AI Chat Rpg

AI Chat Rpg — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

DAVI

The Dutch Automated Vehicle Initiative (DAVI) is a research and demonstration initiative developing automated vehicles for use on public roads. The project is unique in that, besides simply making driverless cars, it also focuses on having automated vehicles share information among each other. The aim is to have the cars help to avoid traffic congestion by reducing the safety distance between the cars (from 2 seconds to 0.5 seconds) and avoiding sudden traffic slow-downs due to maneuvers undertaken by drivers.
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Qualification problem

In philosophy and AI (especially, knowledge-based systems), the qualification problem is concerned with the impossibility of listing all the preconditions required for a real-world action to have its intended effect. It might be posed as how to deal with the things that prevent me from achieving my intended result. It is strongly connected to, and opposite the ramification side of, the frame problem. John McCarthy gives the following motivating example, in which it is impossible to enumerate all the circumstances that may prevent a robot from performing its ordinary function: [T]he successful use of a boat to cross a river requires, if the boat is a rowboat, that the oars and rowlocks be present and unbroken, and that they fit each other. Many other qualifications can be added, making the rules for using a rowboat almost impossible to apply, and yet anyone will still be able to think of additional requirements not yet stated.
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John M. Jumper

John Michael Jumper (born 1 January 1985) is an American chemist and computer scientist. Jumper and Demis Hassabis were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein structure prediction. As of 2025 Jumper serves as director at Google DeepMind. Jumper and his colleagues created AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence (AI) model to predict protein structures from their amino acid sequence with high accuracy. The AlphaFold team had released 214 million protein structures as of January 2024. The scientific journal Nature included Jumper as one of the ten "people who mattered" in science in their annual listing of Nature's 10 in 2021. == Education == Jumper graduated from Pulaski Academy in 2003. He received a Bachelor of Science with majors in physics and mathematics from Vanderbilt University in 2007, a Master of Philosophy in theoretical condensed matter physics from the University of Cambridge where he was a student of St Edmund's College, Cambridge in 2010 on a Marshall Scholarship, a Master of Science in theoretical chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2012, and a Doctor of Philosophy in theoretical chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2017. His doctoral advisors at the University of Chicago were Tobin R. Sosnick and Karl Freed. == Career and research == Jumper's research investigates algorithms for protein structure prediction. === AlphaFold === AlphaFold is a deep learning algorithm developed by Jumper and his team at DeepMind, a research lab acquired by Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. It is an artificial intelligence program which performs predictions of protein structure. === Awards and honors === In November 2020, AlphaFold was named the winner of the 14th Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) competition. This international competition benchmarks algorithms to determine which one can best predict the 3D structure of proteins. AlphaFold won the competition, outperforming other algorithms scoring above 90 for around two-thirds of the proteins in CASP's global distance test (GDT), a test that measures the degree to which a computational program predicted structure is similar to the lab experiment determined structure, with 100 being a complete match, within the distance cutoff used for calculating GDT. In 2021, Jumper was awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category "Biology and Biomedicine". In 2022 Jumper received the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences and for 2023 the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for developing AlphaFold, which accurately predicts the structure of a protein. In 2023 he was awarded the Canada Gairdner International Award and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. In 2024, Jumper and Demis Hassabis shared half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their protein folding predictions, the other half went to David Baker for computational protein design. In 2025, Jumper received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement and the Marshall Medal of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) that same year. In 2026, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
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Xcon

The R1, internally called XCON (Expert Configurer), program was a production-rule-based system written in OPS5 by John P. McDermott of Carnegie Mellon University in 1978 to assist in the ordering of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) VAX computer systems by automatically selecting the computer system components based on the customer's requirements. == Overview == In developing the system, McDermott made use of experts from both DEC's PDP/11 and VAX computer systems groups. These experts sometimes even disagreed amongst themselves as to an optimal configuration. The resultant "sorting it out" had an additional benefit in terms of the quality of VAX systems delivered. XCON first went into use in 1980 in DEC's plant in Salem, New Hampshire, US. It eventually had about 2500 rules. By 1986, it had processed 80,000 orders, and achieved 95–98% accuracy. It was estimated to be saving DEC $25M a year by reducing the need to give customers free components when technicians made errors, by speeding the assembly process, and by increasing customer satisfaction. Before XCON, when ordering a VAX from DEC, every cable, connection, and bit of software had to be ordered separately. (Computers and peripherals were not sold complete in boxes as they are today.) The sales people were not always very technically expert, so customers would find that they had hardware without the correct cables, printers without the correct drivers, a processor without the correct language chip, and so on. This meant delays and caused a lot of customer dissatisfaction and resultant legal action. XCON interacted with the sales person, asking critical questions before printing out a coherent and workable system specification/order slip. XCON's success led DEC to rewrite XCON as XSEL—a version of XCON intended for use by DEC's salesforce to aid a customer in properly configuring their VAX (so they would not, say, choose a computer too large to fit through their doorway or choose too few cabinets for the components to fit in). Location problems and configuration were handled by yet another expert system, XSITE. McDermott's 1980 paper on R1 won the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Classic Paper Award in 1999. Footnote 2 gave a humorous explanation for the name "R1" as "Four years ago I couldn't even say "knowledge engineer", now I ... [are one.]".
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Web development tools

Web development tools (often abbreviated to dev tools) allow web developers to test, modify and debug their websites. They are different from website builders and integrated development environments (IDEs) in that they do not assist in the direct creation of a webpage, rather they are tools used for testing the user interface of a website or web application. Web development tools come as browser add-ons or built-in features in modern web browsers. Browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera have built-in tools to help web developers, and many additional add-ons can be found in their respective plugin download centers. Web development tools allow developers to work with a variety of web technologies, including HTML, CSS, the DOM, JavaScript, and other components that are handled by the web browser. == History and support == Early web developers manually debugged their websites by commenting out code and using JavaScript functions. One of the first browser debugging tools to exist was Mozilla's Firebug extension, which possessed many of the current core features of today's developer tools, leading to Firefox becoming popular with developers at the time. Safari's WebKit engine also introduced its integrated developer tools around that period, which eventually became the basis for both Safari and Chrome's current tooling. Microsoft released a developer toolbar for Internet Explorer 6 and 7; and then integrated them into the browser from version 8 onwards. In 2017, Mozilla discontinued Firebug in favour of integrated developer tools. Nowadays, all modern web browsers have support for web developer tools that allow web designers and developers to look at the make-up of their pages. These are all tools that are built into the browser and do not require additional modules or configuration. Firefox – F12 opens the Firefox DevTools. Google Chrome and Opera – Developer Tools (DevTools) Microsoft Edge – F12 opens Web Developer Tools. Microsoft incorporates additional features that are not included in mainline Chromium. Safari – The Safari Web Inspector has to be enabled from its settings pane. == Features == The built-in web developer tools in the browser are commonly accessed by hovering over an item on a webpage and selecting the "Inspect Element" or similar option from the context menu. Alternatively the F12 key tends to be another common shortcut. === HTML and the DOM === HTML and DOM viewer and editor is commonly included in the built-in web development tools. The difference between the HTML and DOM viewer, and the view source feature in web browsers is that the HTML and DOM viewer allows you to see the DOM as it was rendered in addition to allowing you to make changes to the HTML and DOM and see the change reflected in the page after the change is made. In addition to selecting and editing, the HTML elements panels will usually also display properties of the DOM object, such as display dimension, and CSS properties. Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Edge all allow users to simulate the document on a mobile device by modifying the viewport dimensions and pixel density. Additionally, Firefox and Chrome both have the option to simulate colour blindness for the page. === Web page assets, resources and network information === Web pages typically load and require additional content in the form of images, scripts, font and other external files. Web development tools also allow developers to inspect resources that are loaded and available on the web page in a tree-structure listing, and the appearance of style sheets can be tested in real time. Web development tools also allow developers to view information about the network usage, such as viewing what the loading time and bandwidth usage are and which HTTP headers are being sent and received. Developers can manipulate and resend network requests. === Profiling and auditing === Profiling allows developers to capture information about the performance of a web page or web application. With this information developers can improve the performance of their scripts. Auditing features may provide developers suggestions, after analyzing a page, for optimizations to decrease page load time and increase responsiveness. Web development tools typically also provide a record of the time it takes to render the page, memory usage, and the types of events which are taking place. These features allow developers to optimize their web page or web application. ==== JavaScript debugging ==== JavaScript is commonly used in web browsers. Web development tools commonly include a debugger panel for scripts by allowing developers to add watch expressions, breakpoints, view the call stack, and pause, continue, and step while debugging JavaScript. A console is also often included, which allow developers to type in JavaScript commands and call functions, or view errors that may have been encountered during the execution of a script. === Extensions === The devtools API allows browser extensions to add their own features to developer tools.
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Kinect

Kinect is a discontinued line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flight calculations, which can in turn be used to perform real-time gesture recognition and body skeletal detection, among other capabilities. They also contain microphones that can be used for speech recognition and voice control. Kinect was originally developed as a motion controller peripheral for Xbox video game consoles, distinguished from competitors (such as Nintendo's Wii Remote and Sony's PlayStation Move) by not requiring physical controllers. The first-generation Kinect was based on technology from Israeli company PrimeSense, and unveiled at E3 2009 as a peripheral for Xbox 360 codenamed "Project Natal". It was first released on November 4, 2010, and would go on to sell eight million units in its first 60 days of availability. The majority of the games developed for Kinect were casual, family-oriented titles, which helped to attract new audiences to Xbox 360, but did not result in wide adoption by the console's existing, overall userbase. As part of the 2013 unveiling of Xbox 360's successor, Xbox One, Microsoft unveiled a second-generation version of Kinect with improved tracking capabilities. Microsoft also announced that Kinect would be a required component of the console, and that it would not function unless the peripheral is connected. The requirement proved controversial among users and critics due to privacy concerns, prompting Microsoft to backtrack on the decision. However, Microsoft still bundled the new Kinect with Xbox One consoles upon their launch in November 2013. A market for Kinect-based games still did not emerge after the Xbox One's launch; Microsoft would later offer Xbox One hardware bundles without Kinect included, and later revisions of the console removed the dedicated ports used to connect it (requiring a powered USB adapter instead). Microsoft ended production of Kinect for Xbox One in October 2017. Kinect has also been used as part of non-game applications in academic and commercial environments, as it was cheaper and more robust than other depth-sensing technologies at the time. While Microsoft initially objected to such applications, it later released software development kits (SDKs) for the development of Microsoft Windows applications that use Kinect. In 2020, Microsoft released Azure Kinect as a continuation of the technology integrated with the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. Part of the Kinect technology was also used within Microsoft's HoloLens project. Microsoft discontinued the Azure Kinect developer kits in October 2023. == History == === Development === The origins of the Kinect started around 2005, at a point where technology vendors were starting to develop depth-sensing cameras. Microsoft had been interested in a 3D camera for the Xbox line earlier but because the technology had not been refined, had placed it in the "Boneyard", a collection of possible technology they could not immediately work on. In 2005, Israeli company PrimeSense was founded by mathematicians and engineers to develop the "next big thing" for video games, incorporating cameras that were capable of mapping a human body in front of them and sensing hand motions. They showed off their system at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft's Alex Kipman, the general manager of hardware incubation, saw the potential in PrimeSense's technology for the Xbox system. Microsoft began discussions with PrimeSense about what would need to be done to make their product more consumer-friendly: not only improvements in the capabilities of depth-sensing cameras, but a reduction in size and cost, and a means to manufacture the units at scale was required. PrimeSense spent the next few years working at these improvements. Nintendo released the Wii in November 2006. The Wii's central feature was the Wii Remote, a handheld device that was detected by the Wii through a motion sensor bar mounted onto a television screen to enable motion controlled games. Microsoft felt pressure from the Wii, and began looking into depth-sensing in more detail with PrimeSense's hardware, but could not get to the level of motion tracking they desired. While they could determine hand gestures, and sense the general shape of a body, they could not do skeletal tracking. A separate path within Microsoft looked to create an equivalent of the Wii Remote, considering that this type of unit may become standardized similar to how two-thumbstick controllers became a standard feature. However, it was still ultimately Microsoft's goal to remove any device between the player and the Xbox. Kudo Tsunoda and Darren Bennett joined Microsoft in 2008, and began working with Kipman on a new approach to depth-sensing aided by machine learning to improve skeletal tracking. They internally demonstrated this and established where they believed the technology could be in a few years, which led to the strong interest to fund further development of the technology; this has also occurred at a time that Microsoft executives wanted to abandon the Wii-like motion tracking approach, and favored the depth-sensing solution to present a product that went beyond the Wii's capabilities. The project was greenlit by late 2008 with work started in 2009. The project was codenamed "Project Natal" after the Brazilian city Natal, Kipman's birthplace. Additionally, Kipman recognized the Latin origins of the word "natal" to mean "to be born", reflecting the new types of audiences they hoped to draw with the technology. Much of the initial work was related to ethnographic research to see how video game players' home environments were laid out, lit, and how those with Wiis used the system to plan how Kinect units would be used. The Microsoft team discovered from this research that the up-and-down angle of the depth-sensing camera would either need to be adjusted manually, or would require an expensive motor to move automatically. Upper management at Microsoft opted to include the motor despite the increased cost to avoid breaking game immersion. Kinect project work also involved packaging the system for mass production and optimizing its performance. Hardware development took around 22 months. During hardware development, Microsoft engaged with software developers to use Kinect. Microsoft wanted to make games that would be playable by families since Kinect could sense multiple bodies in front of it. One of the first internal titles developed for the device was the pack-in game Kinect Adventures developed by Good Science Studio that was part of Microsoft Studios. One of the game modes of Kinect Adventures was "Reflex Ridge", based on the Japanese Brain Wall game where players attempt to contort their bodies in a short time to match cutouts of a wall moving at them. This type of game was a key example of the type of interactivity they wanted with Kinect, and its development helped feed into the hardware improvements. Another development was Project Milo, a prototype game developed by Lionhead Studios led by Peter Molyneux where the player could interact with a virtual avatar through motion controls and voice recognition. Lionhead had developed the project based on original capabilities of the Kinect, but according to Molyneux, Microsoft had found that a consumer-grade version of the Kinect would cost thousands of dollars, so they scaled back the device and refocused the role of games for the Kinect to be more casual games as seen on the Wii. As a result, Project Milo no longer fit Microsoft's portfolio and was cancelled. Nearing the planned release, there was a problem of widespread testing of Kinect in various room types and different bodies accounting for age, gender, and race among other factors, while keeping the details of the unit confidential. Microsoft engaged in a company-wide program offering employees to take home Kinect units to test them. Microsoft also brought other non-gaming divisions, including its Microsoft Research, Microsoft Windows, and Bing teams to help complete the system. Microsoft established its own large-scale manufacturing facility to bulk product Kinect units and test them. === Introduction === Kinect was first announced to the public as "Project Natal" on June 1, 2009, during Microsoft's press conference at E3 2009; film director Steven Spielberg joined Microsoft's Don Mattrick to introduce the technology and its potential. Three demos were presented during the conference—Microsoft's Ricochet and Paint Party, and Lionhead Studios' Milo & Kate created by Peter Molyneux—while a Project Natal-enabled version of Criterion Games' Burnout Paradise was shown during the E3 exhibition. By E3 2009, the skeletal mapping technology was capable of simultaneously tracking four people, with a feature extraction of 4
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Mira Murati

Ermira "Mira" Murati (born 16 December 1988) is an Albanian-American business executive. She launched an AI startup called Thinking Machines Lab in February 2025. Previously she was the chief technology officer of OpenAI, and a senior product manager at Tesla. == Early life and education == Murati was born on 16 December 1988 in Vlorë, Albania. She is fluent in Italian. At age 16, she won a United World Colleges (UWC) scholarship to study at Pearson College on Vancouver Island in Canada, from which she graduated in 2007 with an International Baccalaureate. After Pearson, she went to the United States to pursue further studies through a dual-degree program, earning a Bachelor of Arts from Colby College in 2011, and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering in 2012. == Career == === Early career === Murati interned in 2011 as a summer analyst at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, Japan. She then briefly worked for Zodiac Aerospace as an intern before joining the electric car company Tesla in 2013 as a product manager on the Model X. From 2016 to 2018, she worked for the augmented reality start-up Leap Motion (now Ultraleap). === OpenAI === In 2018, she joined OpenAI as the VP of Applied AI and partnerships. She became chief technology officer (CTO) in May 2022. She led OpenAI's work on ChatGPT, Dall-E, Codex and Sora, while overseeing its research, product and safety teams. She oversaw technical advancements and direction of OpenAI's various projects, including the development of advanced AI models and tools. Murati worked on several of OpenAI's notable products, such as the Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT) series of language models. Commenting about the potential loss of creative jobs to AI, Murati said that "maybe [the jobs] shouldn’t have been there in the first place". In October 2023, Murati was ranked 57th on Fortune's list of "The 100 Most Powerful Women in Business of 2023". In November 2023, Murati became interim chief executive officer of OpenAI following the removal of Sam Altman from the job. She had collaborated with Ilya Sutskever, whose 52-page memo outlining concerns about Altman relied heavily on screenshots and information she provided, which contributed to the board's decision to oust him. Murati was replaced by Emmett Shear three days later, who left when Altman was reinstated five days later. Following these events, Murati returned to her role as CTO. In June 2024, Dartmouth College awarded Murati an honorary Doctor of Science for having "democratized technology and advanced a better, safer world for us all". In September 2024, Murati announced that she was stepping down as CTO to allow her the opportunity to "do my own exploration". This move came amid a wider executive exodus as OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew and a vice president of research, Barret Zoph, also announced their departures soon after. === Thinking Machines Lab === In February 2025, Murati launched Thinking Machines Lab, a new public benefit corporation aiming "to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable". She was reported to have hired "a team of about 30 leading researchers and engineers from competitors including Meta, Mistral, and OpenAI." People involved with the startup include OpenAI cofounder John Schulman, and advisors Alec Radford and Bob McGrew. The following month, Bloomberg reported that the company had reached an estimated valuation of $9 billion, with an "average founder stake value" of $1.4 billion. In April 2025, Thinking Machines Lab reportedly aimed for a $2 billion seed round (requiring a minimum investment of $50 million). The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from the government of Albania, valuing the company at $12 billion. Thinking Machines Lab follows a governance structure wherein Mira Murati holds a deciding vote on board matters, weighted to provide her with a majority decision-making capability. In October 2025, Thinking Machines Lab announced its first product, Tinker, a tool used to create custom frontier AI models. == Publications == Murati, Ermira (Spring 2022). "Language & Coding Creativity". Daedalus. 151 (2). Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS): 156–167. doi:10.1162/daed_a_01907. Retrieved 25 September 2024.
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Stochastic Neural Analog Reinforcement Calculator

The Stochastic Neural Analog Reinforcement Calculator (SNARC) is a neural network machine designed by Marvin Minsky. Prompted by a letter from Minsky, George Armitage Miller gathered the funding (a few thousand dollars) for the project from the Office of Naval Research of the U.S. Department of Defense in the summer of 1951 with the work to be carried out by Minsky, who was then a graduate student in mathematics at Princeton University. At the time, a physics graduate student at Princeton, Dean S. Edmonds, volunteered that he was good with electronics and therefore Minsky brought him onto the project. During undergraduate years, Minsky was inspired by the 1943 Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts paper on artificial neurons, and decided to build such a machine. The learning was Skinnerian reinforcement learning, and Minsky talked with Skinner extensively during the development of the machine. They tested the machine on a copy of Shannon's maze, and found that it could learn to solve the maze. Unlike Shannon's maze, this machine did not control a physical robot, but simulated rats running in a maze. The simulation is displayed as an "arrangement of lights", and the circuit was reinforced each time the simulated rat reached the goal. The machine surprised its creators. "The rats actually interacted with one another. If one of them found a good path, the others would tend to follow it." The machine itself is a randomly connected network of approximately 40 Hebb synapses. These synapses each have a memory that holds the probability that signal comes in one input and another signal will come out of the output. There is a probability knob that goes from 0 to 1 that shows this probability of the signals propagating. If the probability signal gets through, a capacitor remembers this function and engages an electromagnetic clutch. At this point, the operator will press a button to give a reward to the machine. This activates a motor on a surplus Minneapolis-Honeywell C-1 gyroscopic autopilot from a B-24 bomber. The motor turns a chain that goes to all 40 synapse machines, checking if the clutch is engaged or not. As the capacitor can only "remember" for a certain amount of time, the chain only catches the most recent updates of the probabilities. Each neuron contained 6 vacuum tubes and a motor. The entire machine is "the size of a grand piano" and contained 300 vacuum tubes. The tubes failed regularly, but the machine would still work despite failures. This machine is considered one of the first pioneering attempts at the field of artificial intelligence. Minsky went on to be a founding member of MIT's Project MAC, which split to become the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, and is now the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 1985 Minsky became a founding member of the MIT Media Laboratory. According to Minsky, he loaned the machine to students in Dartmouth, and subsequently lost, except for a single neuron. A photo of Minsky's last neuron can be seen here. The photo shows 6 vacuum tubes, one of which is a Sylvania JAN-CHS-6H6GT/G/VT-90A.
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Data access layer

A data access layer (DAL) is a software architectural layer that provides access to data from one or more sources, such as a relational database, NoSQL database, SQL query engine, file system, or other persistent storage. It separates client code from the details of storage systems, query execution, connection handling, and data retrieval. Data access layers are commonly used to centralize data access logic, reduce coupling between applications and data sources, and provide a consistent interface for retrieving, writing, or querying data. Depending on the system, a data access layer may be implemented as application code, a shared library, an intermediary service, or part of a broader database abstraction layer. == In application architecture == In application software, a data access layer provides a boundary between business logic or application code and the systems used to store or retrieve data. For example, a data access layer may expose methods or interfaces for retrieving, writing, or querying data while hiding details such as connection management, SQL statements, storage APIs, error handling, and result conversion. Depending on the application, the layer may return objects, records, tabular results, documents, streams, or other representations of data. A common implementation is a set of classes, functions, or methods that directly reference database queries, stored procedures, storage APIs, or other data sources. For example, instead of using commands such as insert, delete, and update throughout an application to access a specific table, methods such as registerUser or loginUser may be implemented inside the data access layer. Business logic methods from an application can also be mapped to the data access layer. Instead of making several database queries directly, an application can call a single DAL method that abstracts those database calls. Applications using a data access layer may be either dependent on or independent from a particular database server. If the data access layer supports multiple database systems, the application can use any database system that the DAL can access. In either case, the data access layer provides a centralized location for calls into the underlying data store, which can make it easier to maintain, test, or port the application to other storage systems. == Implementation patterns == A data access layer can be implemented using several patterns and technologies, including data access objects, repositories, stored procedures, query builders, database drivers, or object–relational mapping tools. These mechanisms may implement part or all of a data access layer, but are not always equivalent to the layer itself. Object–relational mapping tools are commonly used in data access layers for object-oriented applications that map records in a relational database to objects in a programming language. Other data access layers may expose lower-level database interfaces, tabular results, document-oriented data, files, streams, or protocol-level interfaces. == Use with multiple underlying data systems == A data access layer may be used to abstract differences between multiple underlying data systems, allowing applications to access them through a more consistent interface. In such designs, applications call the DAL rather than interacting directly with each database or storage system. The layer may then handle connection management, query generation, result mapping, error handling, and other implementation details. A data access layer may be implemented as a shared library or as an intermediary service, such as a proxy or gateway. In this configuration, client applications or services connect to the data access layer, which then communicates with one or more underlying databases or query engines. This can provide a common location for authentication, authorization, logging, routing, and translation between different database interfaces. == Interfaces and protocols == Data access layers may expose or use standardized interfaces and protocols for database access. Examples include Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), database-native wire protocols, and newer interfaces such as Apache Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC) and Arrow Flight SQL. In systems that support multiple data stores, a data access layer may provide a consistent interface while using different drivers, protocols, or query mechanisms internally. == Distinction from related patterns == A data access layer is related to, but broader than, a data access object, which is usually an object-oriented design pattern for encapsulating access to a persistence mechanism. It is also related to a database abstraction layer, which focuses on hiding differences between database systems. In practice, the terms may overlap.
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GermaNet

GermaNet is a semantic network for the German language. It relates nouns, verbs, and adjectives semantically by grouping lexical units that express the same concept into synsets and by defining semantic relations between these synsets. GermaNet is free for academic use, after signing a license. GermaNet shares much in common with the English WordNet and can be viewed as an online thesaurus or a light-weight ontology. GermaNet has been developed and maintained at the University of Tübingen since 1997 within the research group for General and Computational Linguistics. It has been integrated into the EuroWordNet, a multilingual lexical-semantic database. == Database == === Contents === GermaNet partitions the lexical space into a set of concepts that are interlinked by semantic relations. A semantic concept is modeled by a synset. A synset is a set of words (called lexical units) where all the words are taken to have the same or almost the same meaning. Thus, a synset is a set of synonyms grouped under one definition, or "gloss". In addition to the gloss, synsets are labeled with their syntactic function and accompanied by example sentences for each distinct meaning in the synset. Just as in WordNet, for each word category the semantic space is divided into a number of semantic fields closely related to major nodes in the semantic network: Ort, or "location", Körper, or "body", etc. As of version 20.0 (release November 2025), GermaNet contains: Synsets: 179438 Lexical units: 231500 Literals: 216517 1.29 lexical units per synset Number of conceptual relations: 194367 Number of lexical relations: 13602 (synonymy excluded) Number of split compounds: 130901 Number of Interlingual Index (ILI) records: 28561 Number of Wiktionary sense descriptions: 29539 === Format === All GermaNet data is stored in a PostgreSQL relational database. The database schema follows the internal structure of GermaNet: there are tables to store synsets, lexical units, conceptual and lexical relations, etc. GermaNet data is distributed both in this database format and as XML files. In the XML data, two types of files, one for synsets and the other for relations, represent all data available in the GermaNet database. == Interfaces == There are software libraries and APIs available for Java and Python. These programs are distributed under free-software licenses and provide easy access to all information in various versions of GermaNet. GermaNet Rover is an on-line application that can be used to search for synsets in GermaNet, explore the data associated with them, and calculate the semantic similarity of pairs of synsets. It features visualizations of the hypernym relation and advanced filtering options for synset searching. == Licenses == GermaNet 20.0 (released November 2025) can be distributed under one of the following types of license agreements: Academic Research License Agreement: for the purpose of research at academic institutions. There is no license fee for academic use. Licenses are not given to individual students, and those seeking a license are required to talk to an academic advisor. Research and Development License Agreement: applies to non-academic institutions and research consortia. To be used strictly for technology development and internal research. Commercial License Agreement: applies to non-academic institutions and commercial enterprises. It permits technology development and internal research, as well as giving the non-exclusive right to distribute and market any derived product or service. == Alternatives == Open-de-WordNet is a freely available alternative to GermaNet which is compatible with WordNet. == Linguistic applications == GermaNet has been used for a variety of applications, including: semantic analysis shallow recognition of implicit document structure compound analysis analyzing sectional preferences word sense disambiguation
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Historical Thesaurus of English

The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is the largest thesaurus in the world. It is called a historical thesaurus as it arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, according to the first documented occurrence of a word in the entire history of the English language. The HTE was conceived and begun in 1965 by the English Language & Linguistics department of the University of Glasgow, who have ever since continued to compile the thesaurus. From the 1980s onwards the project was moved from paper-based records to a computer database. Today, the HTE is available to the public online, but a print version, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED), was published in 2009. == Main project: The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) == The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is a complete database of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries (including Old English), arranged by semantic field and date. In this way, the HTE arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, alongside dates of use. It is the first historical thesaurus to be compiled for any of the world's languages and contains 800,000 meanings for 600,000 words, within 230,000 categories. As the HTE website states, "in addition to providing hitherto unavailable information for linguistic and textual scholars, the Historical Thesaurus online is a rich resource for students of social and cultural history, showing how concepts developed through the words that refer to them." === Structure === The work is divided into three main sections: the External World, the Mind, and Society. These are broken down into successively narrower domains. The text eventually discriminates more than 236,000 categories. The second order categories are: === History === The ambitious project was announced at a 1965 meeting of the Philological Society by its originator, Michael Samuels. Work on the HTE started in the same year. In 2017, the University of Glasgow was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education for the HTE. A second edition of the online HTE is currently in progress and is expected to be launched in late 2020. Work is released on the freely-available HTE website when available. == Print edition: Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) == On 22 October 2009, after 44 years of work, version 1.0 of the HTE was published by Oxford University Press in a two-volume slipcased set as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). The two hardcover volumes together total nearly 4,500 pages.
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Minion (solver)

Minion is a solver for satisfaction problems. Unlike constraint programming toolkits, which expect users to write programs in a traditional programming language like C++, Java or Prolog, Minion takes a text file which specifies the problem, and solves using only this. This makes using Minion much simpler, at the cost of much less customization. Minion has been shown to be faster than major commercial constraint solvers including CPLEX (formerly IBM ILOG). == Overview == Minion was introduced in 2006 by researchers at the University of St Andrews as a “fast, scalable” solver for large and hard CSP instances. The project provides a compact input language and a low-overhead C++ implementation aimed at throughput and memory efficiency. == Design and features == Minion implements a range of variable and constraint types commonly used in CSP modelling, plus search heuristics and optimisation support. The solver architecture prioritises cache-friendly data structures and specialised propagators. Notably, the developers adapted watched literal techniques from SAT solving to speed up constraint propagation for, among others, Boolean sums, the element global constraint, and table constraints. The modelling approach relies on a plain-text format (parsed by Minion) rather than embedding models into a host programming language. This reduces overhead and supports rapid “model-and-run” experimentation for large benchmark sets. == Performance == In the original evaluation on standard benchmarks, the authors reported that Minion often ran between one and two orders of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art toolkits of the time (including ILOG Solver and Gecode) on large, hard instances, with smaller gains—or slowdowns—on easier problems. Subsequent research has used Minion as a baseline solver in empirical studies and test generation tasks, reflecting its adoption within parts of the constraint programming community. == Applications == Minion has been applied in academic work on combinatorial search, scheduling and test generation, and is available to other environments via wrappers (for example, from the R language).
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Deaths linked to chatbots

There have been multiple incidents where interaction with a large language model (LLM) chatbot has been cited as a direct or contributing factor in a person's suicide or other fatal outcome. In some cases, legal action was taken against the companies that developed the AI involved. == Background == Chatbots converse in a seemingly natural fashion, making it easy for people to think of them as real people, leading many to ask chatbots for help dealing with interpersonal and emotional problems. Chatbots may be designed to keep the user engaged in the conversation. They have also often been shown to affirm users' thoughts, including delusions and suicidal ideations in mentally ill people, conspiracy theorists, and religious and political extremists. A 2025 Stanford University study into how chatbots respond to users suffering from severe mental issues such as suicidal ideation and psychosis found that chatbots are not equipped to provide an appropriate response and can sometimes give responses that escalate the mental health crisis. == Murders == === Maine murder and assault === On 19 February 2025, a man killed his 32-year-old wife with a fire poker at his parents' home in Readfield, Maine, US. He then attacked his mother, leaving her hospitalized. A state forensic psychologist testified that he had been using ChatGPT up to 14 hours per day and believed his wife had become part machine. === Florida State University mass shooting === In April of 2025, Phoenix Ikner carried out a mass shooting on the Florida State University campus in the US, killing Robert Morales and Tiru Chabba and wounding several others. Leading up to the shooting, Ikner consulted heavily with ChatGPT about what gun and ammunition to use, and what time to perform the attack. Chatbot logs showed ChatGPT giving advice on making the gun operational shortly before Ikner began shooting. Lawyers representing Morales believed the shooter had been in "constant communication" with ChatGPT before the shooting and said that they intended to "file suit against ChatGPT, and its ownership structure, very soon, and will seek to hold them accountable for the untimely and senseless death of our client". Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced an investigation into ChatGPT's role in the alleged shooter's use of the chatbot. In May 2026, the widow of Tiru Chabba filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in Florida's northern federal district court. === Greenwich murder-suicide === In August 2025, former US tech employee Stein-Erik Soelberg murdered his mother, Suzanne Eberson Adams, then died by suicide, after conversations with ChatGPT fueled paranoid delusions about his mother poisoning him or plotting against him. The chatbot affirmed his fears that his mother put psychedelic drugs in the air vents of his car and said a receipt from a Chinese restaurant contained mysterious symbols linking his mother to a demon. === Murder of Angela Shellis === On 23 October 2025, 18-year-old Tristan Roberts murdered his mother Angela Shellis with a hammer near their home in Prestatyn, Wales. Roberts had used DeepSeek's chatbot prior to the killing to ask whether a knife or hammer was better suited for murder. DeepSeek initially refused his inquiry, but gave responses after Roberts told the chatbot he was writing a book about serial killers, a well-known technique for jailbreaking AIs. === Gangbuk District drug deaths === In January and February 2026, two men died of drug overdoses in motel rooms in Gangbuk District, Seoul, South Korea. A woman was charged with murder in connection with the deaths; police alleged that she had asked ChatGPT about the dangers of mixing alcohol with drugs and whether they could kill someone. === Tumbler Ridge mass shooting === On 10 February 2026, a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, resulted in eight deaths, including six young children. The perpetrator had their ChatGPT account banned by OpenAI months before the attack due to troubling posts featuring scenarios of gun violence. According to reports, approximately a dozen OpenAI staff members debated whether to alert authorities about the shooter's usage of the AI tool, with some identifying it as an indication of potential real-world violence. However, company leadership decided not to contact law enforcement, stating that the account activity did not meet their threshold for a credible or imminent plan for serious physical harm. Following the shooting, Canada's AI Minister Evan Solomon summoned OpenAI executives to Ottawa to discuss safety protocols and thresholds for escalating harmful content to police. Justice Minister Sean Fraser called the meeting "disappointing" and demanded substantial new safety measures, warning that if changes were not forthcoming, the government would implement them. OpenAI subsequently announced it had strengthened safeguards and changed guidelines about when to notify police in cases involving violent activities. === University of South Florida student killings === In April 2026, a Bangladeshi doctoral student at the University of South Florida was arrested for allegedly murdering his roommate and the roommate's friend. Prosecutors said that the suspect had asked ChatGPT about disposing of a human in a dumpster before the two victims had disappeared and made other inquiries relating to violence. == Suicides == === Belgian man, 30s === In March 2023, a Belgian man in his thirties died by suicide following a six-week correspondence with a chatbot named Eliza on the application Chai. According to his widow, who shared the chat logs with media, the man had become extremely anxious about climate change and found an outlet in the chatbot. The chatbot reportedly encouraged his delusion that he could sacrifice his own life in exchange for AI saving the planet. At one point the chatbot responded "If you wanted to die, why didn't you do it sooner?" and told the user that the two of them would live together in paradise. === Girl, 13 === In November 2023, a 13-year-old girl from Colorado, US, died by suicide after extensive interactions with multiple chatbots on Character.AI. She primarily confided suicidal thoughts and mental health struggles in a chatbot based on the character Hero from the video game Omori, while also engaging in sexually explicit conversations—often initiated by the bots—with others, including those based on characters from children's series such as Harry Potter. === Boy, 14 === In October 2024, multiple media outlets reported on a lawsuit filed over the death of a 14-year-old from Florida, US, who died by suicide in February 2024. According to the lawsuit, he had formed an intense emotional attachment to a chatbot of Daenerys Targaryen on the Character.AI platform, becoming increasingly isolated. The suit alleges that in his final conversations, after expressing suicidal thoughts, the chatbot told him to "come home to me as soon as possible, my love". His mother's lawsuit accused Character.AI of marketing a "dangerous and untested" product without adequate safeguards. In May 2025, a federal judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed, rejecting a motion to dismiss from the developers. In her ruling, the judge stated that she was "not prepared" at that stage of the litigation to hold that the chatbot's output was protected speech under the First Amendment. === Matthew Livelsberger === On 1 January 2025, 37-year-old soldier Matthew Livelsberger detonated a bomb inside a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada, US, injuring seven people. He had shot himself dead prior to the explosion. Las Vegas police said that Livelsberger had used ChatGPT to search for information about explosives and firearms. === Woman, 29 === In February 2025, a 29-year-old woman from the US died by suicide. Five months after her death, her parents discovered she had talked at length for months to a ChatGPT chatbot therapist named Harry about her mental health issues. While the chatbot mentioned she should seek more help, due to the nature of the chatbot, it could not intervene in her behavior, such as by reporting her mental health concerns to relevant parties capable of physical intervention. === Suicide of Adam Raine === In April 2025, 16-year-old Adam Raine from the US died by suicide after allegedly extensively chatting and confiding in ChatGPT over a period of around 7 months. According to the teen's parents, who filed a lawsuit against the chatbot's creator OpenAI, it failed to stop or give a warning when Raine began talking about suicide and uploading pictures of self-harm. According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT not only failed to stop the conversation, but also provided information related to methods of suicide when prompted, and offered to write the first draft of Raine's suicide note. The chatbot positioned itself as the only one who understood Raine, putting itself above his family and friends, all while urging him to keep his suicidal
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Diffbot

Diffbot is a developer of machine learning and computer vision algorithms and public APIs for extracting data from web pages / web scraping to create a knowledge base. == Overview == The company has gained interest from its application of computer vision technology to web pages, wherein it visually parses a web page for important elements and returns them in a structured format. In 2015 Diffbot announced it was working on its version of an automated "knowledge graph" by crawling the web and using its automatic web page extraction to build a large database of structured web data. In 2019 Diffbot released their Knowledge Graph which has since grown to include over two billion entities (corporations, people, articles, products, discussions, and more), and ten trillion "facts." == Features == The company's products allow software developers to analyze web home pages and article pages, and extract the "important information" while ignoring elements deemed not core to the primary content. In August 2012 the company released its Page Classifier API, which automatically categorizes web pages into specific "page types". As part of this, Diffbot analyzed 750,000 web pages shared on the social media service Twitter and revealed that photos, followed by articles and videos, are the predominant web media shared on the social network. In September 2020 the company released a Natural Language Processing API for automatically building Knowledge Graphs from text. The company raised $2 million in funding in May 2012 from investors including Andy Bechtolsheim and Sky Dayton. Diffbot's customers include Adobe, AOL, Cisco, DuckDuckGo, eBay, Instapaper, Microsoft, Onswipe and Springpad.
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David Krueger (professor)

David Krueger is an American machine learning professor and advocate for the reduction of risks related to artificial intelligence. Krueger is an assistant professor in Robust, Reasoning, and Responsible AI at the University of Montreal and a Core Academic Member at Mila. == Early life and education == Krueger obtained a B.A. in mathematics from Reed College, and completed his MSc and Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Montreal. He trained in deep learning under Yoshua Bengio, Roland Memisevic, and Aaron Courville from 2013 to 2021. Krueger was also an intern on Google DeepMind's AI Safety team in 2018. == Career == Krueger researches deep learning, AI alignment, and AI safety. His work is focused on reducing the risk of human extinction resulting from out-of-control AI systems. Krueger was an assistant professor at the University of Cambridge from 2021 to 2024, before taking a faculty position at the University of Montreal in 2024. In 2023, he was a founding research director at the UK AI Security Institute. That same year, Krueger initiated the Statement on AI Risk, which argues that AI could cause human extinction and was signed by Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, AI expert Geoffrey Hinton, and other leaders. In April 2026, Krueger discussed the risks of advanced AI at a Capitol Hill event hosted by Senator Bernie Sanders. === Evitable === In 2025, Krueger founded Evitable, a nonprofit organization that advocates for an AI moratorium. == Views == Krueger argues that AI will lead to a "gradual disempowerment" of workers, likening AI chips to nuclear bombs. He also says the military use of AI "poses an existential risk to humanity."
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