. DevRob is also related to work done in the domains of robotics and artificial life. == Background == Can a robot learn like a child? Can it learn a variety of new skills and new knowledge unspecified at design time and in a partially unknown and changing environment? How can it discover its body and its relationships with the physical and social environment? How can its cognitive capacities continuously develop without the intervention of an engineer once it is "out of the factory"? What can it learn through natural social interactions with humans? These are the questions at the center of developmental robotics. Alan Turing, as well as a number of other pioneers of cybernetics, already formulated those questions and the general approach in 1950, but it is only since the end of the 20th century that they began to be investigated systematically. Because the concept of adaptive intelligent machines is central to developmental robotics, it has relationships with fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive robotics or computational neuroscience. Yet, while it may reuse some of the techniques elaborated in these fields, it differs from them from many perspectives. It differs from classical artificial intelligence because it does not assume the capability of advanced symbolic reasoning and focuses on embodied and situated sensorimotor and social skills rather than on abstract symbolic problems. It differs from cognitive robotics because it focuses on the processes that allow the formation of cognitive capabilities rather than these capabilities themselves. It differs from computational neuroscience because it focuses on functional modeling of integrated architectures of development and learning. More generally, developmental robotics is uniquely characterized by the following three features: It targets task-independent architectures and learning mechanisms, i.e. the machine/robot has to be able to learn new tasks that are unknown by the engineer; It emphasizes open-ended development and lifelong learning, i.e. the capacity of an organism to acquire continuously novel skills. This should not be understood as a capacity for learning "anything" or even “everything”, but just that the set of skills that is acquired can be infinitely extended at least in some (not all) directions; The complexity of acquired knowledge and skills shall increase (and the increase be controlled) progressively. Developmental robotics emerged at the crossroads of several research communities including embodied artificial intelligence, enactive and dynamical systems cognitive science, connectionism. Starting from the essential idea that learning and development happen as the self-organized result of the dynamical interactions among brains, bodies and their physical and social environment, and trying to understand how this self-organization can be harnessed to provide task-independent lifelong learning of skills of increasing complexity, developmental robotics strongly interacts with fields such as developmental psychology, developmental and cognitive neuroscience, developmental biology (embryology), evolutionary biology, and cognitive linguistics. As many of the theories coming from these sciences are verbal and/or descriptive, this implies a crucial formalization and computational modeling activity in developmental robotics. These computational models are then not only used as ways to explore how to build more versatile and adaptive machines but also as a way to evaluate their coherence and possibly explore alternative explanations for understanding biological development. == Research directions == === Skill domains === Due to the general approach and methodology, developmental robotics projects typically focus on having robots develop the same types of skills as human infants. A first category that is important being investigated is the acquisition of sensorimotor skills. These include the discovery of one's own body, including its structure and dynamics such as hand-eye coordination, locomotion, and interaction with objects as well as tool use, with a particular focus on the discovery and learning of affordances. A second category of skills targeted by developmental robots are social and linguistic skills: the acquisition of simple social behavioural games such as turn-taking, coordinated interaction, lexicons, syntax and grammar, and the grounding of these linguistic skills into sensorimotor skills (sometimes referred as symbol grounding). In parallel, the acquisition of associated cognitive skills are being investigated such as the emergence of the self/non-self distinction, the development of attentional capabilities, of categorization systems and higher-level representations of affordances or social constructs, of the emergence of values, empathy, or theories of mind. === Mechanisms and constraints === The sensorimotor and social spaces in which humans and robot live are so large and complex that only a small part of potentially learnable skills can actually be explored and learnt within a life-time. Thus, mechanisms and constraints are necessary to guide developmental organisms in their development and control of the growth of complexity. There are several important families of these guiding mechanisms and constraints which are studied in developmental robotics, all inspired by human development: Motivational systems, generating internal reward signals that drive exploration and learning, which can be of two main types: extrinsic motivations push robots/organisms to maintain basic specific internal properties such as food and water level, physical integrity, or light (e.g. in phototropic systems); intrinsic motivations push robot to search for novelty, challenge, compression or learning progress per se, thus generating what is sometimes called curiosity-driven learning and exploration, or alternatively active learning and exploration; Social guidance: as humans learn a lot by interacting with their peers, developmental robotics investigates mechanisms that can allow robots to participate to human-like social interaction. By perceiving and interpreting social cues, this may allow robots both to learn from humans (through diverse means such as imitation, emulation, stimulus enhancement, demonstration, etc. ...) and to trigger natural human pedagogy. Thus, social acceptance of developmental robots is also investigated; Statistical inference biases and cumulative knowledge/skill reuse: biases characterizing both representations/encodings and inference mechanisms can typically allow considerable improvement of the efficiency of learning and are thus studied. Related to this, mechanisms allowing to infer new knowledge and acquire new skills by reusing previously learnt structures is also an essential field of study; The properties of embodiment, including geometry, materials, or innate motor primitives/synergies often encoded as dynamical systems, can considerably simplify the acquisition of sensorimotor or social skills, and is sometimes referred as morphological computation. The interaction of these constraints with other constraints is an important axis of investigation; Maturational constraints: In human infants, both the body and the neural system grow progressively, rather than being full-fledged already at birth. This implies, for example, that new degrees of freedom, as well as increases of the volume and resolution of available sensorimotor signals, may appear as learning and development unfold. Transposing these mechanisms in developmental robots, and understanding how it may hinder or on the contrary ease the acquisition of novel complex skills is a central questi

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  • Elements of AI

    Elements of AI

    Elements of AI is a massive open online course (MOOC) teaching the basics of artificial intelligence. The course, originally launched in 2018, is designed and organized by the University of Helsinki and learning technology company MinnaLearn. The course includes modules on machine learning, neural networks, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, and using artificial intelligence to solve problems. It consists of two parts: Introduction to AI and its sequel, Building AI, that was released in late 2020. In November 2019, the course was named one of four winners of MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Challenge. University of Helsinki's computer science department is known as the alma mater of Linus Torvalds, a Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator of the Linux kernel, which is the kernel for Linux operating systems. == EU’s AI pledge == The government of Finland has pledged to offer the course for all EU citizens by the end of 2021, as the course is made available in all the official EU languages. The initiative was launched as part of Finland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2019, with the European Commission providing translations of the course materials. In 2017, Finland launched an AI strategy to stay competitive in the field of AI amid growing competition between China and the United States. With the support of private companies and the government, Finland's now-realized goal was to get 1 percent of its citizens to participate in Elements of AI. Other governments have also given their support to the course. For instance, Germany's Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Peter Altmeier has encouraged citizens to take part in the course to help Germany gain a competitive advantage in AI. Sweden's Minister for Energy and Minister for Digital Development Anders Ygeman has said that Sweden aims to teach 1 percent of its population the basics of AI like Finland has. == Participants == Elements of AI had enrolled more than 1 million students from more than 110 countries by May 2023. A quarter of the course's participants are aged 45 and over, and some 40 percent are women. Among Nordic participants, the share of women is nearly 60 percent. In September 2022, the course was available in Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, English, German, Latvian, Norwegian, French, Belgian, Czech, Greek, Slovakian, Slovenian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Irish, Icelandic, Maltese, Croatian, Romanian, Italian, Dutch, Polish, and Danish.

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  • Actor-critic algorithm

    Actor-critic algorithm

    The actor-critic algorithm (AC) is a family of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms that combine policy-based RL algorithms such as policy gradient methods, and value-based RL algorithms such as value iteration, Q-learning, SARSA, and TD learning. An AC algorithm consists of two main components: an "actor" that determines which actions to take according to a policy function, and a "critic" that evaluates those actions according to a value function. Some AC algorithms are on-policy, some are off-policy. Some apply to either continuous or discrete action spaces. Some work in both cases. == Overview == The actor-critic methods can be understood as an improvement over pure policy gradient methods like REINFORCE via introducing a baseline. === Actor === The actor uses a policy function π ( a | s ) {\displaystyle \pi (a|s)} , while the critic estimates either the value function V ( s ) {\displaystyle V(s)} , the action-value Q-function Q ( s , a ) , {\displaystyle Q(s,a),} the advantage function A ( s , a ) {\displaystyle A(s,a)} , or any combination thereof. The actor is a parameterized function π θ {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }} , where θ {\displaystyle \theta } are the parameters of the actor. The actor takes as argument the state of the environment s {\displaystyle s} and produces a probability distribution π θ ( ⋅ | s ) {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }(\cdot |s)} . If the action space is discrete, then ∑ a π θ ( a | s ) = 1 {\displaystyle \sum _{a}\pi _{\theta }(a|s)=1} . If the action space is continuous, then ∫ a π θ ( a | s ) d a = 1 {\displaystyle \int _{a}\pi _{\theta }(a|s)da=1} . The goal of policy optimization is to improve the actor. That is, to find some θ {\displaystyle \theta } that maximizes the expected episodic reward J ( θ ) {\displaystyle J(\theta )} : J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ t = 0 T γ t r t ] {\displaystyle J(\theta )=\mathbb {E} _{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{t=0}^{T}\gamma ^{t}r_{t}\right]} where γ {\displaystyle \gamma } is the discount factor, r t {\displaystyle r_{t}} is the reward at step t {\displaystyle t} , and T {\displaystyle T} is the time-horizon (which can be infinite). The goal of policy gradient method is to optimize J ( θ ) {\displaystyle J(\theta )} by gradient ascent on the policy gradient ∇ J ( θ ) {\displaystyle \nabla J(\theta )} . As detailed on the policy gradient method page, there are many unbiased estimators of the policy gradient: ∇ θ J ( θ ) = E π θ [ ∑ 0 ≤ j ≤ T ∇ θ ln ⁡ π θ ( A j | S j ) ⋅ Ψ j | S 0 = s 0 ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }J(\theta )=\mathbb {E} _{\pi _{\theta }}\left[\sum _{0\leq j\leq T}\nabla _{\theta }\ln \pi _{\theta }(A_{j}|S_{j})\cdot \Psi _{j}{\Big |}S_{0}=s_{0}\right]} where Ψ j {\textstyle \Psi _{j}} is a linear sum of the following: ∑ 0 ≤ i ≤ T ( γ i R i ) {\textstyle \sum _{0\leq i\leq T}(\gamma ^{i}R_{i})} . γ j ∑ j ≤ i ≤ T ( γ i − j R i ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}\sum _{j\leq i\leq T}(\gamma ^{i-j}R_{i})} : the REINFORCE algorithm. γ j ∑ j ≤ i ≤ T ( γ i − j R i ) − b ( S j ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}\sum _{j\leq i\leq T}(\gamma ^{i-j}R_{i})-b(S_{j})} : the REINFORCE with baseline algorithm. Here b {\displaystyle b} is an arbitrary function. γ j ( R j + γ V π θ ( S j + 1 ) − V π θ ( S j ) ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}\left(R_{j}+\gamma V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j+1})-V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j})\right)} : TD(1) learning. γ j Q π θ ( S j , A j ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}Q^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j},A_{j})} . γ j A π θ ( S j , A j ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}A^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j},A_{j})} : Advantage Actor-Critic (A2C). γ j ( R j + γ R j + 1 + γ 2 V π θ ( S j + 2 ) − V π θ ( S j ) ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}\left(R_{j}+\gamma R_{j+1}+\gamma ^{2}V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j+2})-V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j})\right)} : TD(2) learning. γ j ( ∑ k = 0 n − 1 γ k R j + k + γ n V π θ ( S j + n ) − V π θ ( S j ) ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}\left(\sum _{k=0}^{n-1}\gamma ^{k}R_{j+k}+\gamma ^{n}V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j+n})-V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j})\right)} : TD(n) learning. γ j ∑ n = 1 ∞ λ n − 1 1 − λ ⋅ ( ∑ k = 0 n − 1 γ k R j + k + γ n V π θ ( S j + n ) − V π θ ( S j ) ) {\textstyle \gamma ^{j}\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }{\frac {\lambda ^{n-1}}{1-\lambda }}\cdot \left(\sum _{k=0}^{n-1}\gamma ^{k}R_{j+k}+\gamma ^{n}V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j+n})-V^{\pi _{\theta }}(S_{j})\right)} : TD(λ) learning, also known as GAE (generalized advantage estimate). This is obtained by an exponentially decaying sum of the TD(n) learning terms. === Critic === In the unbiased estimators given above, certain functions such as V π θ , Q π θ , A π θ {\displaystyle V^{\pi _{\theta }},Q^{\pi _{\theta }},A^{\pi _{\theta }}} appear. These are approximated by the critic. Since these functions all depend on the actor, the critic must learn alongside the actor. The critic is learned by value-based RL algorithms. For example, if the critic is estimating the state-value function V π θ ( s ) {\displaystyle V^{\pi _{\theta }}(s)} , then it can be learned by any value function approximation method. Let the critic be a function approximator V ϕ ( s ) {\displaystyle V_{\phi }(s)} with parameters ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } . The simplest example is TD(1) learning, which trains the critic to minimize the TD(1) error: δ i = R i + γ V ϕ ( S i + 1 ) − V ϕ ( S i ) {\displaystyle \delta _{i}=R_{i}+\gamma V_{\phi }(S_{i+1})-V_{\phi }(S_{i})} The critic parameters are updated by gradient descent on the squared TD error: ϕ ← ϕ − α ∇ ϕ ( δ i ) 2 = ϕ + α δ i ∇ ϕ V ϕ ( S i ) {\displaystyle \phi \leftarrow \phi -\alpha \nabla _{\phi }(\delta _{i})^{2}=\phi +\alpha \delta _{i}\nabla _{\phi }V_{\phi }(S_{i})} where α {\displaystyle \alpha } is the learning rate. Note that the gradient is taken with respect to the ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } in V ϕ ( S i ) {\displaystyle V_{\phi }(S_{i})} only, since the ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } in γ V ϕ ( S i + 1 ) {\displaystyle \gamma V_{\phi }(S_{i+1})} constitutes a moving target, and the gradient is not taken with respect to that. This is a common source of error in implementations that use automatic differentiation, and requires "stopping the gradient" at that point. Similarly, if the critic is estimating the action-value function Q π θ {\displaystyle Q^{\pi _{\theta }}} , then it can be learned by Q-learning or SARSA. In SARSA, the critic maintains an estimate of the Q-function, parameterized by ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } , denoted as Q ϕ ( s , a ) {\displaystyle Q_{\phi }(s,a)} . The temporal difference error is then calculated as δ i = R i + γ Q θ ( S i + 1 , A i + 1 ) − Q θ ( S i , A i ) {\displaystyle \delta _{i}=R_{i}+\gamma Q_{\theta }(S_{i+1},A_{i+1})-Q_{\theta }(S_{i},A_{i})} . The critic is then updated by θ ← θ + α δ i ∇ θ Q θ ( S i , A i ) {\displaystyle \theta \leftarrow \theta +\alpha \delta _{i}\nabla _{\theta }Q_{\theta }(S_{i},A_{i})} The advantage critic can be trained by training both a Q-function Q ϕ ( s , a ) {\displaystyle Q_{\phi }(s,a)} and a state-value function V ϕ ( s ) {\displaystyle V_{\phi }(s)} , then let A ϕ ( s , a ) = Q ϕ ( s , a ) − V ϕ ( s ) {\displaystyle A_{\phi }(s,a)=Q_{\phi }(s,a)-V_{\phi }(s)} . Although, it is more common to train just a state-value function V ϕ ( s ) {\displaystyle V_{\phi }(s)} , then estimate the advantage by A ϕ ( S i , A i ) ≈ ∑ j ∈ 0 : n − 1 γ j R i + j + γ n V ϕ ( S i + n ) − V ϕ ( S i ) {\displaystyle A_{\phi }(S_{i},A_{i})\approx \sum _{j\in 0:n-1}\gamma ^{j}R_{i+j}+\gamma ^{n}V_{\phi }(S_{i+n})-V_{\phi }(S_{i})} Here, n {\displaystyle n} is a positive integer. The higher n {\displaystyle n} is, the more lower is the bias in the advantage estimation, but at the price of higher variance. The Generalized Advantage Estimation (GAE) introduces a hyperparameter λ {\displaystyle \lambda } that smoothly interpolates between Monte Carlo returns ( λ = 1 {\displaystyle \lambda =1} , high variance, no bias) and 1-step TD learning ( λ = 0 {\displaystyle \lambda =0} , low variance, high bias). This hyperparameter can be adjusted to pick the optimal bias-variance trade-off in advantage estimation. It uses an exponentially decaying average of n-step returns with λ {\displaystyle \lambda } being the decay strength. == Variants == Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C): Parallel and asynchronous version of A2C. Soft Actor-Critic (SAC): Incorporates entropy maximization for improved exploration. Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG): Specialized for continuous action spaces.

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  • ELIZA

    ELIZA

    ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program developed from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but gave no response that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate "scripts", represented in a Lisp-like expression. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school (in which the therapist often reflects back the patient's words to the patient), and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatbots (originally "chatterbots") and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test. Weizenbaum intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised that some people, including his secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program, a phenomenon that came to be called the ELIZA effect. Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary. The original ELIZA source code had been missing since its creation in the 1960s, as it was not common to publish articles that included source code at that time. However, more recently the MAD-SLIP source code was discovered in the MIT archives and published on various platforms, such as the Internet Archive. The source code is of high historical interest since it demonstrates not only the specificity of programming languages and techniques at that time, but also the beginning of software layering and abstraction as a means of achieving sophisticated software programming. == Overview == Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, created a conversational interaction somewhat similar to what might take place in the office of "a [non-directive] psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview" and to "demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial". While ELIZA is best known for acting in the manner of a psychotherapist, the speech patterns are due to the data and instructions supplied by the DOCTOR script. ELIZA itself examined the text for keywords, applied values to said keywords, and transformed the input into an output; the script that ELIZA ran determined the keywords, set the values of keywords, and set the rules of transformation for the output. Weizenbaum chose to make the DOCTOR script in the context of psychotherapy to "sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge", allowing it to reflect back the patient's statements to carry the conversation forward. The result was a somewhat intelligent-seeming response that reportedly deceived some early users of the program. Weizenbaum named his program ELIZA after Eliza Doolittle, a working-class character in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (also appearing in the musical My Fair Lady, which was based on the play and was hugely popular at the time). According to Weizenbaum, ELIZA's ability to be "incrementally improved" by various users made it similar to Eliza Doolittle, since Eliza Doolittle was taught to speak with an upper-class accent in Shaw's play. However, unlike the human character in Shaw's play, ELIZA is incapable of learning new patterns of speech or new words through interaction alone. Edits must be made directly to ELIZA's active script in order to change the manner by which the program operates. Weizenbaum first implemented ELIZA in his own SLIP list-processing language, where, depending upon the initial entries by the user, the illusion of human intelligence could appear, or be dispelled through several interchanges. Some of ELIZA's responses were so convincing that Weizenbaum and several others have anecdotes of users becoming emotionally attached to the program, occasionally forgetting that they were conversing with a computer. Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." In 1966, interactive computing (via a teletype) was new. It was 11 years before the personal computer became familiar to the general public, and three decades before most people encountered attempts at natural language processing in Internet services like Ask.com or PC help systems such as Microsoft Office Clippit. Although those programs included years of research and work, ELIZA remains a milestone because it was the first time a programmer had attempted such a human-machine interaction with the goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human–human interaction. At the ICCC 1972, ELIZA was brought together with another early artificial-intelligence program named PARRY for a computer-only conversation. While ELIZA was built to speak as a doctor, PARRY was intended to simulate a patient with schizophrenia. == Design and implementation == Weizenbaum originally wrote ELIZA in MAD-SLIP for CTSS on an IBM 7094 as a program to make natural-language conversation possible with a computer. To accomplish this, Weizenbaum identified five "fundamental technical problems" for ELIZA to overcome: the identification of key words, the discovery of a minimal context, the choice of appropriate transformations, the generation of responses in the absence of key words, and the provision of an editing capability for ELIZA scripts. Weizenbaum solved these problems and made ELIZA such that it had no built-in contextual framework or universe of discourse. However, this required ELIZA to have a script of instructions on how to respond to inputs from users. ELIZA starts its process of responding to an input by a user by first examining the text input for a "keyword". A "keyword" is a word designated as important by the acting ELIZA script, which assigns to each keyword a precedence number, or a RANK, designed by the programmer. If such words are found, they are put into a "keystack", with the keyword of the highest RANK at the top. The input sentence is then manipulated and transformed as the rule associated with the keyword of the highest RANK directs. For example, when the DOCTOR script encounters words such as "alike" or "same", it would output a message pertaining to similarity, in this case "In what way?", as these words had high precedence number. This also demonstrates how certain words, as dictated by the script, can be manipulated regardless of contextual considerations, such as switching first-person pronouns and second-person pronouns and vice versa, as these too had high precedence numbers. Such words with high precedence numbers are deemed superior to conversational patterns and are treated independently of contextual patterns. Following the first examination, the next step of the process is to apply an appropriate transformation rule, which includes two parts: the "decomposition rule" and the "reassembly rule". First, the input is reviewed for syntactical patterns in order to establish the minimal context necessary to respond. Using the keywords and other nearby words from the input, different disassembly rules are tested until an appropriate pattern is found. Using the script's rules, the sentence is then "dismantled" and arranged into sections of the component parts as the "decomposition rule for the highest-ranking keyword" dictates. The example that Weizenbaum gives is the input "You are very helpful", which is transformed to "I are very helpful". This is then broken into (1) empty (2) "I" (3) "are" (4) "very helpful". The decomposition rule has broken the phrase into four small segments that contain both the keywords and the information in the sentence. The decomposition rule then designates a particular reassembly rule, or set of reassembly rules, to follow when reconstructing the sentence. The reassembly rule takes the fragments of the input that the decomposition rule had created, rearranges them, and adds in programmed words to create a response. Using Weizenbaum's example previously stated, such a reassembly rule would take the fragments and apply them to the phrase "What makes

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  • Relational data mining

    Relational data mining

    Relational data mining is the data mining technique for relational databases. Unlike traditional data mining algorithms, which look for patterns in a single table (propositional patterns), relational data mining algorithms look for patterns among multiple tables (relational patterns). For most types of propositional patterns, there are corresponding relational patterns. For example, there are relational classification rules (relational classification), relational regression tree, and relational association rules. There are several approaches to relational data mining: Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) Statistical Relational Learning (SRL) Graph Mining Propositionalization Multi-view learning == Algorithms == Multi-Relation Association Rules: Multi-Relation Association Rules (MRAR) is a new class of association rules which in contrast to primitive, simple and even multi-relational association rules (that are usually extracted from multi-relational databases), each rule item consists of one entity but several relations. These relations indicate indirect relationship between the entities. Consider the following MRAR where the first item consists of three relations live in, nearby and humid: “Those who live in a place which is near by a city with humid climate type and also are younger than 20 -> their health condition is good”. Such association rules are extractable from RDBMS data or semantic web data. == Software == Safarii: a Data Mining environment for analysing large relational databases based on a multi-relational data mining engine. Dataconda: a software, free for research and teaching purposes, that helps mining relational databases without the use of SQL. == Datasets == Relational dataset repository: a collection of publicly available relational datasets.

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  • Perusall

    Perusall

    Perusall is a social web annotation tool intended for use by students at schools and universities. It allows users to annotate the margins of a text in a virtual group setting that is similar to social media—with upvoting, emojis, chat functionality, and notification. It also includes automatic AI grading. == History == Perusall began as a research project at Harvard University. It later became an educational product for students and teachers. As of 2024, Perusall states more than 5 million students have used the tool at over 5,000 educational institutions in 112 countries." == Functionality == Perusall integrates with learning management systems such as Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard to aid with collaborative annotation. The tool supports annotation of a range of media including text, images, equations, videos, PDFs and snapshots of webpages.

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  • Autognostics

    Autognostics

    Autognostics is a new paradigm that describes the capacity for computer networks to be self-aware. It is considered one of the major components of Autonomic Networking. == Introduction == One of the most important characteristics of today's Internet that has contributed to its success is its basic design principle: a simple and transparent core with intelligence at the edges (the so-called "end-to-end principle"). Based on this principle, the network carries data without knowing the characteristics of that data (e.g., voice, video, etc.) - only the end-points have application-specific knowledge. If something goes wrong with the data, only the edge may be able to recognize that since it knows about the application and what the expected behavior is. The core has no information about what should happen with that data - it only forwards packets. Although an effective and beneficial attribute, this design principle has also led to many of today's problems, limitations, and frustrations. Currently, it is almost impossible for most end-users to know why certain network-based applications do not work well and what they need to do to make it better. Also, network operators who interact with the core in low-level terms such as router configuration have problems expressing their high-level goals into low-level actions. In high-level terms, this may be summarized as a weak coupling between the network and application layers of the overall system. As a consequence of the Internet end-to-end principle, the network performance experienced by a particular application is difficult to attribute based on the behavior of the individual elements. At any given moment, the measure of performance between any two points is typically unknown and applications must operate blindly. As a further consequence, changes to the configuration of given element, or changes in the end-to-end path, cannot easily be validated. Optimization and provisioning cannot then be automated except against only the simplest design specifications. There is an increasing interest in Autonomic Networking research, and a strong conviction that an evolution from the current networking status quo is necessary. Although to date there have not been any practical implementations demonstrating the benefits of an effective autonomic networking paradigm, there seems to be a consensus as to the characteristics which such implementations would need to demonstrate. These specifically include continuous monitoring, identifying, diagnosing and fixing problems based on high-level policies and objectives. Autognostics, as a major part of the autonomic networking concept, intends to bring networks to a new level of awareness and eliminate the lack of visibility which currently exists in today's networks. == Definition == Autognostics is a new paradigm that describes the capacity for computer networks to be self-aware, in part and as a whole, and dynamically adapt to the applications running on them by autonomously monitoring, identifying, diagnosing, resolving issues, subsequently verifying that any remediation was successful, and reporting the impact with respect to the application's use (i.e., providing visibility into the changes to networks and their effects). Although similar to the concept of network awareness, i.e., the capability of network devices and applications to be aware of network characteristics (see References section below), it is noteworthy that autognostics takes that concept one step further. The main difference is the auto part of autognostics, which entails that network devices are self-aware of network characteristics, and have the capability to adapt themselves as a result of continuous monitoring and diagnostics. == Path to autognostics == Autognostics, or in other words deep self-knowledge, can be best described as the ability of a network to know itself and the applications that run on it. This knowledge is used to autonomously adapt to dynamic network and application conditions such as utilization, capacity, quality of service/application/user experience, etc. In order to achieve autognosis, networks need a means to: Continuously monitor/test the network for application-specific performance Analyze the monitoring/test data to detect problems (e.g., performance degradation) Diagnose, identify and localize sources of degradation Automatically take actions to resolve problems via remediation/provisioning Verify the problems have been resolved (potentially rolling back changes if ineffective) Subsequently, continue to monitor/test for performance

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  • Neurocomputing (journal)

    Neurocomputing (journal)

    Neurocomputing is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural computation. It was established in 1989 and is published by Elsevier. The editor-in-chief is Zidong Wang (Brunel University London). Independent scientometric studies noted that despite being one of the most productive journals in the field, it has kept its reputation across the years intact and plays an important role in leading the research in the area. The journal is abstracted and indexed in Scopus and Science Citation Index Expanded. According to the Journal Citation Reports, its 2023 impact factor is 5.5.

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  • Grammar systems theory

    Grammar systems theory

    Grammar systems theory is a field of theoretical computer science that studies systems of finite collections of formal grammars generating a formal language. Each grammar works on a string, a so-called sequential form that represents an environment. Grammar systems can thus be used as a formalization of decentralized or distributed systems of agents in artificial intelligence. Let A {\displaystyle \mathbb {A} } be a simple reactive agent moving on the table and trying not to fall down from the table with two reactions, t for turning and ƒ for moving forward. The set of possible behaviors of A {\displaystyle \mathbb {A} } can then be described as formal language L A = { ( f m t n f r ) + : 1 ≤ m ≤ k ; 1 ≤ n ≤ ℓ ; 1 ≤ r ≤ k } , {\displaystyle \mathbb {L_{A}} =\{(f^{m}t^{n}f^{r})^{+}:1\leq m\leq k;1\leq n\leq \ell ;1\leq r\leq k\},} where ƒ can be done maximally k times and t can be done maximally ℓ times considering the dimensions of the table. Let G A {\displaystyle \mathbb {G_{A}} } be a formal grammar which generates language L A {\displaystyle \mathbb {L_{A}} } . The behavior of A {\displaystyle \mathbb {A} } is then described by this grammar. Suppose the A {\displaystyle \mathbb {A} } has a subsumption architecture; each component of this architecture can be then represented as a formal grammar, too, and the final behavior of the agent is then described by this system of grammars. The schema on the right describes such a system of grammars which shares a common string representing an environment. The shared sequential form is sequentially rewritten by each grammar, which can represent either a component or generally an agent. If grammars communicate together and work on a shared sequential form, it is called a Cooperating Distributed (DC) grammar system. Shared sequential form is a similar concept to the blackboard approach in AI, which is inspired by an idea of experts solving some problem together while they share their proposals and ideas on a shared blackboard. Each grammar in a grammar system can also work on its own string and communicate with other grammars in a system by sending their sequential forms on request. Such a grammar system is then called a Parallel Communicating (PC) grammar system. PC and DC are inspired by distributed AI. If there is no communication between grammars, the system is close to the decentralized approaches in AI. These kinds of grammar systems are sometimes called colonies or Eco-Grammar systems, depending (besides others) on whether the environment is changing on its own (Eco-Grammar system) or not (colonies).

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  • Embodied cognitive science

    Embodied cognitive science

    Embodied cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior. It comprises three main methodologies: the modeling of psychological and biological systems in a holistic manner that considers the mind and body as a single entity; the formation of a common set of general principles of intelligent behavior; and the experimental use of robotic agents in controlled environments. == Contributors == Embodied cognitive science borrows heavily from embodied philosophy and the related research fields of cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Contributors to the field include: From the perspective of neuroscience, Gerald Edelman of the Neurosciences Institute at La Jolla, Francisco Varela of CNRS in France, and J. A. Scott Kelso of Florida Atlantic University From the perspective of psychology, Lawrence Barsalou, Michael Turvey, Vittorio Guidano and Eleanor Rosch From the perspective of linguistics, Gilles Fauconnier, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Leonard Talmy and Mark Turner From the perspective of language acquisition, Eric Lenneberg and Philip Rubin at Haskins Laboratories From the perspective of anthropology, Edwin Hutchins, Bradd Shore, James Wertsch and Merlin Donald. From the perspective of autonomous agent design, early work is sometimes attributed to Rodney Brooks or Valentino Braitenberg From the perspective of artificial intelligence, Understanding Intelligence by Rolf Pfeifer and Christian Scheier or How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, by Rolf Pfeifer and Josh C. Bongard From the perspective of philosophy, Andy Clark, Dan Zahavi, Shaun Gallagher, and Evan Thompson In 1950, Alan Turing proposed that a machine may need a human-like body to think and speak: It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. That process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again, I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried. == Traditional cognitive theory == Embodied cognitive science is an alternative theory to cognition in which it minimizes appeals to computational theory of mind in favor of greater emphasis on how an organism's body determines how and what it thinks. Traditional cognitive theory is based mainly around symbol manipulation, in which certain inputs are fed into a processing unit that produces an output. These inputs follow certain rules of syntax, from which the processing unit finds semantic meaning. Thus, an appropriate output is produced. For example, a human's sensory organs are its input devices, and the stimuli obtained from the external environment are fed into the nervous system which serves as the processing unit. From here, the nervous system is able to read the sensory information because it follows a syntactic structure, thus an output is created. This output then creates bodily motions and brings forth behavior and cognition. Of particular note is that cognition is sealed away in the brain, meaning that mental cognition is cut off from the external world and is only possible by the input of sensory information. == The embodied cognitive approach == Embodied cognitive science differs from the traditionalist approach in that it denies the input-output system. This is chiefly due to the problems presented by the Homunculus argument, which concluded that semantic meaning could not be derived from symbols without some kind of inner interpretation. If some little man in a person's head interpreted incoming symbols, then who would interpret the little man's inputs? Because of the specter of an infinite regress, the traditionalist model began to seem less plausible. Thus, embodied cognitive science aims to avoid this problem by defining cognition in three ways. === Physical attributes of the body === The first aspect of embodied cognition examines the role of the physical body, particularly how its properties affect its ability to think. This part attempts to overcome the symbol manipulation component that is a feature of the traditionalist model. Depth perception, for instance, can be better explained under the embodied approach due to the sheer complexity of the action. Depth perception requires that the brain detect the disparate retinal images obtained by the distance of the two eyes. In addition, body and head cues complicate this further. When the head is turned in a given direction, objects in the foreground will appear to move against objects in the background. From this, it is said that some kind of visual processing is occurring without the need of any kind of symbol manipulation. This is because the objects appearing to move the foreground are simply appearing to move. This observation concludes then that depth can be perceived with no intermediate symbol manipulation necessary. A more poignant example exists through examining auditory perception. Generally speaking the greater the distance between the ears, the greater the possible auditory acuity. Also relevant is the amount of density in between the ears, for the strength of the frequency wave alters as it passes through a given medium. The brain's auditory system takes these factors into account as it process information, but again without any need for a symbolic manipulation system. This is because the distance between the ears for example does not need symbols to represent it. The distance itself creates the necessary opportunity for greater auditory acuity. The amount of density between the ears is similar, in that it is the actual amount itself that simply forms the opportunity for frequency alteration. Thus under consideration of the physical properties of the body, a symbolic system is unnecessary and an unhelpful metaphor. === The body's role in the cognitive process === The second aspect draws heavily from George Lakoff's and Mark Johnson's work on concepts. They argued that humans use metaphors whenever possible to better explain their external world. Humans also have a basic stock of concepts in which other concepts can be derived from. These basic concepts include spatial orientations such as up, down, front, and back. Humans can understand what these concepts mean because they can directly experience them from their own bodies. For example, because human movement revolves around standing erect and moving the body in an up-down motion, humans innately have these concepts of up and down. Lakoff and Johnson contend this is similar with other spatial orientations such as front and back too. As mentioned earlier, these basic stocks of spatial concepts are the basis in which other concepts are constructed. Happy and sad for instance are seen now as being up or down respectively. When someone says they are feeling down, what they are really saying is that they feel sad for example. Thus the point here is that true understanding of these concepts is contingent on whether one can have an understanding of the human body. So the argument goes that if one lacked a human body, they could not possibly know what up or down could mean, or how it could relate to emotional states. [I]magine a spherical being living outside of any gravitational field, with no knowledge or imagination of any other kind of experience. What could UP possibly mean to such a being? While this does not mean that such beings would be incapable of expressing emotions in other words, it does mean that they would express emotions differently from humans. Human concepts of happiness and sadness would be different because human would have different bodies. So then an organism's body directly affects how it can think, because it uses metaphors related to its body as the basis of concepts. === Interaction of local environment === A third component of the embodied approach looks at how agents use their immediate environment in cognitive processing. Meaning, the local environment is seen as an actual extension of the body's cognitive process. The example of a personal digital assistant (PDA) is used to better imagine this. Echoing functionalism (philosophy of mind), this point claims that mental states are individuated by their role in a much larger system. So under this premise, the information on a PDA is similar to the information stored in the brain. So then if one thinks information in the brain constitutes mental states, then it must follow that information in the PDA is a cognitive state too. Consider also the role of pen and paper in a complex multiplication problem. The pen and paper are so involved in the cognitive process of solving the problem that it seems ridiculous to say they are somehow different from the process, in very much the same way the PDA is used for information like the brain. Another example examines how humans control and manipulate their environment

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  • Meta-Labeling

    Meta-Labeling

    Meta-labeling, also known as corrective AI, is a machine learning (ML) technique utilized in quantitative finance to enhance the performance of investment and trading strategies, developed in 2017 by Marcos López de Prado at Guggenheim Partners and Cornell University. The core idea is to separate the decision of trade direction (side) from the decision of trade sizing, addressing the inefficiencies of simultaneously learning both side and size predictions. The side decision involves forecasting market movements (long, short, neutral), while the size decision focuses on risk management and profitability. It serves as a secondary decision-making layer that evaluates the signals generated by a primary predictive model. By assessing the confidence and likely profitability of those signals, meta-labeling allows investors and algorithms to dynamically size positions and suppress false positives. == Motivation == Meta-labeling is designed to improve precision without sacrificing recall. As noted by López de Prado, attempting to model both the direction and the magnitude of a trade using a single algorithm can result in poor generalization. By separating these tasks, meta-labeling enables greater flexibility and robustness: Enhances control over capital allocation. Reduces overfitting by limiting model complexity. Allows the use of interpretability tools and tailored thresholds to manage risk. Enables dynamic trade suppression in unfavorable regimes. == Applications == Meta-labeling has been applied in a variety of financial ML contexts, including: Algorithmic trading: Filtering and sizing trades to reduce false positives. Portfolio optimization: Scaling exposure across multiple signals with differing confidence levels. Risk management: Dynamically disabling strategies in adverse market conditions. Model validation: Interpreting when and why a model may be underperforming due to regime shifts. == General architecture == Meta-labeling decouples two core components of systematic trading strategies: directional prediction and position sizing. The process involves training a primary model to generate trade signals (e.g., buy, sell, or hold) and then training a secondary model to determine whether each signal is likely to lead to a profitable trade. The second model outputs a probability that is interpreted as the confidence in the forecast, which can be used to adjust the position size or to filter out unreliable trades. Meta-labeling is typically implemented as a three-stage process: Primary model (M1): Predicts the direction or label of a financial outcome using features such as market prices, returns, or volatility indicators. A typical output is directional, e.g., Y ∈ {−1,0,1}, representing short, neutral, or long positions. Secondary model (M2): A binary classifier trained to predict whether the primary model's prediction will be profitable. The target variable is a binary meta-label F ∈ { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle F\in \{0,1\}} . Inputs can include features used in the primary model, performance diagnostics, or market regime data. Position sizing algorithm (M3): Translates the output probability of the secondary model into a position size. Higher confidence scores result in larger allocations, while lower confidence leads to reduced or zero exposure. === Stage 1: Forecasting side === Primary model architecture Figure 1 Figure 1 presents the architecture of a primary model. It focuses on forecasting the side of the trade. Following the example, this model (M1) takes in input data – such as open-high-low-close data and determines the side of the position to take: a negative number is a short position, and positive number is a long position, the range is set between −1 and 1 (the closer it is to −1 or 1, the stronger the models conviction is). When training the model, the labels are −1 and 1, based on the direction of forward returns for some predefined investment horizon. The researcher may decide to apply a recall check (τ: "Tau") by setting a minimum threshold that the initial output needs to be to qualify of a short or long position (if the threshold is not met, no side forecast is predicted, leading to closing of any open positions), this leads to the primary model output which is one of three possible side forecasts: −1, 0, or 1. The primary model also generates evaluation data which can be used by the secondary model, to improve performance of size forecasts. Some examples of evaluation data include rolling accuracy, F1, recall, precision, and AUC scores. === Stage 2: Filtering out false positives === General meta-labeling architecture Figure 2 Next comes the phase of filtering out false positives, by applying a secondary machine learning model (M2), which is a binary classifier trained to determine if the trade will be profitable or not. The model takes as input four general groupings of data: General input data which is predictive of a false positive. For example the last 30 days rolling volatility of the underlying asset. Evaluation data. Market state and regime data, one may find that macro economic data or clustering the market into regimes may help as specific trading strategies are known to perform better in particular regimes. Example: momentum based strategies perform best in periods with low volatility and strong directional moves. Primary models initial input which is a value between −1 and 1. This highlights the strength of the primary models conviction. The output of the model is a value between −1 and 1 (if using a Tanh function) which will indicate the strength of the conviction that a short or long position is profitable, or it could simply be between 0 and 1 (using a sigmoid function) if one only wanted to know if it made money or not. This output allows filtering out trades that are likely to lead to losses. One could stop at this point or use the outputs of the secondary model as inputs to a position sizing algorithm (M3) which could further enhance strategy performance metrics by translating the output probability of the secondary model into a position size. Higher confidence scores result in larger allocations, while lower confidence leads to reduced or zero exposure. === Stage 3: Optimizing position sizes === ==== Position sizing methods (M3) ==== Various algorithms have been proposed for transforming predicted probabilities into trade sizes: All-or-nothing: Allocate 100% of capital if the probability exceeds a predefined threshold (e.g., 0.5); otherwise, do not trade. Model confidence: Use the probability score directly as the fraction of capital allocated. Linear scaling: Rescale the model's probabilities using min-max normalization based on the training data. Normal CDF (NCDF): Use a normal cumulative distribution function applied to a z-statistic derived from the predicted probability. Empirical CDF (ECDF): Rank probabilities based on their percentile in the training data to ensure relative allocation. Sigmoid Optimal Position Sizing (SOPS): Applies a smooth non-linear sigmoid transformation optimized to maximize risk-adjusted returns (Sharpe ratio). ==== Model calibration ==== Each machine learning algorithm used in meta-labeling tends to produce outputs with different characteristic distributions; for example, some are approximately normally distributed, whereas others exhibit a pronounced U-shape, concentrating probabilities near the extremes. Due to these varying distributions, simply summing the outputs of different models can inadvertently lead to uneven weighting of signals, biasing trade decisions. To address this, model calibration techniques are essential to adjust the predicted probabilities towards frequentist probabilities, ensuring that model outputs reflect true likelihoods more accurately. Two common calibration techniques are: Platt scaling (Sigmoid scaling): Suitable for correcting S-shaped calibration plots typically produced by models such as support vector machines (SVMs). Isotonic regression: Fits a non-decreasing step function to probabilities and is effective particularly with larger datasets, though it can sometimes lead to overfitting. Transforming predictions to frequentist probabilities is crucial as it provides probabilistic outputs that are directly interpretable as the actual likelihood of an event occurring. Such calibration significantly enhances the effectiveness of fixed position sizing methods, reducing maximum drawdowns and increasing risk-adjusted returns. However, calibration has less impact on position sizing methods that directly estimate parameters from the training data, such as ECDF and SOPS, suggesting that calibration is a critical step mainly for fixed methods that rely heavily on raw model outputs. =

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  • Ugly duckling theorem

    Ugly duckling theorem

    The ugly duckling theorem is an argument showing that classification is not really possible without some sort of bias. More particularly, it assumes finitely many properties combinable by logical connectives, and finitely many objects; it asserts that any two different objects share the same number of (extensional) properties. The theorem is named after Hans Christian Andersen's 1843 story "The Ugly Duckling", because it shows that a duckling is just as similar to a swan as two swans are to each other. It was derived by Satosi Watanabe in 1969. == Mathematical formula == Suppose there are n things in the universe, and one wants to put them into classes or categories. One has no preconceived ideas or biases about what sorts of categories are "natural" or "normal" and what are not. So one has to consider all the possible classes that could be, all the possible ways of making a set out of the n objects. There are 2 n {\displaystyle 2^{n}} such ways, the size of the power set of n objects. One can use that to measure the similarity between two objects, and one would see how many sets they have in common. However, one cannot. Any two objects have exactly the same number of classes in common if we can form any possible class, namely 2 n − 1 {\displaystyle 2^{n-1}} (half the total number of classes there are). To see this is so, one may imagine each class is represented by an n-bit string (or binary encoded integer), with a zero for each element not in the class and a one for each element in the class. As one finds, there are 2 n {\displaystyle 2^{n}} such strings. As all possible choices of zeros and ones are there, any two bit-positions will agree exactly half the time. One may pick two elements and reorder the bits so they are the first two, and imagine the numbers sorted lexicographically. The first 2 n / 2 {\displaystyle 2^{n}/2} numbers will have bit #1 set to zero, and the second 2 n / 2 {\displaystyle 2^{n}/2} will have it set to one. Within each of those blocks, the top 2 n / 4 {\displaystyle 2^{n}/4} will have bit #2 set to zero and the other 2 n / 4 {\displaystyle 2^{n}/4} will have it as one, so they agree on two blocks of 2 n / 4 {\displaystyle 2^{n}/4} or on half of all the cases, no matter which two elements one picks. So if we have no preconceived bias about which categories are better, everything is then equally similar (or equally dissimilar). The number of predicates simultaneously satisfied by two non-identical elements is constant over all such pairs. Thus, some kind of inductive bias is needed to make judgements to prefer certain categories over others. === Boolean functions === Let x 1 , x 2 , … , x n {\displaystyle x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{n}} be a set of vectors of k {\displaystyle k} booleans each. The ugly duckling is the vector which is least like the others. Given the booleans, this can be computed using Hamming distance. However, the choice of boolean features to consider could have been somewhat arbitrary. Perhaps there were features derivable from the original features that were important for identifying the ugly duckling. The set of booleans in the vector can be extended with new features computed as boolean functions of the k {\displaystyle k} original features. The only canonical way to do this is to extend it with all possible Boolean functions. The resulting completed vectors have 2 k {\displaystyle 2^{k}} features. The ugly duckling theorem states that there is no ugly duckling because any two completed vectors will either be equal or differ in exactly half of the features. Proof. Let x and y be two vectors. If they are the same, then their completed vectors must also be the same because any Boolean function of x will agree with the same Boolean function of y. If x and y are different, then there exists a coordinate i {\displaystyle i} where the i {\displaystyle i} -th coordinate of x {\displaystyle x} differs from the i {\displaystyle i} -th coordinate of y {\displaystyle y} . Now the completed features contain every Boolean function on k {\displaystyle k} Boolean variables, with each one exactly once. Viewing these Boolean functions as polynomials in k {\displaystyle k} variables over GF(2), segregate the functions into pairs ( f , g ) {\displaystyle (f,g)} where f {\displaystyle f} contains the i {\displaystyle i} -th coordinate as a linear term and g {\displaystyle g} is f {\displaystyle f} without that linear term. Now, for every such pair ( f , g ) {\displaystyle (f,g)} , x {\displaystyle x} and y {\displaystyle y} will agree on exactly one of the two functions. If they agree on one, they must disagree on the other and vice versa. (This proof is believed to be due to Watanabe.) == Discussion == A possible way around the ugly duckling theorem would be to introduce a constraint on how similarity is measured by limiting the properties involved in classification, for instance, between A and B. However Medin et al. (1993) point out that this does not actually resolve the arbitrariness or bias problem since in what respects A is similar to B: "varies with the stimulus context and task, so that there is no unique answer, to the question of how similar is one object to another". For example, "a barberpole and a zebra would be more similar than a horse and a zebra if the feature striped had sufficient weight. Of course, if these feature weights were fixed, then these similarity relations would be constrained". Yet the property "striped" as a weight 'fix' or constraint is arbitrary itself, meaning: "unless one can specify such criteria, then the claim that categorization is based on attribute matching is almost entirely vacuous". Stamos (2003) remarked that some judgments of overall similarity are non-arbitrary in the sense they are useful: "Presumably, people's perceptual and conceptual processes have evolved that information that matters to human needs and goals can be roughly approximated by a similarity heuristic... If you are in the jungle and you see a tiger but you decide not to stereotype (perhaps because you believe that similarity is a false friend), then you will probably be eaten. In other words, in the biological world stereotyping based on veridical judgments of overall similarity statistically results in greater survival and reproductive success." Unless some properties are considered more salient, or 'weighted' more important than others, everything will appear equally similar, hence Watanabe (1986) wrote: "any objects, in so far as they are distinguishable, are equally similar". In a weaker setting that assumes infinitely many properties, Murphy and Medin (1985) give an example of two putative classified things, plums and lawnmowers: "Suppose that one is to list the attributes that plums and lawnmowers have in common in order to judge their similarity. It is easy to see that the list could be infinite: Both weigh less than 10,000 kg (and less than 10,001 kg), both did not exist 10,000,000 years ago (and 10,000,001 years ago), both cannot hear well, both can be dropped, both take up space, and so on. Likewise, the list of differences could be infinite… any two entities can be arbitrarily similar or dissimilar by changing the criterion of what counts as a relevant attribute." According to Woodward, the ugly duckling theorem is related to Schaffer's Conservation Law for Generalization Performance, which states that all algorithms for learning of boolean functions from input/output examples have the same overall generalization performance as random guessing. The latter result is generalized by Woodward to functions on countably infinite domains.

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  • Perusall

    Perusall

    Perusall is a social web annotation tool intended for use by students at schools and universities. It allows users to annotate the margins of a text in a virtual group setting that is similar to social media—with upvoting, emojis, chat functionality, and notification. It also includes automatic AI grading. == History == Perusall began as a research project at Harvard University. It later became an educational product for students and teachers. As of 2024, Perusall states more than 5 million students have used the tool at over 5,000 educational institutions in 112 countries." == Functionality == Perusall integrates with learning management systems such as Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard to aid with collaborative annotation. The tool supports annotation of a range of media including text, images, equations, videos, PDFs and snapshots of webpages.

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  • Pattern theory

    Pattern theory

    Pattern theory, formulated by Ulf Grenander, is a mathematical formalism to describe knowledge of the world as patterns. It differs from other approaches to artificial intelligence in that it does not begin by prescribing algorithms and machinery to recognize and classify patterns; rather, it prescribes a vocabulary to articulate and recast the pattern concepts in precise language. Broad in its mathematical coverage, Pattern Theory spans algebra and statistics, as well as local topological and global entropic properties. In addition to the new algebraic vocabulary, its statistical approach is novel in its aim to: Identify the hidden variables of a data set using real world data rather than artificial stimuli, which was previously commonplace. Formulate prior distributions for hidden variables and models for the observed variables that form the vertices of a Gibbs-like graph. Study the randomness and variability of these graphs. Create the basic classes of stochastic models applied by listing the deformations of the patterns. Synthesize (sample) from the models, not just analyze signals with them. The Brown University Pattern Theory Group was formed in 1972 by Ulf Grenander. Many mathematicians are currently working in this group, noteworthy among them being the Fields Medalist David Mumford. Mumford regards Grenander as his "guru" in Pattern Theory.

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