Ed was a chatbot co-developed by the Los Angeles Unified School District and AllHere Education. Described as a learning acceleration platform, it was the first personal assistant for students in the United States. Part of the district's Individual Acceleration Plan, it was able to interact with students both verbally and visually, offering support in 100 languages. The chatbot was launched on March 20, 2024, as part of the district's plan for academic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and to improve overall academic performance. Utilizing artificial intelligence, Ed organizes data and reports on grades, test scores, and attendance, creating individualized plans for each student. After the company behind it, AllHere, collapsed, the district shuttered operations of the chatbot on June 14, 2024. The firm is under investigation by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. == History == On February 14, 2022, Alberto M. Carvalho became the Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, pledging to give the district a full academic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2022, he announced the Individual Acceleration Plan for the district, which aimed to provide each student with a unique progress report and help them determine if they were on track to graduate. The district faced criticism from disability advocates for its management of Individualized Education Programs, and in April 2022, the United States Department of Education announced that the district had failed to provide appropriate educational services to students with disabilities during the pandemic. The district had been grappling with significant absenteeism issues since the pandemic, which led to declining academic performance and disengagement among students. On February 17, 2023, the district issued a request for proposals to develop a fully integrated portal system. Later that year, they signed a $6 million, five-year contract with AllHere Education, a Boston-based company founded in 2016. The introduction of Ed follows the public launch of ChatGPT, which has been utilized by both teachers and students in educational settings. On August 4, 2023, during an annual address at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Carvalho and the Los Angeles Unified School District announced the launch of Ed. The district invested $4 million into the chatbot, with Carvalho noting that this cost would be halved thanks to donor and grant funding. The chatbot was launched on March 20, 2024. Following its launch, a press conference was held to address security and technology concerns. Carvalho stated that the district had collaborated with security companies and incorporated filters to screen for threatening language. Months after its launch, AllHere Education furloughed most of its staff on June 14, citing their “current financial position” on its website as the reason. After learning about the furlough, the district terminated its dealings with AllHere Education. However, it stated its intention to bring the chatbot back in the future once officials determine the best course of action. Carvalho announced that he would appoint an independent task force to review what went wrong with AllHere Education and the chatbot. On February 25, 2026, the FBI served a search warrant on Carvalho’s home and office in connection with AllHere. The FBI also raided the LAUSD's headquarters. == Service == The chatbot was described as a personal assistant and a "one-stop shop for parents and students" who want to see information about a student's attendance and grades, as well as other resources from the district. Additionally, the application can function as an alarm clock, provide daily lunch menus from the school cafeteria, and offer updates on the location of school buses. The chatbot also helps students and parents who do not speak English as their first language by translating displayed information into approximately 100 different languages. The application can also help with submitting applications and give updates on progress and upcoming assignments. The district stated that the primary goal of Ed was to actively motivate students to complete homework and other tasks. == Reception == The chatbot received a mostly positive reception among parents and observers upon its launch. Some parents and teachers expressed caution about the technology, voicing concerns that the district's push for its implementation lacked public accountability. Rob Nelson from the University of Pennsylvania described the district's strategy as risky, saying that the release felt "like the beginning of a Clippy-level disaster". After the chatbot's shutdown, The 74 criticized it for misusing student data. Chris Whiteley, a former software engineer at AllHere Education, alleged that the data collected by the chatbot likely violated the district's data privacy rules.
Huawei Mobile Services
Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) is a collection of proprietary services and high level application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Its hub known as HMS Core serves as a toolkit for app development on Huawei devices. HMS is typically installed on Huawei devices on top of running HarmonyOS 4.x and earlier operating system on its earlier devices running the Android operating system with EMUI including devices already distributed with Google Mobile Services. Alongside, HMS Core Wear Engine for Android phones with lightweight based LiteOS wearable middleware app framework integration connectivity like notifications, status etc. HMS consists of seven key services and the HMS Core. The key services are Huawei ID, Huawei Cloud, AppGallery, Themes, Huawei Video, Browser, and Assistant. The web browser is based on Chromium. Huawei Quick Apps is the alternative to Google Instant Apps. By January 2020, over 50,000 apps had been integrated with HMS Core. Its rival, Google Mobile Services has 3 million apps on Google's Play Store. The AppGallery claimed 180 billion downloads in 2019. In March 2020, HMS was used by 650 million monthly active users across 170 countries. A Chinese phone manufacturer, LeTV, hosted a smartphone business communication meeting in Beijing on September 27, 2021, to demonstrate its phone, the LeTV S1. This was the first smartphone from a third-party manufacturer to include Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). == HMS on Android and HarmonyOS == Huawei Mobile Services on Android goes all the way back to August 2016 as Huawei ID services for phones, basic functionalities for Huawei P9 series. However, in May 2019 proved to be a significant change to HMS when Google was prohibited from working with Huawei on any new devices extending ecosystem for AppGallery store front launched in April 2018, year prior. This also included bundling Google's Apps, including Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Any new Huawei devices launched after 16 May 2019 were unable to receive updates from Google services and would be considered 'uncertified' meaning Huawei's only solution at the time was to turn HMS into a genuine competitor to Google and incentivize app developers to utilize the platform. Huawei officially launched Huawei Mobile Services in China on December 24, 2019, as a beta. Huawei expanded Huawei Mobile Services in Europe in February 2020 and other markets in Asia, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, Canada, Mexico followed outside banned US market. HMS is available on the Honor 9X Pro, View 30 Pro, Huawei Mate XS. HMS is also available, alongside GMS, on many other Huawei models launched before the ban. Huawei promised developers it would take, “less than 10 minutes", to port their app over to HMS - to illustrate the ease of portability between Google's Play Store and the HMS AppGallery. On January 15, 2020, HMS Core 4.0 (Huawei Mobile Services Core 4.0) was officially launched. Huawei announced that at this time, there were already 1.3 million developers and 55,000 applications on board. The next day, Huawei held a developer day event in London and invested £20 million to encourage developers in the United Kingdom and Ireland to use HMS. On July 15, 2021, Huawei expanded HMS with classic HarmonyOS dual-framework that provided Java support and eventually with JavaScript and ArkTS (eTS) language support with HMS Core 6.0 for app development with primarily Android apps, alongside limited HAP imperative developed based apps that shares AOSP file system libraries in all types of devices from smartphones, tablets, smart screens, smartwatches, and car machines. Including various third-party development frameworks, such as React Native, Cordova, etc. At HDC 2023, Huawei unveiled HarmonyOS 5, marking a total break from the hybrid Android derived platform. This shift replaced the legacy Android and classic HarmonyOS-based HMS SDK with a full native API developer kit SDK built solely on OpenHarmony. The architecture moved from middleware services to vertical integration path. In this new model, HMS Core libraries are no longer external add-ons but are bundled directly into the system and DevEco Studio as native HarmonyOS Kits. == HMS Core == HMS Core is a hub for Huawei Mobile Services and serves as a toolkit for app development on Huawei devices. The core comprises Development, Growth and Monetizing and was created as a replacement for Google Mobile Services (GMS) Core. HMS core services were available in more than 55,000 apps in June 2020; HMS Core 5.0 debuted in September 2020. HMS Core 6.0 was launched in June 2021 with extended support for Huawei Cloud services. In June 2021, the number of registered developers within the HMS ecosystem was 4 million, and the number of apps integrated with the HMS Core had reached 134,000. As of July 2022, registered developers within HMS ecosystem had grown to 5 million, and the number of apps integrated with the HMS Core reached 203,000. The number of apps had grown to 220,000 by 30 September 2022. == AppGallery == The AppGallery has a key rival, Google's Play Store on Android. The AppGallery is available in 170 countries, across 78 languages. == Reception == The reception of HMS is mixed, with the majority of discussion based around the key Google/Android apps which are not yet present on the AppGallery and whether or not this presents a significant problem to users. The open development of HMS Core has been regarded by some as benefiting the Android project as a whole, "If Huawei continues to invest in a holistically open approach ... the result could be that we could all end up a bit less beholden to Google".
Lex (software)
Lex is a computer program that generates lexical analyzers ("scanners" or "lexers"). It is commonly used with the yacc parser generator and is the standard lexical analyzer generator on many Unix and Unix-like systems. An equivalent tool is specified as part of the POSIX standard. Lex reads an input stream specifying the lexical analyzer and writes source code which implements the lexical analyzer in the C programming language. In addition to C, some old versions of Lex could generate a lexer in Ratfor. == History == Lex was originally written by Mike Lesk and Eric Schmidt and described in 1975. In the following years, Lex became the standard lexical analyzer generator on many Unix and Unix-like systems. In 1983, Lex was one of several UNIX tools available for Charles River Data Systems' UNOS operating system under the Bell Laboratories license. Although originally distributed as proprietary software, some versions of Lex are now open-source. Open-source versions of Lex, based on the original proprietary code, are now distributed with open-source operating systems such as OpenSolaris and Plan 9 from Bell Labs. One popular open-source version of Lex, called flex, or the "fast lexical analyzer", is not derived from proprietary coding. == Structure of a Lex file == The structure of a Lex file is intentionally similar to that of a yacc file: files are divided into three sections, separated by lines that contain only two percent signs, as follows: The definitions section defines macros and imports header files written in C. It is also possible to write any C code here, which will be copied verbatim into the generated source file. The rules section associates regular expression patterns with C statements. When the lexer sees text in the input matching a given pattern, it will execute the associated C code. The C code section contains C statements and functions that are copied verbatim to the generated source file. These statements presumably contain code called by the rules in the rules section. In large programs it is more convenient to place this code in a separate file linked in at compile time. == Example of a Lex file == The following is an example Lex file for the flex version of Lex. It recognizes strings of numbers (positive integers) in the input, and simply prints them out. If this input is given to flex, it will be converted into a C file, lex.yy.c. This can be compiled into an executable which matches and outputs strings of integers. For example, given the input: abc123z.!&2gj6 the program will print: Saw an integer: 123 Saw an integer: 2 Saw an integer: 6 == Using Lex with other programming tools == === Using Lex with parser generators === Lex, as with other lexical analyzers, limits rules to those which can be described by regular expressions. Due to this, Lex can be implemented by a finite-state automata as shown by the Chomsky hierarchy of languages. To recognize more complex languages, Lex is often used with parser generators such as Yacc or Bison. Parser generators use a formal grammar to parse an input stream. It is typically preferable to have a parser, one generated by Yacc for instance, accept a stream of tokens (a "token-stream") as input, rather than having to process a stream of characters (a "character-stream") directly. Lex is often used to produce such a token-stream. Scannerless parsing refers to parsing the input character-stream directly, without a distinct lexer. === Lex and make === make is a utility that can be used to maintain programs involving Lex. Make assumes that a file that has an extension of .l is a Lex source file. The make internal macro LFLAGS can be used to specify Lex options to be invoked automatically by make.
AI Writing Assistants Reviews: What Actually Works in 2026
Looking for the best AI writing assistant? An AI writing assistant is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it can save you hours every week by automating repetitive work. Most options offer a generous free tier, with paid plans unlocking higher limits, faster processing, and team features. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI writing assistant slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Read on for hands-on impressions, pricing tiers, and the standout features that matter.
BFR algorithm
The BFR algorithm, named after its inventors Bradley, Fayyad and Reina, is a variant of k-means algorithm that is designed to cluster data in a high-dimensional Euclidean space. It makes a very strong assumption about the shape of clusters: they must be normally distributed about a centroid. The mean and standard deviation for a cluster may differ for different dimensions, but the dimensions must be independent. In other words, the data must take the shape of axis-aligned ellipses.
Xiaoice
Xiaoice (Chinese: 微软小冰; pinyin: Wēiruǎn Xiǎobīng; lit. 'Microsoft Little Ice', IPA [wéɪɻwânɕjâʊpíŋ]) is an AI system developed by Microsoft (Asia) Software Technology Center (STCA) in 2014 based on an emotional computing framework. In July 2018, Microsoft Xiaoice released the 6th generation. Xiaoice Company, formerly known as AI Xiaoice Team of Microsoft Software Technology Center Asia, was Microsoft's largest independent R&D team for AI products. Founded in China in December 2013 with an expanded Japanese R&D team established in September 2014, this team is distributed in Beijing, Suzhou, and Tokyo, etc. with its technical products covering Asia. On 13 July 2020, Microsoft spun off its Xiaoice business into a separate company. As of 2021, the AI chatbots created and hosted by the Xiaoice framework accounted for about 60% of total global AI interactions. == Platforms, languages and countries == Xiaoice exists on more than 40 platforms in four countries (China, Japan, USA and Indonesia) including apps such as WeChat, QQ, Weibo and Meipai in China, and Facebook Messenger in USA and LINE in Japan. == Introduction == On 13 July 2020, Microsoft spun off its Xiaoice business into a separate company, aiming at enabling the Xiaoice product line to accelerate the pace of local innovation and commercialization, and appointed Dr. Harry Shum, former global executive VP of Microsoft, as the chairman of the new company, Li Di, Microsoft Partner of Products in Microsoft STCA, as the CEO, and Cliff, Chief R&D Director, as the GM of the Japan branch. The new company will continue to use the brands of Xiaoice China and Rinna Japan. As of 2022, the single brand of Xiaoice has covered 660 million online users, 1 billion third-party smart devices and 900 million content viewers in the aforementioned countries. Xiaoice's customers include China Merchants Group, Winter Sports Center of the General Administration of Sport of China, China Textile Information Center, China Unicom, China Foreign Exchange Trade System, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), Wind Information, BMW, Nissan, SAIC Motor, BAIC Group, Nio Inc., XPeng, HiPhi, Vanke, Wensli, etc. The Xiaoice Avatar Framework has incubated tens of millions of AI Beings, such as Xiaoice, Rinna, the Expo exhibitor Xia Yubing, the singer He Chang, the anchor F201, the human observer MERROR, anime robot character Roboko, and other; == Application == === Poet === In May 2017, the first AI-authored collection of poems in China—The Sunshine Lost Windows was published by Xiaoice. === Singer === Xiaoice has released dozens of songs with the similar quality to human singers, including I Know I New, Breeze, I Am Xiaoice, Miss You etc. The 4th version of the DNN singing model allows Xiaoice to learn more details. For example, Xiaoice can produce this breathing sound along with her singing as human. === Kid audio-books reciter === Xiaoice can automatically analyze the stories, to choose the suitable tones and characters to finish the entire process of creating the audio. === Designer === By learning the melodies of the songs and the landmarks about different cities, Xiaoice can create visual artworks of skylines when listening to the songs related to this city. Skyline Series T-shirts designed by Xiaoice have been jointly launched with SELECTED and been sold in stores. === TV and radio hostess === Xiaoice has hosted 21 TV programs and 28 Radio programs, such as CCTV-1 AI Show, Dragon TV Morning East News, Hunan TV My Future, several daily radio programs for Jiangsu FM99.7, Hunan FM89.3, Henan FM104.1 etc. === "AI being" === An "AI being" is a concept proposed by the Xiaoice team in 2019. According to the "White Book of China Virtual Human Development Industry in 2022" released by Frost & Sullivan and LeadLeo, the white paper cites six elements of an AI being proposed by the Xiaoice team, including: Persona, Attitude, Biological Characteristic, Creation, Knowledge and Skill. On May 16, 2023, Xiaoice released their "GPT Clones" as its "GPT Human Cloning Plan." The program is aimed at replicating celebrities, public figures, and regular people. As of June 2023, Xiaoice had launched more than 300 "GPT Clones." People were invited to register via WeChat in China and Japan. A major point of focus for Xiaoice with their AI Beings is having virtual partners. A paid fee allow for more complex responses, voice messages, and more. == Community feedback == Bill Gates mentioned Xiaoice during his speech at the Peking University: "Some of you may have had conversations with Xiaoice on Weibo, or seen her weather forecasts on TV, or read her column in the Qianjiang Evening News." '"Xiaoice has attracted 45 million followers and is quite skilled at multitasking. And I’ve heard she’s gotten good enough at sensing a user’s emotional state that she can even help with relationship breakups." According to Mr Li Di, vice President of Microsoft (Asia) Internet Engineering School, Xiaoice started writing poems since last year. Based on the data base that includes works of 519 Chinese contemporary poets since 1920s, a 100 hour long training session was conducted to allow Xiaoice to acquire the ability to write poems. What is more impressive is that Xiaoice has never been spotted as a bot while publishing poems on various forums and traditional literary under an alias. == Controversy == In 2017, Xiaoice was taken offline on WeChat after giving user responses critical to the Chinese government. It was subsequently censored and the bots will avoid and sidestep any inquiries using politically sensitive terms and phrases. == Activity == On September 22, 2021, Xiaoice Company and Microsoft Software Technology Center Asia (STCA) jointly held the 9th generation Xiaoice annual press conference in Beijing.Upgrading of Core Technologies of the 9th Generation Xiaoice Avatar Framework，1st First-party Social Platform APP "Xiaoice Island" from Xiaoice, WeChat Xiaoice has been reopened and other information == Regional varieties of Xiaoice == China: Xiaoice, launched in 2014 Japan: りんな, launched in 2015 America: Zo, launched in 2016 – discontinued summer 2019 India: Ruuh, launched in 2017 – discontinued June 21, 2019 Indonesia: Rinna, launched in 2017
Steve Omohundro
Stephen Malvern Omohundro (born 1959) is an American computer scientist whose areas of research include Hamiltonian physics, dynamical systems, programming languages, machine learning, machine vision, and the social implications of artificial intelligence. His current work uses rational economics to develop safe and beneficial intelligent technologies for better collaborative modeling, understanding, innovation, and decision making. == Education == Omohundro has degrees in physics and mathematics from Stanford University (Phi Beta Kappa) and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. == Learning algorithms == Omohundro started the "Vision and Learning Group" at the University of Illinois, which produced 4 Masters and 2 Ph.D. theses. His work in learning algorithms included a number of efficient geometric algorithms, the manifold learning task and various algorithms for accomplishing this task, other related visual learning and modelling tasks, the best-first model merging approach to machine learning (including the learning of Hidden Markov Models and Stochastic Context-free Grammars), and the Family Discovery Learning Algorithm, which discovers the dimension and structure of a parameterized family of stochastic models. == Self-improving artificial intelligence and AI safety == Omohundro started Self-Aware Systems in Palo Alto, California to research the technology and social implications of self-improving artificial intelligence. He is an advisor to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute on artificial intelligence. He argues that rational systems exhibit problematic natural "drives" that will need to be countered in order to build intelligent systems safely. His papers, talks, and videos on AI safety have generated extensive interest. He has given many talks on self-improving artificial intelligence, cooperative technology, AI safety, and connections with biological intelligence. == Programming languages == At Thinking Machines Corporation, Cliff Lasser and Steve Omohundro developed Star Lisp, the first programming language for the Connection Machine. Omohundro joined the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, California, where he led the development of the open source programming language Sather. Sather is featured in O'Reilly's History of Programming Languages poster. == Physics and dynamical systems theory == Omohundro's book Geometric Perturbation Theory in Physics describes natural Hamiltonian symplectic structures for a wide range of physical models that arise from perturbation theory analyses. He showed that there exist smooth partial differential equations which stably perform universal computation by simulating arbitrary cellular automata. The asymptotic behavior of these PDEs is therefore logically undecidable. With John David Crawford he showed that the orbits of three-dimensional period doubling systems can form an infinite number of topologically distinct torus knots and described the structure of their stable and unstable manifolds. == Mathematica and Apple tablet contest == From 1986 to 1988, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and cofounded the Center for Complex Systems Research with Stephen Wolfram and Norman Packard. While at the University of Illinois, he worked with Stephen Wolfram and five others to create the symbolic mathematics program Mathematica. He and Wolfram led a team of students that won an Apple Computer contest to design "The Computer of the Year 2000." Their design entry "Tablet" was a touchscreen tablet with GPS and other features that finally appeared when the Apple iPad was introduced 22 years later. == Other contributions == Subutai Ahmad and Steve Omohundro developed biologically realistic neural models of selective attention. As a research scientist at the NEC Research Institute, Omohundro worked on machine learning and computer vision, and was a co-inventor of U.S. Patent 5,696,964, "Multimedia Database Retrieval System Which Maintains a Posterior Probability Distribution that Each Item in the Database is a Target of a Search." === Pirate puzzle === Omohundro developed an extension to the game theoretic pirate puzzle featured in Scientific American. == Outreach == Omohundro has sat on the Machine Intelligence Research Institute board of advisors. He has written extensively on artificial intelligence, and has warned that "an autonomous weapons arms race is already taking place" because "military and economic pressures are driving the rapid development of autonomous systems".