kdb+ is a column-based relational time series database (TSDB) with in-memory (IMDB) abilities, developed and marketed by KX Systems. The database is commonly used in high-frequency trading (HFT) to store, analyze, process, and retrieve large data sets at high speed. kdb+ has the ability to handle billions of records and analyzes data within a database. The database is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions for several operating systems. Financial institutions use kdb+ to analyze time series data such as stock or commodity exchange data. The database has also been used for other time-sensitive data applications including commodity markets such as energy trading, telecommunications, sensor data, log data, machine and computer network usage monitoring along with real time analytics in Formula One racing. == Overview == kdb+ is a high-performance column-store database that was designed to process and store large amounts of data. Commonly accessed data is pushed into random-access memory (RAM), which is faster to access than data in disk storage. Created with financial institutions in mind, the database was developed as a central repository to store time series data that supports real-time analysis of billions of records. kdb+ has the ability to analyze data over time and responds to queries similar to Structured Query Language (SQL). Columnar databases return answers to some queries in a more efficient way than row-based database management systems. kdb+ dictionaries, tables and nanosecond time stamps are native data types and are used to store time series data. At the core of kdb+ is the built-in programming language, q, a concise, expressive query array language, and dialect of the language APL. Q can manipulate streaming, real-time, and historical data. kdb+ uses q to aggregate and analyze data, perform statistical functions, and join data sets and supports SQL queries The vector language q was built for speed and expressiveness and eliminates most need for looping structures. kdb+ includes interfaces in C, C++, Java, C#, and Python. == History == In 1998, KX released kdb, a database built on the language K written by Arthur Whitney. In 2003, kdb+ was released as a 64-bit version of kdb. In 2004, the kdb+ tick market database framework was released along with kdb+ taq, a loader for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) taq data. kdb+ was created by Arthur Whitney, building on his prior work with array languages. In April 2007, KX announced that it was releasing a version of kdb+ for Mac OS X. Then, kdb+ was also available on the operating systems Linux, Windows, and Solaris. In September 2012, version 3.0 was released. It was optimized for Intel's upgraded processors with support for WebSockets, and universally unique identifiers (UUIDs, termed globally unique identifiers (GUID)s in Microsoft software). Intel's Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) and Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (SSE4) 4.2 on the Sandy Bridge processors of the time allowed for enhanced support of the kdb+ system. In June 2013, version 3.1 was released, with benchmarks up to 8 times faster than older versions. In March 2020, version 4.0 was released. New features included Multithreaded primitives, Intel Optane DC persistent memory support and Data at Rest Encryption.
NHS COVID-19
NHS COVID-19 was a voluntary contact tracing app for monitoring the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales, in use from 24 September 2020 until 27 April 2023. It was available for Android and iOS smartphones, and could be used by anyone aged 16 or over. Two versions of the app were created. The first was commissioned by NHSX and developed by the Pivotal division of American software company VMware. A pilot deployment began in May 2020, but on 18 June development of the app was abandoned in favour of a second design using the Apple/Google Exposure Notification system. Scotland and Northern Ireland had separate contact tracing apps. A 2023 study estimated that in its first year of use, the app's contact tracing function prevented an estimated 1 million cases, and 9,600 deaths. == Description == The app allowed users to: See the alert level of their local authority area (in Wales) or information about restrictions (in England); to enable this, the user must enter the first half of their postcode "Check in" at places displaying an NHS QR code poster (no longer required by legislation after 26 January 2022, removed from the app the next month) Be notified when they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus Be notified when local health protection teams determine that people with the virus had attended a business or other venue around the same time as the user Check their symptoms, and book a coronavirus test if necessary If asked to self-isolate, receive information and a daily "countdown". At first, "close contact" was defined as being within 2 metres for 15 minutes, or within 4 metres for a longer time. These time durations were reduced from 29 October 2020, to as little as three minutes when the other person is at their most infectious, i.e. soon after they begin showing symptoms. === Implementation === The Android app was coded in Kotlin, and the iOS app in Swift. The backend used Java and is deployed to Amazon Web Services using Terraform. The code of the app and back-end is open-source and available on GitHub. == Context == The app was part of the UK's test and trace programme which was chaired by Dido Harding; from 12 May 2020 Tom Riordan, chief executive of Leeds City Council, led the tracing effort. == First phase and cancellation == === Description === In March 2020, NHSX commissioned a contact tracing app to monitor the spread in the United Kingdom of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the 2020 pandemic, developed by the Pivotal division of American software company VMware. The app used a centralised approach, in contrast to the Google / Apple contact tracing project. NHSX consulted ethicists and GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) about the privacy aspects. The app recorded the make and model of the phone and asked the user for their postcode area. It generated a unique installation identification number and also a daily identification number. It then used Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to record the daily identification number of other users nearby. If a user was unwell, they could tell the app about symptoms which are characteristic of COVID-19, such as a fever and cough. These details were then passed to a central NHS server. This would assess the information and notify other users that have been in contact, giving them appropriate advice such as physical distancing. The NHS would also arrange for a swab test of the unwell user and the outcome would determine further notifications to contacts: if the test confirmed infection with COVID-19, the contacts would be asked to isolate. By June 2020, £11.8 million had been spent on the app; in 2020–21, £35 million was spent on the app. === Deployment === The first public trial of the app began on the Isle of Wight on 5 May 2020 and by 11 May it had been downloaded 55,000 times. When the first national contact tracing schemes were launched – Test, Trace, Protect in Wales on 13 May, then on 28 May NHS Test and Trace in England, and Test and Protect in Scotland – the app was not ready to be included. Replying to a question at the government's daily briefing on 8 June, Hancock was unable to give a date for rollout of the app in England, saying it would be brought in "when it's right to do so". On 17 June, Lord Bethell, junior minister for Innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care, said "we're seeking to get something going before the winter ... it isn't a priority for us at the moment". On 18 June, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced development would switch to the Apple/Google system after admitting that Apple's restrictions on usage of Bluetooth prevented the app from working effectively. At the same press briefing Dido Harding, leader of the UK's test and trace programme, said "What we've done in really rigorously testing both our own Covid-19 app and the Google-Apple version is demonstrate that none of them are working sufficiently well enough to be actually reliable to determine whether any of us should self-isolate for two weeks [and] that's true across the world". === Concerns === The first, ultimately rejected, version of the app was subject to privacy concerns, the government backtracking on initial statements that the data collected from the app would not be shared outside the NHS. Matthew Gould, CEO of NHSX, the government department responsible for the app, said the data would be accessible to other organisations, but did not disclose which. Data collected would not necessarily be anonymised and would be held in a centralised repository. Over 150 of the UK's security and privacy experts warned the app's data could be used by 'a bad actor (state, private sector, or hacker)' to spy on citizens. Fears were discussed by the House of Commons' Human Rights Select Committee about plans for the app to record user location data. Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights said this version of the app should not be released without proper privacy protections. The second version of the app, released nationwide, addressed these concerns by employing a decentralised framework, the Apple/Google Exposure Notification system. Under this system, users remain pseudonymous: a person diagnosed with COVID-19 does not know which people are informed about an encounter, and contacted persons do not receive any information about the person diagnosed with COVID-19. The functionality of the app was also questioned in late April and early May 2020, as the software's use of Bluetooth required the app to be constantly running, meaning users could not use other apps or lock their device if the app was to function properly. The developers of the app were said to have found a way of working around this restriction. === Related contracts === Faculty – a company linked to Cambridge Analytica – provided research and modelling to NHSX in support of the response to the pandemic. Palantir, also linked to Cambridge Analytica, provided their data management platform. These contracts began in February and March respectively. == Second phase == As outlined on cancellation of the first app on 18 June 2020, the Department of Health and Social Care published on 30 July a brief description of the "next phase" app. Users would be able to scan a QR code at venues they visit, and later be notified if they had visited a place which was the source of a number of infections; the app would also assist with identifying symptoms and ordering a test. By using the Exposure Notification system from Apple and Google, personal data would be decentralised. Zuhlke Engineering Ltd, the UK branch of Swiss-based Zühlke Group, used 70 staff to complete the development of the app in 12 weeks. Zuhlke Engineering was awarded "Development Team of the Year" title at UK IT Industry awards in November 2021 for development of NHS COVID-19 application. === Timeline === Testing of the app by NHS volunteer responders, and selected residents of the Isle of Wight and the London Borough of Newham, began around 13 August. The app was made available to the public (aged 16 or over) in England and Wales on 24 September. An updated app released on 29 October, in part from collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute, improved the accuracy of measurements of the distance between the user's phone and other phones. At the same time, the duration threshold for determining exposure was reduced; this was expected to lead to an increase in the number of users told to self-isolate. An update to the app in April 2021, timed to coincide with easing of restrictions on hospitality businesses, was blocked by Apple and Google. It was intended that users who tested positive would be asked to share their history of visited venues, to assist in warning others, but this would have contravened assurances by Apple and Google that location data from devices would not be shared. === Statistics and effectiveness === The app was downloaded six million times on the first day it was generally availa
Species distribution modelling
Species distribution modelling (SDM), also known as environmental (or ecological) niche modelling (ENM), habitat suitability modelling, predictive habitat distribution modelling, and range mapping uses ecological models to predict the distribution of a species across geographic space and time using environmental data. The environmental data are most often climate data (e.g. temperature, precipitation), but can include other variables such as soil type, water depth, and land cover. SDMs are used in several research areas in conservation biology, ecology and evolution. These models can be used to understand how environmental conditions influence the occurrence or abundance of a species, and for predictive purposes (ecological forecasting). Predictions from an SDM may be of a species' future distribution under climate change, a species' past distribution in order to assess evolutionary relationships, or the potential future distribution of an invasive species. Predictions of current and/or future habitat suitability can be useful for management applications (e.g. reintroduction or translocation of vulnerable species, reserve placement in anticipation of climate change). There are two main types of SDMs. Correlative SDMs, also known as climate envelope models, bioclimatic models, or resource selection function models, model the observed distribution of a species as a function of environmental conditions. Mechanistic SDMs, also known as process-based models or biophysical models, use independently derived information about a species' physiology to develop a model of the environmental conditions under which the species can exist. The extent to which such modelled data reflect real-world species distributions will depend on a number of factors, including the nature, complexity, and accuracy of the models used and the quality of the available environmental data layers; the availability of sufficient and reliable species distribution data as model input; and the influence of various factors such as barriers to dispersal, geologic history, or biotic interactions, that increase the difference between the realized niche and the fundamental niche. Environmental niche modelling may be considered a part of the discipline of biodiversity informatics. == History == A. F. W. Schimper used geographical and environmental factors to explain plant distributions in his 1898 Pflanzengeographie auf physiologischer Grundlage (Plant Geography Upon a Physiological Basis) and his 1908 work of the same name. Andrew Murray used the environment to explain the distribution of mammals in his 1866 The Geographical Distribution of Mammals. Robert Whittaker's work with plants and Robert MacArthur's work with birds strongly established the role the environment plays in species distributions. Elgene O. Box constructed environmental envelope models to predict the range of tree species. His computer simulations were among the earliest uses of species distribution modelling. The adoption of more sophisticated generalised linear models (GLMs) made it possible to create more sophisticated and realistic species distribution models. The expansion of remote sensing and the development of GIS-based environmental modelling increase the amount of environmental information available for model-building and made it easier to use. == Correlative vs mechanistic models == === Correlative SDMs === SDMs originated as correlative models. Correlative SDMs model the observed distribution of a species as a function of geographically referenced climatic predictor variables using multiple regression approaches. Given a set of geographically referred observed presences of a species and a set of climate maps, a model defines the most likely environmental ranges within which a species lives. Correlative SDMs assume that species are at equilibrium with their environment and that the relevant environmental variables have been adequately sampled. The models allow for interpolation between a limited number of species occurrences. For these models to be effective, it is required to gather observations not only of species presences, but also of absences, that is, where the species does not live. Records of species absences are typically not as common as records of presences, thus often "random background" or "pseudo-absence" data are used to fit these models. If there are incomplete records of species occurrences, pseudo-absences can introduce bias. Since correlative SDMs are models of a species' observed distribution, they are models of the realized niche (the environments where a species is found), as opposed to the fundamental niche (the environments where a species can be found, or where the abiotic environment is appropriate for the survival). For a given species, the realized and fundamental niches might be the same, but if a species is geographically confined due to dispersal limitation or species interactions, the realized niche will be smaller than the fundamental niche. Correlative SDMs are easier and faster to implement than mechanistic SDMs, and can make ready use of available data. Since they are correlative however, they do not provide much information about causal mechanisms and are not good for extrapolation. They will also be inaccurate if the observed species range is not at equilibrium (e.g. if a species has been recently introduced and is actively expanding its range). In standard SDMs, the distribution of a single species is often modeled, with unique parameters describing how environmental (abiotic) factors influence its occurrence probability. This allows for differentiated responses to environmental drivers among species, but can be problematic for data-deficient species. In contrast, similarities in environmental responses can be accounted for in multi-species SDMs, which model several species jointly using shared or hierarchically related parameters. However, neither approach explicitly accounts for community-level biotic interactions, which can be important in explaining species diversity patterns. Joint species distribution models (joint SDMs or J-SDMs) address this by modeling species co-occurrence patterns directly. The occurrence probability of a given species is thus influenced not only by abiotic drivers but also by inferred biotic associations with other species. This can improve accuracy for rarer taxa and provide insights into community ecology. Both standard SDMs and J-SDMs can be used to generate community-level metrics, such as species richness, by aggregating outputs across multiple species. These can be important for decision-making such as conservation planning. === Mechanistic SDMs === Mechanistic SDMs are more recently developed. In contrast to correlative models, mechanistic SDMs use physiological information about a species (taken from controlled field or laboratory studies) to determine the range of environmental conditions within which the species can persist. These models aim to directly characterize the fundamental niche, and to project it onto the landscape. A simple model may simply identify threshold values outside of which a species can't survive. A more complex model may consist of several sub-models, e.g. micro-climate conditions given macro-climate conditions, body temperature given micro-climate conditions, fitness or other biological rates (e.g. survival, fecundity) given body temperature (thermal performance curves), resource or energy requirements, and population dynamics. Geographically referenced environmental data are used as model inputs. Because the species distribution predictions are independent of the species' known range, these models are especially useful for species whose range is actively shifting and not at equilibrium, such as invasive species. Mechanistic SDMs incorporate causal mechanisms and are better for extrapolation and non-equilibrium situations. However, they are more labor-intensive to create than correlational models and require the collection and validation of a lot of physiological data, which may not be readily available. The models require many assumptions and parameter estimates, and they can become very complicated. Dispersal, biotic interactions, and evolutionary processes present challenges, as they aren't usually incorporated into either correlative or mechanistic models. Correlational and mechanistic models can be used in combination to gain additional insights. For example, a mechanistic model could be used to identify areas that are clearly outside the species' fundamental niche, and these areas can be marked as absences or excluded from analysis. See for a comparison between mechanistic and correlative models. == Niche models (correlative) == There are a variety of mathematical methods that can be used for fitting, selecting, and evaluating correlative SDMs. Models include "profile" methods, which are simple statistical techniques that use e.g. environmental distance to known sites of occurrence such as
Artificial imagination
Artificial imagination is a narrow subcomponent of artificial general intelligence which generates, simulates, and facilitates real or possible fiction models to create predictions, inventions, or conscious experiences. The term artificial imagination is also used to describe a property of machines or programs. Some of the traits that researchers hope to simulate include creativity, vision, digital art, humor, and satire. Practitioners in the field are researching various aspects of Artificial imagination, such as Artificial (visual) imagination, Artificial (aural) Imagination, modeling/filtering content based on human emotions and Interactive Search. Some articles on the topic speculate on how artificial imagination may evolve to create an artificial world "people may be comfortable enough to escape from the real world". Some researchers such as G. Schleis and M. Rizki have focused on using artificial neural networks to simulate artificial imagination. Another important project is being led by Hiroharu Kato and Tatsuya Harada at the University of Tokyo in Japan. They have developed a computer capable of translating a description of an object into an image, which could be the easiest way to define what imagination is. Their idea is based on the concept of an image as a series of pixels divided into short sequences that correspond to a specific part of an image. The scientists call this sequences "visual words" and those can be interpreted by the machine using statistical distribution to read an create an image of an object the machine has not encountered. The topic of artificial imagination has garnered interest from scholars outside the computer science domain, such as noted communications scholar Ernest Bormann, who came up with the Symbolic Convergence Theory and worked on a project to develop artificial imagination in computer systems. An interdisciplinary research seminar organized by the artist Grégory Chatonsky on artificial imagination and postdigital art has taken place since 2017 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. == Use in interactive search == The typical application of artificial imagination is for an interactive search. Interactive searching has been developed since the mid-1990s, accompanied by the World Wide Web's development and the optimization of search engines. Based on the first query and feedback from a user, the databases to be searched are reorganized to improve the searching results. Artificial imagination allows us to synthesize images and to develop a new image, whether it is in the database, regardless its existence in the real world. For example, the computer shows results that are based on the answer from the initial query. The user selects several relevant images, and then the technology analyzes these selections and reorganizes the images' ranks to fit the query. In this process, artificial imagination is used to synthesize the selected images and to improve the searching result with additional relevant synthesized images. This technique is based on several algorithms, including the Rocchio algorithm and the evolutionary algorithm. The Rocchio algorithm, locating a query point near relevant examples and far away from irrelevant examples, is simple and works well in a small system where the databases are arranged in certain ranks. The evolutionary synthesis is composed of two steps: a standard algorithm and an enhancement of the standard algorithm. Through feedback from the user, there would be additional images synthesized so as to be suited to what the user is looking for. == General artificial imagination == Artificial imagination has a more general definition and wide applications. The traditional fields of artificial imagination include visual imagination and aural imagination. More generally, all the actions to form ideas, images and concepts can be linked to imagination. Thus, artificial imagination means more than only generating graphs. For example, moral imagination is an important research subfield of artificial imagination, although classification of artificial imagination is difficult. Morals are an important part to human beings' logic, while artificial morals are important in artificial imagination and artificial intelligence. A common criticism of artificial intelligence is whether human beings should take responsibility for machines' mistakes or decisions and how to develop well-behaved machines. As nobody can give a clear description of the best moral rules, it is impossible to create machines with commonly accepted moral rules. However, recent research about artificial morals circumvent the definition of moral. Instead, machine learning methods are applied to train machines to imitate human morals. As the data about moral decisions from thousands of different people are considered, the trained moral model can reflect widely accepted rules. Memory is another major field of artificial imagination. Researchers such as Aude Oliva have performed extensive work on artificial memory, especially visual memory. Compared to visual imagination, the visual memory focuses more on how machine understand, analyse and store pictures in a human way. In addition, characters like spatial features are also considered. As this field is based on the brains' biological structures, extensive research on neuroscience has also been performed, which makes it a large intersection between biology and computer science.
Reservoir sampling
Reservoir sampling is a family of randomized algorithms for choosing a simple random sample, without replacement, of k items from a population of unknown size n in a single pass over the items. The size of the population n is not known to the algorithm and is typically too large for all n items to fit into main memory. The population is revealed to the algorithm over time, and the algorithm cannot look back at previous items. At any point, the current state of the algorithm must permit extraction of a simple random sample without replacement of size k over the part of the population seen so far. == Motivation == Suppose we see a sequence of items, one at a time. We want to keep 10 items in memory, and we want them to be selected at random from the sequence. If we know the total number of items n and can access the items arbitrarily, then the solution is easy: select 10 distinct indices i between 1 and n with equal probability, and keep the i-th elements. The problem is that we do not always know the exact n in advance. == Simple: Algorithm R == A simple and popular but slow algorithm, Algorithm R, was created by Jeffrey Vitter. Initialize an array R {\displaystyle R} indexed from 1 {\displaystyle 1} to k {\displaystyle k} , containing the first k items of the input x 1 , . . . , x k {\displaystyle x_{1},...,x_{k}} . This is the reservoir. For each new input x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} , generate a random number j uniformly in { 1 , . . . , i } {\displaystyle \{1,...,i\}} . If j ∈ { 1 , . . . , k } {\displaystyle j\in \{1,...,k\}} , then set R [ j ] := x i . {\displaystyle R[j]:=x_{i}.} Otherwise, discard x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} . Return R {\displaystyle R} after all inputs are processed. This algorithm works by induction on i ≥ k {\displaystyle i\geq k} . While conceptually simple and easy to understand, this algorithm needs to generate a random number for each item of the input, including the items that are discarded. The algorithm's asymptotic running time is thus O ( n ) {\displaystyle O(n)} . Generating this amount of randomness and the linear run time causes the algorithm to be unnecessarily slow if the input population is large. This is Algorithm R, implemented as follows: == Optimal: Algorithm L == If we generate n {\displaystyle n} random numbers u 1 , . . . , u n ∼ U [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle u_{1},...,u_{n}\sim U[0,1]} independently, then the indices of the smallest k {\displaystyle k} of them is a uniform sample of the k {\displaystyle k} -subsets of { 1 , . . . , n } {\displaystyle \{1,...,n\}} . The process can be done without knowing n {\displaystyle n} : Keep the smallest k {\displaystyle k} of u 1 , . . . , u i {\displaystyle u_{1},...,u_{i}} that has been seen so far, as well as w i {\displaystyle w_{i}} , the index of the largest among them. For each new u i + 1 {\displaystyle u_{i+1}} , compare it with u w i {\displaystyle u_{w_{i}}} . If u i + 1 < u w i {\displaystyle u_{i+1} Abiquo Hybrid Cloud Management Platform is a web-based cloud computing software platform developed by Abiquo. Written entirely in Java, it is used to build, integrate and manage public and private clouds in homogeneous environments. Users can deploy and manage servers, storage system and network and virtual devices. It also supports LDAP integration. == Hypervisors == Abiquo supports five hypervisor systems. VMware ESXi Microsoft Hyper-V Citrix XenServer Oracle VM Server for x86 KVM From version 3.1, it also supports multiple public cloud providers: Amazon AWS Rackspace Google Compute Engine HP Cloud ElasticHosts DigitalOcean Abiquo version 3.2 added: Microsoft Azure Abiquo version 3.4 added: Support for Docker hosts, adding multi-tenant networking, storage management and private registry management for Docker SoftLayer CloudSigma Later versions continued to add features including autoscaling on any cloud, integration to VMware NSX and OpenStack Neutron for software defined networking, guest config with cloud-init and integrated monitoring driving guest automation. == Storage services == Abiquo supports any vendor for hypervisor storage, and also supports tiered storage pools, enabling storage-as-a-service from specific vendors and technologies including: NFS Generic iSCSI NetApp Nexenta == SAAS version == In April 2014 Abiquo launched Abiquo anyCloud, a SAAS version of the Abiquo Hybrid Cloud Platform software. This version lets users manage public cloud resources from: Amazon AWS Microsoft Azure IBM SoftLayer DigitalOcean Rackspace Open Cloud (an OpenStack cloud) HP Public Cloud (an OpenStack cloud) Google Compute Engine ElasticHosts Additional security and process features include workflow, to have an enterprise administrator electronically sign off on changes, an audit trail of activity and the ability to share cloud accounts among and enterprise team in a secure way. == Reviews and awards == Finalist for the 2015 Cloud Awards Finalist for the 2015 UK Cloud Awards in the category Cloud Management Product of the Year EMA Radar for Private Cloud platforms 2013 Global Telecoms Business Innovation Summit and Awards 2013 (with Interoute) EuroCloud UK Awards Friendly artificial intelligence (friendly AI or FAI) is hypothetical artificial general intelligence (AGI) that would have a positive (benign) effect on humanity or at least align with human interests such as fostering the improvement of the human species. It is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence and is closely related to machine ethics. While machine ethics is concerned with how an artificially intelligent agent should behave, friendly artificial intelligence research is focused on how to practically bring about this behavior and ensuring it is adequately constrained. == Etymology and usage == The term was coined by Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is best known for popularizing the idea, to discuss superintelligent artificial agents that reliably implement human values. Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig's leading artificial intelligence textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, describes the idea: Yudkowsky (2008) goes into more detail about how to design a Friendly AI. He asserts that friendliness (a desire not to harm humans) should be designed in from the start, but that the designers should recognize both that their own designs may be flawed, and that the robot will learn and evolve over time. Thus the challenge is one of mechanism design—to define a mechanism for evolving AI systems under a system of checks and balances, and to give the systems utility functions that will remain friendly in the face of such changes. "Friendly" is used in this context as technical terminology, and picks out agents that are safe and useful, not necessarily ones that are "friendly" in the colloquial sense. The concept is primarily invoked in the context of discussions of recursively self-improving artificial agents that rapidly explode in intelligence, on the grounds that this hypothetical technology would have a large, rapid, and difficult-to-control impact on human society. == Risks of unfriendly AI == The roots of concern about artificial intelligence are very old. Kevin LaGrandeur showed that the dangers specific to AI can be seen in ancient literature concerning artificial humanoid servants such as the golem, or the proto-robots of Gerbert of Aurillac and Roger Bacon. In those stories, the extreme intelligence and power of these humanoid creations clash with their status as slaves (which by nature are seen as sub-human), and cause disastrous conflict. By 1942 these themes prompted Isaac Asimov to create the "Three Laws of Robotics"—principles hard-wired into all the robots in his fiction, intended to prevent them from turning on their creators, or allowing them to come to harm. In modern times as the prospect of superintelligent AI looms nearer, philosopher Nick Bostrom has said that superintelligent AI systems with goals that are not aligned with human ethics are intrinsically dangerous unless extreme measures are taken to ensure the safety of humanity. He put it this way: Basically we should assume that a 'superintelligence' would be able to achieve whatever goals it has. Therefore, it is extremely important that the goals we endow it with, and its entire motivation system, is 'human friendly.' In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky called for the creation of "friendly AI" to mitigate existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. He explains: "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." Steve Omohundro says that a sufficiently advanced AI system will, unless explicitly counteracted, exhibit a number of basic "drives", such as resource acquisition, self-preservation, and continuous self-improvement, because of the intrinsic nature of any goal-driven systems and that these drives will, "without special precautions", cause the AI to exhibit undesired behavior. Alexander Wissner-Gross says that AIs driven to maximize their future freedom of action (or causal path entropy) might be considered friendly if their planning horizon is longer than a certain threshold, and unfriendly if their planning horizon is shorter than that threshold. Luke Muehlhauser, writing for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, recommends that machine ethics researchers adopt what Bruce Schneier has called the "security mindset": Rather than thinking about how a system will work, imagine how it could fail. For instance, he suggests even an AI that only makes accurate predictions and communicates via a text interface might cause unintended harm. In 2014, Luke Muehlhauser and Nick Bostrom underlined the need for 'friendly AI'; nonetheless, the difficulties in designing a 'friendly' superintelligence, for instance via programming counterfactual moral thinking, are considerable. == Coherent extrapolated volition == Yudkowsky advances the Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) model. According to him, our coherent extrapolated volition is "our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted". Rather than a Friendly AI being designed directly by human programmers, it is to be designed by a "seed AI" programmed to first study human nature and then produce the AI that humanity would want, given sufficient time and insight, to arrive at a satisfactory answer. The appeal to an objective through contingent human nature (perhaps expressed, for mathematical purposes, in the form of a utility function or other decision-theoretic formalism), as providing the ultimate criterion of "Friendliness", is an answer to the meta-ethical problem of defining an objective morality; extrapolated volition is intended to be what humanity objectively would want, all things considered, but it can only be defined relative to the psychological and cognitive qualities of present-day, unextrapolated humanity. == Other approaches == Steve Omohundro has proposed a "scaffolding" approach to AI safety, in which one provably safe AI generation helps build the next provably safe generation. Seth Baum argues that the development of safe, socially beneficial artificial intelligence or artificial general intelligence is a function of the social psychology of AI research communities and so can be constrained by extrinsic measures and motivated by intrinsic measures. Intrinsic motivations can be strengthened when messages resonate with AI developers; Baum argues that, in contrast, "existing messages about beneficial AI are not always framed well". Baum advocates for "cooperative relationships, and positive framing of AI researchers" and cautions against characterizing AI researchers as "not want(ing) to pursue beneficial designs". In his book Human Compatible, AI researcher Stuart J. Russell lists three principles to guide the development of beneficial machines. He emphasizes that these principles are not meant to be explicitly coded into the machines; rather, they are intended for the human developers. The principles are as follows: The machine's only objective is to maximize the realization of human preferences. The machine is initially uncertain about what those preferences are. The ultimate source of information about human preferences is human behavior. The "preferences" Russell refers to "are all-encompassing; they cover everything you might care about, arbitrarily far into the future." Similarly, "behavior" includes any choice between options, and the uncertainty is such that some probability, which may be quite small, must be assigned to every logically possible human preference. == Public policy == James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention, suggested that "a public-private partnership has to be created to bring A.I.-makers together to share ideas about security—something like the International Atomic Energy Agency, but in partnership with corporations." He urges AI researchers to convene a meeting similar to the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, which discussed risks of biotechnology. John McGinnis encourages governments to accelerate friendly AI research. Because the goalposts of friendly AI are not necessarily eminent, he suggests a model similar to the National Institutes of Health, where "Peer review panels of computer and cognitive scientists would sift through projects and choose those that are designed both to advance AI and assure that such advances would be accompanied by appropriate safeguards." McGinnis feels that peer review is better "than regulation to address technical issues that are not possible to capture through bureaucratic mandates". McGinnis notes that his proposal stands in contrast to that of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which generally aims to avoid government involvement in friendly AI. == Criticism == Some critics believe that both human-level AI and superintelligence are unlikely and that, therefore, friendly AI is unlikAbiquo Enterprise Edition
Friendly artificial intelligence