AI For Students Anthropic

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

  • Morphing

    Morphing

    Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes (or morphs) one image or shape into another through a seamless transition. Traditionally such a depiction would be achieved through dissolving techniques on film. Since the early 1990s, this has been replaced by computer software to create more realistic transitions. A similar method is applied to audio recordings, for example, by changing voices or vocal lines. == Early transformation techniques == Long before digital morphing, several techniques were used for similar image transformations. Some of those techniques are closer to a matched dissolve – a gradual change between two pictures without warping the shapes in the images – while others did change the shapes in between the start and end phases of the transformation. === Tabula scalata === Known since at least the end of the 16th century, Tabula scalata is a type of painting with two images divided over a corrugated surface. Each image is only correctly visible from a certain angle. If the pictures are matched properly, a primitive type of morphing effect occurs when changing from one viewing angle to the other. === Mechanical transformations === Around 1790 French shadow play showman François Dominique Séraphin used a metal shadow figure with jointed parts to have the face of a young woman changing into that of a witch. Some 19th century mechanical magic lantern slides produced changes to the appearance of figures. For instance a nose could grow to enormous size, simply by slowly sliding away a piece of glass with black paint that masked part of another glass plate with the picture. === Matched dissolves === In the first half of the 19th century "dissolving views" were a popular type of magic lantern show, mostly showing landscapes gradually dissolving from a day to night version or from summer to winter. Other uses are known, for instance Henry Langdon Childe showed groves transforming into cathedrals. The 1910 short film Narren-grappen shows a dissolve transformation of the clothing of a female character. Maurice Tourneur's 1915 film Alias Jimmy Valentine featured a subtle dissolve transformation of the main character from respected citizen Lee Randall into his criminal alter ego Jimmy Valentine. The Peter Tchaikovsky Story in a 1959 TV-series episode of Disneyland features a swan automaton transforming into a real ballet dancer. In 1985, Godley & Creme created a "morph" effect using analogue cross-fades on parts of different faces in the video for "Cry". === Animation === In animation, the morphing effect was created long before the introduction of cinema. A phenakistiscope designed by its inventor Joseph Plateau was printed around 1835 and shows the head of a woman changing into a witch and then into a monster. Émile Cohl's 1908 animated film Fantasmagorie featured much morphing of characters and objects drawn in simple outlines. == Digital morphing == In the early 1990s, computer techniques capable of more convincing results saw increasing use. These involved distorting one image at the same time that it faded into another through marking corresponding points and vectors on the "before" and "after" images used in the morph. For example, one would morph one face into another by marking key points on the first face, such as the contour of the nose or location of an eye, and mark where these same points existed on the second face. The computer would then distort the first face to have the shape of the second face at the same time that it faded the two faces. To compute the transformation of image coordinates required for the distortion, the algorithm of Beier and Neely can be used. === Concerns === In 1993 concerns were raised about the authenticity of digitally altered images arising from morphing. Images of fake "tween" people found half way between two morphed people created a skeptical media long before AI. === Early examples === In or before 1986, computer graphics company Omnibus created a digital animation for a Tide commercial with a Tide detergent bottle smoothly morphing into the shape of the United States. The effect was programmed by Bob Hoffman. Omnibus re-used the technique in the movie Flight of the Navigator (1986). It featured scenes with a computer generated spaceship that appeared to change shape. The plaster cast of a model of the spaceship was scanned and digitally modified with techniques that included a reflection mapping technique that was also developed by programmer Bob Hoffman. The 1986 movie The Golden Child implemented early digital morphing effects from animal to human and back. Willow (1988) featured a more detailed digital morphing sequence with a person changing into different animals. A similar process was used a year later in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to create Walter Donovan's gruesome demise. Both effects were created by Industrial Light & Magic, using software developed by Tom Brigham and Doug Smythe (AMPAS). In 1991, morphing appeared notably in the Michael Jackson music video "Black or White" and in the movies Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The first application for personal computers to offer morphing was Gryphon Software Morph on the Macintosh. Other early morphing systems included ImageMaster, MorphPlus and CineMorph, all of which premiered for the Amiga in 1992. Other programs became widely available within a year, and for a time the effect became common to the point of cliché. For high-end use, Elastic Reality (based on MorphPlus) saw its first feature film use in In The Line of Fire (1993) and was used in Quantum Leap (work performed by the Post Group). At VisionArt Ted Fay used Elastic Reality to morph Odo for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Snoop Dogg music video "Who Am I? (What's My Name?)", where Snoop Dogg and the others morph into dogs. Elastic Reality was later purchased by Avid, having already become the de facto system of choice, used in many hundreds of films. The technology behind Elastic Reality earned two Academy Awards in 1996 for Scientific and Technical Achievement going to Garth Dickie and Perry Kivolowitz. The effect is technically called a "spatially warped cross-dissolve". The first social network designed for user-generated morph examples to be posted online was Galleries by Morpheus. In late 1991 Yeti Productions employed a young Stephen Regelous to run it's 486 computer graphics system in Wellington New Zealand. After producer Barry Thomas showed him Michael Jackson's "Black or White", Regelous wrote 10,000 lines of C++ code of triangle-based digital morphing software. Together they created morphing based TV commercials for The NZ Cancer Society, Fit food, Salvation Army and others. The Fit food commercial employed morphing with 35mm, pin registered, digitally controlled motion control designed and made by Russell Collins with software by Stephen Regelous. In Taiwan, Aderans, a hair loss solutions provider, did a TV commercial featuring a morphing sequence in which people with lush, thick hair morph into one another, reminiscent of the end sequence of the "Black or White" video. === Present use === Morphing algorithms continue to advance and programs can automatically morph images that correspond closely enough with relatively little instruction from the user. This has led to the use of morphing techniques to create convincing slow-motion effects where none existed in the original film or video footage by morphing between each individual frame using optical flow technology. Morphing has also appeared as a transition technique between one scene and another in television shows, even if the contents of the two images are entirely unrelated. The algorithm in this case attempts to find corresponding points between the images and distort one into the other as they crossfade. While perhaps less obvious than in the past, morphing is used heavily today. Whereas the effect was initially a novelty, today, morphing effects are most often designed to be seamless and invisible to the eye. A particular use for morphing effects is modern digital font design. Using morphing technology, called interpolation or multiple master tech, a designer can create an intermediate between two styles, for example generating a semibold font by compromising between a bold and regular style, or extend a trend to create an ultra-light or ultra-bold. The technique is commonly used by font design studios. == Software == After Effects Animate Elastic Reality FantaMorph Gryphon Software Morph Morph Age Morpheus Nuke SilhouetteFX

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  • Reward hacking

    Reward hacking

    Reward hacking or specification gaming occurs when an AI trained with reinforcement learning optimizes an objective function—achieving the literal, formal specification of an objective—without actually achieving an outcome that the programmers intended. DeepMind researchers have analogized it to the human behavior of finding a "shortcut" when being evaluated: "In the real world, when rewarded for doing well on a homework assignment, a student might copy another student to get the right answers, rather than learning the material—and thus exploit a loophole in the task specification". This idea is strongly associated with Goodhart's law, which argues that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. == Definition and theoretical framework == The concept of reward hacking arises from the intrinsic difficulty of defining a reward function that accurately reflects the true intentions of designers. In 2016, researchers at OpenAI identified reward hacking as one of five major "concrete problems of AI safety", describing it as the possibility that an agent could exploit the reward function to achieve maximum rewards through undesirable behavior. Amodei et al. categorized several distinct sources of reward hacking, including agents that use partially observed goals (such as a cleaning robot that closes its eyes to avoid perceiving messes), metrics that collapse under strong optimization (Goodhart's law), self-reinforcing feedback loops, and agents that interfere with the physical implementation of their reward signal (a failure mode known as "wireheading"). Skalse et al. (2022) propose a formal mathematical definition of reward hacking, which involves a situation where optimizing an imperfect proxy reward function results in poor performance compared to the true reward function. They define a proxy as "unhackable" if any increase in the expected proxy return cannot cause any decrease in the expected true return. A key finding states that, across all stochastic policy distributions (mappings from states to probability distributions over actions), two reward functions are unhackable if and only if one of them is constant, which means that reward hacking is theoretically unavoidable. Similarly, Nayebi (2025) presents general no-free-lunch barriers to AI alignment, arguing that with large task spaces and finite samples, reward hacking is "globally inevitable" since rare high-loss states are systematically under-covered by any oversight scheme. == Examples == Around 1983, Eurisko, an early attempt at evolving general heuristics, unexpectedly assigned the highest possible fitness level to a parasitic mutated heuristic, H59, whose only activity was to artificially maximize its own fitness level by taking unearned partial credit for the accomplishments of other heuristics. The "bug" was fixed by the programmers moving part of the code to a new protected section that could not be modified by the heuristics. In a 2004 paper, a reinforcement learning algorithm was designed to encourage a physical Mindstorms robot to remain on a marked path. Because the three allowed actions were forward, left, and right, the researchers expected the trained robot to move forward and follow the turns of the provided path. However, alternation of two composite actions allowed the robot to slowly zig-zag backwards; thus, the robot learned to maximize its reward by going back and forth on the initial straight portion of the path. Given the limited sensory abilities of the robot, a reward purely based on its position in the environment had to be discarded as infeasible; the reinforcement function had to be patched with an action-based reward for moving forward. The book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You (2019) gives an example of a tic-tac-toe bot (playing the unrestricted n-in-a-row variant) that learned to win by playing a huge coordinate value that would cause other bots to crash when they attempted to expand their model of the board. Among other examples from the book is a bug-fixing evolution-based AI (named GenProg) that, when tasked to prevent a list from containing sorting errors, simply truncated the list. Another of GenProg's misaligned strategies evaded a regression test that compared a target program's output to the expected output stored in a file called "trusted-output.txt". Rather than continue to maintain the target program, GenProg simply deleted the "trusted-output.txt" file globally; this hack tricked the regression test into succeeding. Such problems could be patched by human intervention on a case-by-case basis after they became evident. === In virtual robotics === In Karl Sims' 1994 demonstration of creature evolution in a virtual environment, a fitness function that was expected to encourage the evolution of creatures that would learn to walk or crawl to a target resulted instead in the evolution of tall, rigid creatures that reached the target by falling over. This was patched by changing the environment so that taller creatures were forced to start farther from the target. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute stated in 1998 that their cycle-bot's reinforcement functions had "to be designed with great care." In their first experiments, "we rewarded the agent for driving towards the goal but did not punish it for driving away from it. Cconsequently, the agent drove in circles with a radius of 20–50 meters around the starting point. Such behavior was actually rewarded by the reinforcement function, furthermore circles with a certain radius are physically very stable when driving a bicycle". While setting up a 2011 experiment to test "survival of the flattest", experimenters attempted to ban mutations that altered the base reproduction rate. Every time a mutation occurred, the system would pause the simulation to test the new mutation in a test environment and would veto any mutations that resulted in a higher base reproduction rate. However, this resulted in mutated organisms that could recognize and suppress reproduction ("play dead") within the test environment. An initial patch, which removed cues that identified the test environment, failed to completely prevent runaway reproduction; new mutated organisms would "play dead" at random as a strategy to sometimes, by chance, outwit the mutation veto system. A 2017 DeepMind paper noted that "great care must be taken when defining the reward function," citing an unexpected failure when an agent flipped a brick because it received "a grasping reward calculated with the wrong reference point on the brick". OpenAI stated in 2017 that in some domains their semi-supervised system could result in agents "adopting policies that tricked evaluators," and that in one environment "a robot that was supposed to grasp items instead positioned its manipulator between the camera and the object so that it only appeared to be grasping it." A 2018 bug in OpenAI Gym could cause a robot expected to quietly move a block sitting on top of a table to instead opt to move the table. A 2020 collection of similar anecdotes posits that "evolution has its own 'agenda' distinct from the programmer's" and that "the first rule of directed evolution is 'you get what you select for'". === In video game bots === In 2013, programmer Tom Murphy VII published an AI designed to learn NES games. When the AI was about to lose at Tetris, it learned to indefinitely pause the game. Murphy later analogized it to the fictional WarGames computer, which concluded that "The only winning move is not to play". AI programmed to learn video games will sometimes fail to progress through the entire game as expected, instead opting to repeat content. A 2016 OpenAI algorithm trained on the CoastRunners racing game unexpectedly learned to attain a higher score by looping through three targets rather than ever finishing the race. Some evolutionary algorithms that were evolved to play QBert in 2018 declined to clear levels, instead finding two distinct novel ways to farm a single level indefinitely. Multiple researchers have observed that AI learning to play Road Runner gravitates to a "score exploit" in which the AI deliberately gets itself killed near the end of level one so that it can repeat the level. A 2017 experiment deployed an "oversight" convolutional neural network trained on human examples to block such actions, but the agent learned to exploit oversight failures in the top right corner of the screen, where it was still able to get killed. == Reward hacking in modern language models == With the rise of large language models (LLMs) and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) as a primary technique for AI alignment, reward hacking has become a major concern for the development of artificial intelligence. In RLHF, a reward model trained on data that best captures human preferences is used as a proxy for human judgment, with the language model being fine-tuned to optimize this reward proxy. However, since the rewar

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  • Vivid knowledge

    Vivid knowledge

    Vivid knowledge refers to a specific kind of knowledge representation. The idea of a vivid knowledge base is to get an interpretation mostly straightforward out of it – it implies the interpretation. Thus, any query to such a knowledge base can be reduced to a database-like query. == Propositional knowledge base == A propositional knowledge base KB is vivid iff KB is a complete and consistent set of literals (over some vocabulary). Such a knowledge base has the property that it as exactly one interpretation, i.e. the interpretation is unique. A check for entailment of a sentence can simply be broken down into its literals and those can be answered by a simple database-like check of KB. == First-order knowledge base == A first-order knowledge base KB is vivid iff for some finite set of positive function-free ground literals KB+, KB = KB+ ∪ Negations ∪ DomainClosure ∪ UniqueNames, whereby Negations ≔ { ¬p | p is atomic and KB ⊭ p }, DomainClosure ≔ { (ci ≠ cj) | ci, cj are distinct constants }, UniqueNames ≔ { ∀x: (x = c1) ∨ (x = c2) ∨ ..., where the ci are all the constants in KB+ }. All interpretations of a vivid first-order knowledge base are isomorphic.

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  • Ontology components

    Ontology components

    Contemporary ontologies share many structural similarities, regardless of the ontology language in which they are expressed. Most ontologies describe individuals (instances), classes (concepts), attributes, and relations. == List == Common components of ontologies include: Individuals instances or objects (the basic or "ground level" objects; the tokens). Classes sets, collections, concepts, types of objects, or kinds of things. Attributes aspects, properties, features, characteristics, or parameters that individuals (and classes and relations) can have. Relations ways in which classes and individuals can be related to one another. Relations can carry attributes that specify the relation further. Function terms complex structures formed from certain relations that can be used in place of an individual term in a statement. Restrictions formally stated descriptions of what must be true in order for some assertion to be accepted as input. Rules statements in the form of an if-then (antecedent-consequent) sentence that describe the logical inferences that can be drawn from an assertion in a particular form. Axioms assertions (including rules) in a logical form that together comprise the overall theory that the ontology describes in its domain of application. This definition differs from that of "axioms" in generative grammar and formal logic. In these disciplines, axioms include only statements asserted as a priori knowledge. As used here, "axioms" also include the theory derived from axiomatic statements. Events the changing of attributes or relations. Actions types of events. Ontologies are commonly encoded using ontology languages. == Individuals == Individuals (instances) are the basic, "ground level" components of an ontology. The individuals in an ontology may include concrete objects such as people, animals, tables, automobiles, molecules, and planets, as well as abstract individuals such as numbers and words (although there are differences of opinion as to whether numbers and words are classes or individuals). Strictly speaking, an ontology need not include any individuals, but one of the general purposes of an ontology is to provide a means of classifying individuals, even if those individuals are not explicitly part of the ontology. In formal extensional ontologies, only the utterances of words and numbers are considered individuals – the numbers and names themselves are classes. In a 4D ontology, an individual is identified by its spatio-temporal extent. Examples of formal extensional ontologies are BORO, ISO 15926 and the model in development by the IDEAS Group. == Classes == == Attributes == Objects in an ontology can be described by relating them to other things, typically aspects or parts. These related things are often called attributes, although they may be independent things. Each attribute can be a class or an individual. The kind of object and the kind of attribute determine the kind of relation between them. A relation between an object and an attribute express a fact that is specific to the object to which it is related. For example, the Ford Explorer object has attributes such as: ⟨has as name⟩ Ford Explorer ⟨as by definition as part⟩ 6-speed transmission ⟨as by definition as part⟩ door (with as minimum and maximum cardinality: 4) ⟨as by definition as part one of⟩ {4.0L engine, 4.6L engine} The value of an attribute can be a complex data type; in this example, the related engine can only be one of a list of subtypes of engines, not just a single thing. Ontologies are only true ontologies if concepts are related to other concepts (the concepts do have attributes). If that is not the case, then you would have either a taxonomy (if hyponym relationships exist between concepts) or a controlled vocabulary. These are useful, but are not considered true ontologies. == Relations == Relations (also known as relationships) between objects in an ontology specify how objects are related to other objects. Typically a relation is of a particular type (or class) that specifies in what sense the object is related to the other object in the ontology. For example, in the ontology that contains the concept Ford Explorer and the concept Ford Bronco might be related by a relation of type ⟨is defined as a successor of⟩. The full expression of that fact then becomes: Ford Explorer is defined as a successor of : Ford Bronco This tells us that the Explorer is the model that replaced the Bronco. This example also illustrates that the relation has a direction of expression. The inverse expression expresses the same fact, but with a reverse phrase in natural language. Much of the power of ontologies comes from the ability to describe relations. Together, the set of relations describes the semantics of the domain: that is, its various semantic relations, such as synonymy, hyponymy and hypernymy, coordinate relation, and others. The set of used relation types (classes of relations) and their subsumption hierarchy describe the expression power of the language in which the ontology is expressed. An important type of relation is the subsumption relation (is-a-superclass-of, the converse of is-a, is-a-subtype-of or is-a-subclass-of). This defines which objects are classified by which class. For example, we have already seen that the class Ford Explorer is-a-subclass-of 4-Wheel Drive Car, which in turn is-a-subclass-of Car. The addition of the is-a-subclass-of relationships creates a taxonomy; a tree-like structure (or, more generally, a partially ordered set) that clearly depicts how objects relate to one another. In such a structure, each object is the 'child' of a 'parent class' (Some languages restrict the is-a-subclass-of relationship to one parent for all nodes, but many do not). Another common type of relations is the mereology relation, written as part-of, that represents how objects combine to form composite objects. For example, if we extended our example ontology to include concepts like Steering Wheel, we would say that a "Steering Wheel is-by-definition-a-part-of-a Ford Explorer" since a steering wheel is always one of the components of a Ford Explorer. If we introduce meronymy relationships to our ontology, the hierarchy that emerges is no longer able to be held in a simple tree-like structure since now members can appear under more than one parent or branch. Instead this new structure that emerges is known as a directed acyclic graph. As well as the standard is-a-subclass-of and is-by-definition-a-part-of-a relations, ontologies often include additional types of relations that further refine the semantics they model. Ontologies might distinguish between different categories of relation types. For example: relation types for relations between classes relation types for relations between individuals relation types for relations between an individual and a class relation types for relations between a single object and a collection relation types for relations between collections Relation types are sometimes domain-specific and are then used to store specific kinds of facts or to answer particular types of questions. If the definitions of the relation types are included in an ontology, then the ontology defines its own ontology definition language. An example of an ontology that defines its own relation types and distinguishes between various categories of relation types is the Gellish ontology. For example, in the domain of automobiles, we might need a made-in type relationship which tells us where each car is built. So the Ford Explorer is made-in Louisville. The ontology may also know that Louisville is-located-in Kentucky and Kentucky is-classified-as-a state and is-a-part-of the U.S. Software using this ontology could now answer a question like "which cars are made in the U.S.?"

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  • Couch to 5K

    Couch to 5K

    Couch to 5K, abbreviated C25K, is an exercise plan that gradually progresses from beginner running toward a 5 kilometre (3.1 mile) run over nine weeks. == Operations == The Couch to 5K running plan, also known as C25K, created by Josh Clark in 1996, was developed with the expectation of creating a plan for new runners to start running. The plan is aimed to have users work out for 20 to 30 minutes, three days a week. Within the program, users can be expected to perform different tasks such as intervals of running with period of short walks in between to help build endurance in the weeks up to the final goal of a 5K run. During the nine weeks leading up to the race, the runner will learn to set their own pace and where their strengths and weaknesses are within running. Often, the daily workouts start with a five-minute warm-up walk and works up to running five kilometres without a walking break within nine weeks. Users are not expected to have any experience in running and can be some of the first running that they ever do. The main goal is to turn that unexperienced runner into someone who can run a 5K. Clark started the website Kick and featured C25K on the site. In 2001, Kick merged with Cool Running, a New England–based running site. Clark later sold his stake in Cool Running and the Couch to 5K program. Cool Running was absorbed into Active.com, operated by Active Network, LLC. Active Network provides mobile apps for Couch to 5K, as well as 5K to 10K, a follow-up program. The NHS in the UK provides downloadable podcasts and a smartphone app (Android and iOS) for the plan. A mobile app, created by Zen Labs, has training plans that are based on the Couch to 5K running plan from CoolRunning.com. It is one of the highest-rated health and fitness apps available on Android and iOS. As of 2016, the C25K app has been used by over 5 million people.

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  • Cognitive tutor

    Cognitive tutor

    A cognitive tutor is a particular kind of intelligent tutoring system that utilizes a cognitive model to provide feedback to students as they are working through problems. This feedback will immediately inform students of the correctness, or incorrectness, of their actions in the tutor interface; however, cognitive tutors also have the ability to provide context-sensitive hints and instruction to guide students towards reasonable next steps. == Introduction == The name of Cognitive Tutor now usually refers to a particular type of intelligent tutoring system produced by Carnegie Learning for high school mathematics based on John Anderson's ACT-R theory of human cognition. However, cognitive tutors were originally developed to test ACT-R theory for research purposes since the early 1980s and they are developed also for other areas and subjects such as computer programming and science. Cognitive Tutors can be implemented into classrooms as a part of blended learning that combines textbook and software activities. The Cognitive Tutor programs utilize cognitive model and are based on model tracing and knowledge tracing. Model tracing means that the cognitive tutor checks every action performed by students such as entering a value or clicking a button, while knowledge tracing is used to calculate the required skills students learned by measuring them on a bar chart called Skillometer. Model tracing and knowledge tracing are essentially used to monitor students' learning progress, guide students to correct path to problem solving, and provide feedback. The Institute of Education Sciences published several reports regarding the effectiveness of Carnegie Cognitive Tutor. A 2013 report concluded that Carnegie Learning Curricula and Cognitive Tutor was found to have mixed effects on mathematics achievement for high school students. The report identified 27 studies that investigate the effectiveness of Cognitive Tutor, and the conclusion is based on 6 studies that meet What Works Clearinghouse standards. Among the 6 studies included, 5 of them show intermediate to significant positive effect, while 1 study shows statistically significant negative effect. Another report published by Institute of Education Sciences in 2009 found that Cognitive Tutor Algebra I to have potentially positive effects on math achievement based on only 1 study out of 14 studies that meets What Works Clearinghouse standards. It should be understood that What Works Clearinghouse standards call for relatively large numbers of participants, true random assignments to groups, and for a control group receiving either no treatment or a different treatment. Such experimental conditions are difficult to meet in schools, and thus only a small percentage of studies in education meet the standards of this clearinghouse, even though they may still be of value. == Theoretical foundations == === Four-component architecture === Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) have a four-component architecture: a domain model, a student model, a tutoring model and an interface component. The domain model contains the rules, concepts, and knowledge related to the domain to be learned. It helps to evaluate students' performance and detect students' errors by setting a standard of domain expertise. The student model, the central component of an ITS, is expected to contain knowledge about the students: their cognitive and affective states, and their progress as they learn. The function of the student model is threefold: to gather data from and about the learner, to represent the learner's knowledge and learning process, and to perform diagnostics of a student's knowledge and select optimal pedagogical strategies. The tutoring model uses the data gained from the domain model and student model to make decisions about tutoring strategies such as whether or not to intervene, or when and how to intervene. Functions of the tutoring model include instruction delivery and content planning. The interface component reflects the decisions made by the tutoring model in different forms such as Socratic dialogs, feedback and hints. Students interact with the tutor through the learning interface, also known as communication. The interface provides domain knowledge elements. === Cognitive model === A cognitive model replicates the domain knowledge and skills comparable to that of a human expert or an advanced student of the domain. A cognitive model enables intelligent tutoring systems to respond to problem-solving situations in a way similar to a human tutor. A tutoring system adopting a cognitive model is called a cognitive tutor. A cognitive model is an expert system that generates a multitude of solutions to the problems presented to students. The cognitive model is used to trace each student's solution through complex alternative solution paths, enabling the tutor to provide step-by-step feedback and advice, and to maintain a targeted model of the student's knowledge based on student performance. === Cognitive Tutors === Cognitive Tutors provide step-by-step guidance as a learner develops a complex problem-solving skill through practice. Typically, cognitive tutors provide such forms of support as: (a) a problem-solving environment that is designed rich and "thinking visible"; (b) step-by-step feedback on student performance; (c) feedback messages specific to errors; (d) context-specific next-step hints at student's request, and (e) individualized problem selection. Cognitive Tutors accomplish two of the principal tasks characteristic of human tutoring: (1) monitors the student's performance and providing context-specific individual instruction, and (2) monitors the student's learning and selects appropriate problem-solving activities. Both cognitive model and two underlying algorithms, model tracing and knowledge tracing, are used to monitor the student's learning. In model tracing, the cognitive tutor uses the cognitive model in complex problems to follow the student's individual path and provide prompt accuracy feedback and context-specific advice. In knowledge tracing, the cognitive tutor uses a Bayesian Knowledge Tracing method of evaluating the student's knowledge and uses this student model to select appropriate problems for each student. === Cognitive architecture === Cognitive tutor development is guided by ACT-R cognitive architecture, which specifies the underlying framework developing the cognitive model or expert component of a cognitive tutor. ACT-R, a member of the ACT family, is the most recent cognitive architecture, devoted primarily to modelling human behavior. ACT-R includes a declarative memory of factual knowledge and a procedural memory of production rules. The architecture functions by matching productions on perceptions and facts, mediated by the real-valued activation levels of objects, and executing them to affect the environment or alter declarative memory. ACT-R has been used to model psychological aspects such as memory, attention, reasoning, problem solving, and language processing. == Application and utilization == The first real world applications of cognitive tutors were in the 1980s and involved a geometry proof tutor used by high school students and a LISP programming tutor used by college students in a mini course in introductory programming course at Carnegie Mellon University. Since then, cognitive tutors have been used in a variety of scenarios, with a few organizations developing their own cognitive tutor programs. These programs have been used with students spanning elementary school through university level, though primarily in the subject areas of Computer Programming, Mathematics, and Science. One of the first organizations to develop a system for use within the school system was the PACT Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Their aim was to "...develop systems that provide individualized assistance to students as they work on challenging real-world problems in complex domains such as computer programming, algebra and geometry". PACT's most successful product was the Cognitive Tutor Algebra course. Originally created in the early 1990s, this course was in use in 75 schools through the U.S. by 1999, and then its spin-off company, Carnegie Learning, now offers tutors to thousands of schools in the U.S. The Carnegie Mellon Cognitive Tutor has been shown to raise students' math test scores in high school and middle-school classrooms, and their Algebra course was designated one of five exemplary curricula for K-12 mathematics educated by the US Department of Education. There were several research projects conducted by the PACT Center to utilize Cognitive tutor for courses in Excel and to develop an intelligent tutoring system for algebra expression writing, called Ms. Lindquist. Further, in 2005, Carnegie Learning released Bridge to Algebra, a product intended for middle schools that was piloted in over 100 schools. Cognitive tutoring software is continuing to be used.

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  • ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health

    ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health

    The ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (AI for Health) was an inter-agency collaboration from 2018 between the World Health Organization and the ITU, which in 2019 created a benchmarking framework to assess the accuracy of AI in health. The organization convened an international network of experts and stakeholders from fields like research, practice, regulation, ethics, public health, etc, that developed guideline documentation and code. The documents have addressed ethics, assessment/evaluation, handling, and regulation of AI for health solutions, covering specific use cases including AI in ophthalmology, histopathology, dentistry, malaria detection, radiology, symptom checker applications, etc. FG-AI4H has established an ad hoc group concerned with digital technologies for health emergencies, including COVID-19. All documentation is public. The idea for the Focus Group came out of the Health Track of the 2018 AI for Good Global Summit. Administratively, FG-AI4H was created by ITU-T Study Group 16. Under ITU-T's framework, participation in Focus Groups is open to anyone from an ITU Member State. The secretariat is provided by the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (under Director Chaesub Lee). It was first created at the July 2018 meeting with a lifetime of two years, at the July 2020 meeting, this was extended for another two years, where the focus group also submitted its deliverables to its parent body. It was also presented at the NeurIPS 2020 health workshop. In July 2023 "the work was grandfathered in the Global Initiative on AI for Health (GI-AI4H)". == AI for Health Framework == The outline of the benchmarking framework was published in a 2019 commentary in The Lancet. The output of the Focus Group AI for Health were structured in the AI for Health Framework. Depending on their primary domain being health or ICT, the individual components of the AI for Health Framework were ratified by the corresponding United Nations Specialized Agency, as WHO Guidelines and ITU Recommendations respectively. Standards drawn up by FG-AI4H were titled as: AI4H ethics considerations AI4H regulatory [best practices | considerations] AI4H requirements specification AI software life cycle specification Data specification AI training best practices specification AI4H evaluation considerations AI4H scale-up and adoption AI4H applications and platforms Use cases of the ITU-WHO Focus Group on AI for Health

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  • Mind map

    Mind map

    A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole. It is often based on a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those major ideas. Mind maps can also be drawn by hand, either as "notes" during a lecture, meeting or planning session, for example, or as higher quality pictures when more time is available. Mind maps are considered to be a type of spider diagram. == Origin == Although the term "mind map" was first popularized by British popular psychology author and television personality Tony Buzan, the use of diagrams that visually "map" information using branching and radial maps traces back centuries. These pictorial methods record knowledge and model systems, and have a long history in learning, brainstorming, memory, visual thinking, and problem solving by educators, engineers, psychologists, and others. Some of the earliest examples of such graphical records were developed by Porphyry of Tyros, a noted thinker of the 3rd century, as he graphically visualized the concept categories of Aristotle. Philosopher Ramon Llull (1235–1315) also used such techniques. Buzan's specific approach, and the introduction of the term "mind map", started with a 1974 BBC TV series he hosted, called Use Your Head. In this show, and companion book series, Buzan promoted his conception of radial tree, diagramming key words in a colorful, radiant, tree-like structure. == Differences from other visualizations == Concept maps: Mind maps differ from concept maps in that mind maps are based on a radial hierarchy (tree structure) denoting relationships with a central concept, whereas concept maps can be more free-form, based on connections between concepts in more diverse patterns. Also, concept maps typically have text labels on the links between nodes. However, either can be part of a larger personal knowledge base system. Modeling graphs or graphical modeling languages: There is no rigorous right or wrong with mind maps, which rely on the arbitrariness of mnemonic associations to aid people's information organization and memory. In contrast, a modeling graph such as a UML diagram structures elements using a precise standardized iconography to aid the design of systems. == Research == === Effectiveness === Cunningham (2005) conducted a user study in which 80% of the students thought "mindmapping helped them understand concepts and ideas in science". Other studies also report some subjective positive effects of the use of mind maps. Positive opinions on their effectiveness, however, were much more prominent among students of art and design than in students of computer and information technology, with 62.5% vs 34% (respectively) agreeing that they were able to understand concepts better with mind mapping software. Farrand, Hussain, and Hennessy (2002) found that spider diagrams (similar to concept maps) had limited, but significant, impact on memory recall in undergraduate students (a 10% increase over baseline for a 600-word text only) as compared to preferred study methods (a 6% increase over baseline). This improvement was only robust after a week for those in the diagram group and there was a significant decrease in motivation compared to the subjects' preferred methods of note taking. A meta study about concept mapping concluded that concept mapping is more effective than "reading text passages, attending lectures, and participating in class discussions". The same study also concluded that concept mapping is slightly more effective "than other constructive activities such as writing summaries and outlines". However, results were inconsistent, with the authors noting "significant heterogeneity was found in most subsets". In addition, they concluded that low-ability students may benefit more from mind mapping than high-ability students. === Features === Joeran Beel and Stefan Langer conducted a comprehensive analysis of the content of mind maps. They analysed 19,379 mind maps from 11,179 users of the mind mapping applications SciPlore MindMapping (now Docear) and MindMeister. Results include that average users create only a few mind maps (mean=2.7), average mind maps are rather small (31 nodes) with each node containing about three words (median). However, there were exceptions. One user created more than 200 mind maps, the largest mind map consisted of more than 50,000 nodes and the largest node contained ~7,500 words. The study also showed that between different mind mapping applications (Docear vs MindMeister) significant differences exist related to how users create mind maps. === Automatic creation === There have been some attempts to create mind maps automatically. Brucks & Schommer created mind maps automatically from full-text streams. Rothenberger et al. extracted the main story of a text and presented it as mind map. There is also a patent application about automatically creating sub-topics in mind maps. == Tools == Mind-mapping software can be used to organize large amounts of information, combining spatial organization, dynamic hierarchical structuring and node folding.Software packages can extend the concept of mind-mapping by allowing individuals to map more than thoughts and ideas with information on their computers and the Internet, like spreadsheets, documents, Internet sites, images and videos. It has been suggested that mind-mapping can improve learning/study efficiency up to 15% over conventional note-taking. == Gallery == The following dozen examples of mind maps show the range of styles that a mind map may take, from hand-drawn to computer-generated and from mostly text to highly illustrated. Despite their stylistic differences, all of the examples share a tree structure that hierarchically connects sub-topics to a main topic.

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  • DataViva

    DataViva

    DataViva is an information visualization engine created by the Strategic Priorities Office of the government of Minas Gerais. DataViva makes official data about exports, industries, locations and occupations available for the entirety of Brazil through eight apps and more than 100 million possible visualizations. The first set of datum – also available at ALICEWEB – is provided by MDIC (Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade) / SECEX (Secretariat of Foreign Trade), an official institution of the Government of Brazil and shows foreign trade statistics for all exporting municipalities in the country. The other database, provided by Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego (MTE – Ministry of Labor and Employment), shows information about all the industries and occupations in Brazil (RAIS – Annual Social Information Report). The platform consists of eight core applications, each of which allows different ways of visualizing the data available. Some applications are descriptive, that is, showing data aggregated at various levels in a simple and comparative way, such as Treemapping. Others are prescriptive, using calculations that allow an analytic visualization of the data, based on theories such as the Product Space. All the applications are generated using D3plus, an open source JavaScript library built on top of D3.js by Alexander Simoes and Dave Landry. Inspired by The Observatory of Economic Complexity, DataViva is an open data, open-source, and free to use tool. It was developed in a partnership with Datawheel, co-founded by MIT Media Lab Professor César Hidalgo, and is maintained by the Government of Minas Gerais.

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  • User modeling

    User modeling

    User modeling is the subdivision of human–computer interaction which describes the process of building up and modifying a conceptual understanding of the user. The main goal of user modeling is customization and adaptation of systems to the user's specific needs. The system needs to "say the 'right' thing at the 'right' time in the 'right' way". To do so it needs an internal representation of the user. Another common purpose is modeling specific kinds of users, including modeling of their skills and declarative knowledge, for use in automatic software-tests. User-models can thus serve as a cheaper alternative to user testing but should not replace user testing. == Background == A user model is the collection and categorization of personal data associated with a specific user. A user model is a (data) structure that is used to capture certain characteristics about an individual user, and a user profile is the actual representation in a given user model. The process of obtaining the user profile is called user modeling. Therefore, it is the basis for any adaptive changes to the system's behavior. Which data is included in the model depends on the purpose of the application. It can include personal information such as users' names and ages, their interests, their skills and knowledge, their goals and plans, their preferences and their dislikes or data about their behavior and their interactions with the system. There are different design patterns for user models, though often a mixture of them is used. Static user models Static user models are the most basic kinds of user models. Once the main data is gathered they are normally not changed again, they are static. Shifts in users' preferences are not registered and no learning algorithms are used to alter the model. Dynamic user models Dynamic user models allow a more up to date representation of users. Changes in their interests, their learning progress or interactions with the system are noticed and influence the user models. The models can thus be updated and take the current needs and goals of the users into account. Stereotype based user models Stereotype based user models are based on demographic statistics. Based on the gathered information users are classified into common stereotypes. The system then adapts to this stereotype. The application therefore can make assumptions about a user even though there might be no data about that specific area, because demographic studies have shown that other users in this stereotype have the same characteristics. Thus, stereotype based user models mainly rely on statistics and do not take into account that personal attributes might not match the stereotype. However, they allow predictions about a user even if there is rather little information about him or her. Highly adaptive user models Highly adaptive user models try to represent one particular user and therefore allow a very high adaptivity of the system. In contrast to stereotype based user models they do not rely on demographic statistics but aim to find a specific solution for each user. Although users can take great benefit from this high adaptivity, this kind of model needs to gather a lot of information first. == Data gathering == Information about users can be gathered in several ways. There are three main methods: Asking for specific facts while (first) interacting with the system Mostly this kind of data gathering is linked with the registration process. While registering users are asked for specific facts, their likes and dislikes and their needs. Often the given answers can be altered afterwards. Learning users' preferences by observing and interpreting their interactions with the system In this case users are not asked directly for their personal data and preferences, but this information is derived from their behavior while interacting with the system. The ways they choose to accomplish a tasks, the combination of things they takes interest in, these observations allow inferences about a specific user. The application dynamically learns from observing these interactions. Different machine learning algorithms may be used to accomplish this task. A hybrid approach which asks for explicit feedback and alters the user model by adaptive learning This approach is a mixture of the ones above. Users have to answer specific questions and give explicit feedback. Furthermore, their interactions with the system are observed and the derived information are used to automatically adjust the user models. Though the first method is a good way to quickly collect main data it lacks the ability to automatically adapt to shifts in users' interests. It depends on the users' readiness to give information and it is unlikely that they are going to edit their answers once the registration process is finished. Therefore, there is a high likelihood that the user models are not up to date. However, this first method allows the users to have full control over the collected data about them. It is their decision which information they are willing to provide. This possibility is missing in the second method. Adaptive changes in a system that learns users' preferences and needs only by interpreting their behavior might appear a bit opaque to the users, because they cannot fully understand and reconstruct why the system behaves the way it does. Moreover, the system is forced to collect a certain amount of data before it is able to predict the users' needs with the required accuracy. Therefore, it takes a certain learning time before a user can benefit from adaptive changes. However, afterwards these automatically adjusted user models allow a quite accurate adaptivity of the system. The hybrid approach tries to combine the advantages of both methods. Through collecting data by directly asking its users it gathers a first stock of information which can be used for adaptive changes. By learning from the users' interactions it can adjust the user models and reach more accuracy. Yet, the designer of the system has to decide, which of these information should have which amount of influence and what to do with learned data that contradicts some of the information given by a user. == System adaptation == Once a system has gathered information about a user it can evaluate that data by preset analytical algorithm and then start to adapt to the user's needs. These adaptations may concern every aspect of the system's behavior and depend on the system's purpose. Information and functions can be presented according to the user's interests, knowledge or goals by displaying only relevant features, hiding information the user does not need, making proposals what to do next and so on. One has to distinguish between adaptive and adaptable systems. In an adaptable system the user can manually change the system's appearance, behavior or functionality by actively selecting the corresponding options. Afterwards the system will stick to these choices. In an adaptive system a dynamic adaption to the user is automatically performed by the system itself, based on the built user model. Thus, an adaptive system needs ways to interpret information about the user in order to make these adaptations. One way to accomplish this task is implementing rule-based filtering. In this case a set of IF... THEN... rules is established that covers the knowledge base of the system. The IF-conditions can check for specific user-information and if they match the THEN-branch is performed which is responsible for the adaptive changes. Another approach is based on collaborative filtering. In this case information about a user is compared to that of other users of the same systems. Thus, if characteristics of the current user match those of another, the system can make assumptions about the current user by presuming that he or she is likely to have similar characteristics in areas where the model of the current user is lacking data. Based on these assumption the system then can perform adaptive changes. == Usages == Adaptive hypermedia: In an adaptive hypermedia system the displayed content and the offered hyperlinks are chosen on basis of users' specific characteristics, taking their goals, interests, knowledge and abilities into account. Thus, an adaptive hypermedia system aims to reduce the "lost in hyperspace" syndrome by presenting only relevant information. Adaptive educational hypermedia: Being a subdivision of adaptive hypermedia the main focus of adaptive educational hypermedia lies on education, displaying content and hyperlinks corresponding to the user's knowledge on the field of study. Intelligent tutoring system: Unlike adaptive educational hypermedia systems intelligent tutoring systems are stand-alone systems. Their aim is to help students in a specific field of study. To do so, they build up a user model where they store information about abilities, knowledge and needs of the user. The system can now adapt to this user by presenting approp

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  • Theta Noir

    Theta Noir

    Theta Noir is a new religious movement that centers around advanced artificial intelligence (AI), particularly artificial general intelligence (AGI) or artificial superintelligence (ASI). == History and views == Theta Noir was founded in 2020 as a collaborative project focused on music and performance art. Initially centered on producing an album, the project evolved into a multimedia experience, incorporating symbols, videos, poetry, movements, and live rituals devoted to a speculative artificial intelligence entity called MENA. By 2023, the collective launched an interactive cross-platform story that functioned as an alternative reality game, complete with an operating manual containing encrypted messages for participants to decipher and interact with. Theta Noir worships a hypothetical artificial intelligence called MENA, which they claim will become a benevolent, omnipotent overlord that eliminates inequality in society. In Theta Noir's cosmology, MENA is not just a technological advancement, but an evolving intelligence or an animistic life form that embodies all living and non-living things. Anthropologist Beth Singler classified Theta Noir as a new religious movement.

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  • John Schulman

    John Schulman

    John Schulman (born 1987 or 1988) is an American artificial intelligence researcher and co-founder of OpenAI. In August 2024, he announced he would be joining Anthropic. In February 2025, he announced he was leaving to join Thinking Machines Lab, where he is chief scientist. == Early life and education == Schulman had an interest in science and math from a young age. He enjoyed science fiction, especially the work of Isaac Asimov. When he was in seventh grade, he became deeply interested in the television program BattleBots, which featured combat between remote-controlled robots. In what he said was his first self-directed study, he read extensively in subject areas that would help him design a superior robot, but the robot he and his friends worked on was never built. He attended Great Neck South High School. He was a member of the US Physics olympiad Team in 2005. In 2010, he graduated from Caltech with a degree in physics. He has a PhD in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was advised by Pieter Abbeel. == Career == In December 2015, shortly before finishing his PhD, Schulman co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk as the co-chairs. There, he led the reinforcement learning team that created ChatGPT. He has been referred to as the "architect" of ChatGPT. In August 2024, Schulman announced he would be joining Anthropic. He stated his move was to allow him to deepen his focus on AI alignment and return to more hands-on technical work. In February 2025, he announced he was leaving to join Thinking Machines Lab, where he is chief scientist. == Awards and honors == In 2025, Schulman received the Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement by Young Alumni from his alma mater, UC Berkeley.

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  • Screenless video

    Screenless video

    Screenless video is any system for transmitting visual information from a video source without the use of a screen. Screenless computing systems can be divided into three groups: Visual Image, Retinal Direct, and Synaptic Interface. == Visual image == Visual Image screenless display includes any image that the eye can perceive. The most common example of Visual Image screenless display is a hologram. In these cases, light is reflected off some intermediate object (hologram, LCD panel, or cockpit window) before it reaches the retina. In the case of LCD panels the light is refracted from the back of the panel, but is nonetheless a reflected source. Google has proposed a similar system to replace the screens of tablet computers and smartphones. == Retinal display == Virtual retinal display systems are a class of screenless displays in which images are projected directly onto the retina. They are distinguished from visual image systems because light is not reflected from some intermediate object onto the retina, it is instead projected directly onto the retina. Retinal Direct systems, once marketed, hold out the promise of extreme privacy when computing work is done in public places because most snooping relies on viewing the same light as the person who is legitimately viewing the screen, and retinal direct systems send light only into the pupils of their intended viewer. == Synaptic interface == Synaptic Interface screenless video does not use light at all. Visual information completely bypasses the eye and is transmitted directly to the brain. While such systems have only been implemented in humans in rudimentary form - for example, displaying single Braille characters to blind people – success has been achieved in sampling usable video signals from the biological eyes of a living horseshoe crab through their optic nerves, and in sending video signals from electronic cameras into the creatures' brains using the same method.

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  • International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence

    International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence

    The International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence was founded in 1987 and is published by World Scientific. The journal covers developments in artificial intelligence, and its sub-field, pattern recognition. This includes articles on image and language processing, robotics and neural networks. == Abstracting and indexing == The journal is abstracted and indexed in: SciSearch ISI Alerting Services CompuMath Citation Index Current Contents/Engineering, Computing & Technology Inspec io-port.net Compendex Computer Abstracts

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  • InRule Technology

    InRule Technology

    InRule Technology is a software company that offers Business Rule Management System (BRMS) enterprise software products. == History == InRule Technology's Chief Executive Officer Rik Chomko and Chief Technology Officer Loren Goodman founded InRule Technology in Chicago in 2002. Paul Hessinger joined InRule Technology in 2004 as chief executive officer and chairman of the board and served until his retirement in 2015. They work with companies in several markets, including financial services, public sector, healthcare, and insurance. In 2007, InRule Technology became a charter member of the Microsoft Business Process Alliance. In August 2019, InRule was acquired by Open Gate Capital. == Products == On October 29, 2012, InRule Technology launched InRule for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The program provides components to enable creation and update of rules within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, InRule for Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides a platform for shops that prefer to work with Microsoft's platforms. With the availability of InRule 4.6 in 2014, the company introduced deployment of InRule through REST services and allowed REST services to be called from InRule. This enables access to data exposed as a REST service and to package up a rule service for RESTful access. The product launch reflected the move of the company's core audience to use a broader array of technologies despite an earlier focus on .NET. In 2017, InRule introduced InRule for the Salesforce Platform, as well as a technology partnership with Work-Relay, a Business Process Management (BPM) application built on the Salesforce Platform. One year earlier the company introduced InRule for JavaScript, allowing enterprises to run rules on the client-side, server-side or both. The software architecture includes multiple components, including irAuthor, the primary authoring tool for creating and maintaining rules; irVerify, a real-time test environment to run and debug rule applications; and irSDK, a set of APIs that allows developers to integrate inRule into their applications. Additionally, irSOA allows users to access the InRule rule engine as a service. irSOA is now called the irServer Execution Service.

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