11,069 research outputs found

    One Small Step for Generative AI, One Giant Leap for AGI: A Complete Survey on ChatGPT in AIGC Era

    Full text link
    OpenAI has recently released GPT-4 (a.k.a. ChatGPT plus), which is demonstrated to be one small step for generative AI (GAI), but one giant leap for artificial general intelligence (AGI). Since its official release in November 2022, ChatGPT has quickly attracted numerous users with extensive media coverage. Such unprecedented attention has also motivated numerous researchers to investigate ChatGPT from various aspects. According to Google scholar, there are more than 500 articles with ChatGPT in their titles or mentioning it in their abstracts. Considering this, a review is urgently needed, and our work fills this gap. Overall, this work is the first to survey ChatGPT with a comprehensive review of its underlying technology, applications, and challenges. Moreover, we present an outlook on how ChatGPT might evolve to realize general-purpose AIGC (a.k.a. AI-generated content), which will be a significant milestone for the development of AGI.Comment: A Survey on ChatGPT and GPT-4, 29 pages. Feedback is appreciated ([email protected]

    Corporate Social Responsibility: the institutionalization of ESG

    Get PDF
    Understanding the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on firm performance as it relates to industries reliant on technological innovation is a complex and perpetually evolving challenge. To thoroughly investigate this topic, this dissertation will adopt an economics-based structure to address three primary hypotheses. This structure allows for each hypothesis to essentially be a standalone empirical paper, unified by an overall analysis of the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance. The first hypothesis explores the evolution of CSR to the modern quantified iteration of ESG has led to the institutionalization and standardization of the CSR concept. The second hypothesis fills gaps in existing literature testing the relationship between firm performance and ESG by finding that the relationship is significantly positive in long-term, strategic metrics (ROA and ROIC) and that there is no correlation in short-term metrics (ROE and ROS). Finally, the third hypothesis states that if a firm has a long-term strategic ESG plan, as proxied by the publication of CSR reports, then it is more resilience to damage from controversies. This is supported by the finding that pro-ESG firms consistently fared better than their counterparts in both financial and ESG performance, even in the event of a controversy. However, firms with consistent reporting are also held to a higher standard than their nonreporting peers, suggesting a higher risk and higher reward dynamic. These findings support the theory of good management, in that long-term strategic planning is both immediately economically beneficial and serves as a means of risk management and social impact mitigation. Overall, this contributes to the literature by fillings gaps in the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance, particularly from a management perspective

    Comedians without a Cause: The Politics and Aesthetics of Humour in Dutch Cabaret (1966-2020)

    Get PDF
    Comedians play an important role in society and public debate. While comedians have been considered important cultural critics for quite some time, comedy has acquired a new social and political significance in recent years, with humour taking centre stage in political and social debates around issues of identity, social justice, and freedom of speech. To understand the shifting meanings and political implications of humour within a Dutch context, this PhD thesis examines the political and aesthetic workings of humour in the highly popular Dutch cabaret genre, focusing on cabaret performances from the 1960s to the present. The central questions of the thesis are: how do comedians use humour to deliver social critique, and how does their humour resonate with political ideologies? These questions are answered by adopting a cultural studies approach to humour, which is used to analyse Dutch cabaret performances, and by studying related materials such as reviews and media interviews with comedians. This thesis shows that, from the 1960s onwards, Dutch comedians have been considered ‘progressive rebels’ – politically engaged, subversive, and carrying a left-wing political agenda – but that this image is in need of correction. While we tend to look for progressive political messages in the work of comedians who present themselves as being anti-establishment rebels – such as Youp van ‘t Hek, Hans Teeuwen, and Theo Maassen – this thesis demonstrates that their transgressive and provocative humour tends to protect social hierarchies and relationships of power. Moreover, it shows that, paradoxically, both the deliberately moderate and nuanced humour of Wim Kan and Claudia de Breij, and the seemingly past-oriented nostalgia of Alex Klaasen, are more radical and progressive than the transgressive humour of van ‘t Hek, Teeuwen and Maassen. Finally, comedians who present absurdist or deconstructionist forms of humour, such as the early student cabarets, Freek de Jonge, and Micha Wertheim, tend to disassociate themselves from an explicit political engagement. By challenging the dominant image of the Dutch comedian as a ‘progressive rebel,’ this thesis contributes to a better understanding of humour in the present cultural moment, in which humour is often either not taken seriously, or one-sidedly celebrated as being merely pleasurable, innocent, or progressively liberating. In so doing, this thesis concludes, the ‘dark’ and more conservative sides of humour tend to get obscured

    Exploring Potential Domains of Agroecological Transformation in the United States

    Get PDF
    There is now substantial evidence that agroecology constitutes a necessary pathway towards socially just and ecologically resilient agrifood systems. In the United States, however, agroecology remains relegated to the margins of research and policy spaces. This dissertation explores three potential domains of agroecological transformation in the US. Domains of transformation are sites of contestation in which agroecology interfaces with the industrial agrifood system; these material and conceptual spaces may point to important pathways for scaling agroecology. To explore this concept, I examine formal agroecology education (Chapter 1), extension services and statewide discourses around soil health (Chapter 2), and models of farmland access not based on private property (Chapter 3). While these constitute three distinct topics, I seek to demonstrate that they are linked by similar forces that enable and constrain the extent to which these domains can be sites of agroecological transformation. First, I use case study methodology to explore the evolution of an advanced undergraduate agroecology course at the University of Vermont. I examine how course content and pedagogy align with a transformative framing of agroecology as inherently transdisciplinary, participatory, action-oriented, and political. I find that student-centered pedagogies and experiential education on farms successfully promote transformative learning whereby students shift their understanding of agrifood systems and their role(s) within them. In my second chapter, I zoom out to consider soil health discourses amongst farmers and extension professionals in Vermont. Using co-created mental models and participatory analysis, I find that a singular notion of soil health based on biological, chemical, and physical properties fails to capture the diverse ways in which farmers and extension professionals understand soil health. I advocate for a principles-based approach to soil health that includes social factors and may provide a valuable heuristic for mobilizing knowledge towards agroecology transition pathways. My third chapter, conducted in collaboration with the national non-profit organization Agrarian Trust, considers equitable farmland access. Through semi-structured interviews with 13 farmers and growers across the US, I explore both farmer motivations for engaging with alternative land access models (ALAMs) and the potential role(s) these models may play within broader transformation processes. I argue that ALAMs constitute material and conceptual ‘third spaces’ within which the private property regime is challenged and new identities and language around land ownership can emerge; as such, ALAMs may facilitate a (re)imagining of land-based social-ecological relationships. I conclude the dissertation by identifying conceptual and practical linkages across the domains explored in Chapters 1-3. I pay particular attention to processes that challenge neoliberal logics, enact plural ways of knowing, and prefigure just futures. In considering these concepts, I apply an expansive notion of pedagogy to explore how processes of teaching and (un)learning can contribute to cultivating foundational capacities for transition processes

    Machine Learning Research Trends in Africa: A 30 Years Overview with Bibliometric Analysis Review

    Full text link
    In this paper, a critical bibliometric analysis study is conducted, coupled with an extensive literature survey on recent developments and associated applications in machine learning research with a perspective on Africa. The presented bibliometric analysis study consists of 2761 machine learning-related documents, of which 98% were articles with at least 482 citations published in 903 journals during the past 30 years. Furthermore, the collated documents were retrieved from the Science Citation Index EXPANDED, comprising research publications from 54 African countries between 1993 and 2021. The bibliometric study shows the visualization of the current landscape and future trends in machine learning research and its application to facilitate future collaborative research and knowledge exchange among authors from different research institutions scattered across the African continent

    A Decision Support System for Economic Viability and Environmental Impact Assessment of Vertical Farms

    Get PDF
    Vertical farming (VF) is the practice of growing crops or animals using the vertical dimension via multi-tier racks or vertically inclined surfaces. In this thesis, I focus on the emerging industry of plant-specific VF. Vertical plant farming (VPF) is a promising and relatively novel practice that can be conducted in buildings with environmental control and artificial lighting. However, the nascent sector has experienced challenges in economic viability, standardisation, and environmental sustainability. Practitioners and academics call for a comprehensive financial analysis of VPF, but efforts are stifled by a lack of valid and available data. A review of economic estimation and horticultural software identifies a need for a decision support system (DSS) that facilitates risk-empowered business planning for vertical farmers. This thesis proposes an open-source DSS framework to evaluate business sustainability through financial risk and environmental impact assessments. Data from the literature, alongside lessons learned from industry practitioners, would be centralised in the proposed DSS using imprecise data techniques. These techniques have been applied in engineering but are seldom used in financial forecasting. This could benefit complex sectors which only have scarce data to predict business viability. To begin the execution of the DSS framework, VPF practitioners were interviewed using a mixed-methods approach. Learnings from over 19 shuttered and operational VPF projects provide insights into the barriers inhibiting scalability and identifying risks to form a risk taxonomy. Labour was the most commonly reported top challenge. Therefore, research was conducted to explore lean principles to improve productivity. A probabilistic model representing a spectrum of variables and their associated uncertainty was built according to the DSS framework to evaluate the financial risk for VF projects. This enabled flexible computation without precise production or financial data to improve economic estimation accuracy. The model assessed two VPF cases (one in the UK and another in Japan), demonstrating the first risk and uncertainty quantification of VPF business models in the literature. The results highlighted measures to improve economic viability and the viability of the UK and Japan case. The environmental impact assessment model was developed, allowing VPF operators to evaluate their carbon footprint compared to traditional agriculture using life-cycle assessment. I explore strategies for net-zero carbon production through sensitivity analysis. Renewable energies, especially solar, geothermal, and tidal power, show promise for reducing the carbon emissions of indoor VPF. Results show that renewably-powered VPF can reduce carbon emissions compared to field-based agriculture when considering the land-use change. The drivers for DSS adoption have been researched, showing a pathway of compliance and design thinking to overcome the ‘problem of implementation’ and enable commercialisation. Further work is suggested to standardise VF equipment, collect benchmarking data, and characterise risks. This work will reduce risk and uncertainty and accelerate the sector’s emergence

    Consent and the Construction of the Volunteer: Institutional Settings of Experimental Research on Human Beings in Britain during the Cold War

    Get PDF
    This study challenges the primacy of consent in the history of human experimentation and argues that privileging the cultural frameworks adds nuance to our understanding of the construction of the volunteer in the period 1945 to 1970. Historians and bio-ethicists have argued that medical ethics codes have marked out the parameters of using people as subjects in medical scientific research and that the consent of the subjects was fundamental to their status as volunteers. However, the temporality of the creation of medical ethics codes means that they need to be understood within their historical context. That medical ethics codes arose from a specific historical context rather than a concerted and conscious determination to safeguard the well-being of subjects needs to be acknowledged. The British context of human experimentation is under-researched and there has been even less focus on the cultural frameworks within which experiments took place. This study demonstrates, through a close analysis of the Medical Research Council's Common Cold Research Unit (CCRU) and the government's military research facility, the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment, Porton Down (Porton), that the `volunteer' in human experiments was a subjective entity whose identity was specific to the institution which recruited and made use of the subject. By examining representations of volunteers in the British press, the rhetoric of the government's collectivist agenda becomes evident and this fed into the institutional construction of the volunteer at the CCRU. In contrast, discussions between Porton scientists, staff members, and government officials demonstrate that the use of military personnel in secret chemical warfare experiments was far more complex. Conflicting interests of the military, the government and the scientific imperative affected how the military volunteer was perceived

    Implementing Health Impact Assessment as a Required Component of Government Policymaking: A Multi-Level Exploration of the Determinants of Healthy Public Policy

    Get PDF
    It is widely understood that the public policies of ‘non-health’ government sectors have greater impacts on population health than those of the traditional healthcare realm. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a decision support tool that identifies and promotes the health benefits of policies while also mitigating their unintended negative consequences. Despite numerous calls to do so, the Ontario government has yet to implement HIA as a required component of policy development. This dissertation therefore sought to identify the contexts and factors that may both enable and impede HIA use at the sub-national (i.e., provincial, territorial, or state) government level. The three integrated articles of this dissertation provide insights into specific aspects of the policy process as they relate to HIA. Chapter one details a case study of purposive information-seeking among public servants within Ontario’s Ministry of Education (MOE). Situated within Ontario’s Ministry of Health (MOH), chapter two presents a case study of policy collaboration between health and ‘non-health’ ministries. Finally, chapter three details a framework analysis of the political factors supporting health impact tool use in two sub-national jurisdictions – namely, Québec and South Australia. MOE respondents (N=9) identified four components of policymaking ‘due diligence’, including evidence retrieval, consultation and collaboration, referencing, and risk analysis. As prospective HIA users, they also confirmed that information is not routinely sought to mitigate the potential negative health impacts of education-based policies. MOH respondents (N=8) identified the bureaucratic hierarchy as the brokering mechanism for inter-ministerial policy development. As prospective HIA stewards, they also confirmed that the ministry does not proactively flag the potential negative health impacts of non-health sector policies. Finally, ‘lessons learned’ from case articles specific to Québec (n=12) and South Australia (n=17) identified the political factors supporting tool use at different stages of the policy cycle, including agenda setting (‘policy elites’ and ‘political culture’), implementation (‘jurisdiction’), and sustained implementation (‘institutional power’). This work provides important insights into ‘real life’ policymaking. By highlighting existing facilitators of and barriers to HIA use, the findings offer a useful starting point from which proponents may tailor context-specific strategies to sustainably implement HIA at the sub-national government level

    A qualitative study about first year students’ experiences of transitioning to higher education and available academic support resources

    Get PDF
    Successfully transitioning students to higher education is a complex problem that challenges institutions internationally. Unsuccessful transitions have wide ranging implications that include both social and financial impacts for students and the universities. There appears to be a paucity in the literature that represents student perspectives on their transition experiences. This research study aimed to do two things: first to better understand the transition experience and use of academic support services from the student perspective and second to provide strategies for facilitating a more effective transition experience based on student discussions. This research explores the experiences of primarily non-traditional students at one institution in Australia. Data collection involved two phases using a yarning circle approach. The first involved participants in small unstructured yarning circles where they were given the opportunity to speak freely about their transition experience and their use of academic support services. This was then followed by a larger yarning circle that was semi-structured to explore some of the themes from the small yarning circles more fully. The yarning circle data was analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-steps of thematic analysis. The analysis indicated that participants felt that the available academic support services did not meet their needs. It also provided insight into how the students approach higher education and what they are seeking from their institution by means of support. One major finding that has the potential to impact transition programs around the world is that older non-traditional students appear to approach higher education as they would a new job. This shifts the lens away from the traditional transition program of social integration to one that uses workplace induction strategies as a form of integration. The recommendations from this study also include recognising and accepting the emotions associated with transitioning to higher education, reworking the transition strategies for non-traditional students and facilitating opportunities for engagement as opposed to providing them directly

    The determinants of value addition: a crtitical analysis of global software engineering industry in Sri Lanka

    Get PDF
    It was evident through the literature that the perceived value delivery of the global software engineering industry is low due to various facts. Therefore, this research concerns global software product companies in Sri Lanka to explore the software engineering methods and practices in increasing the value addition. The overall aim of the study is to identify the key determinants for value addition in the global software engineering industry and critically evaluate the impact of them for the software product companies to help maximise the value addition to ultimately assure the sustainability of the industry. An exploratory research approach was used initially since findings would emerge while the study unfolds. Mixed method was employed as the literature itself was inadequate to investigate the problem effectively to formulate the research framework. Twenty-three face-to-face online interviews were conducted with the subject matter experts covering all the disciplines from the targeted organisations which was combined with the literature findings as well as the outcomes of the market research outcomes conducted by both government and nongovernment institutes. Data from the interviews were analysed using NVivo 12. The findings of the existing literature were verified through the exploratory study and the outcomes were used to formulate the questionnaire for the public survey. 371 responses were considered after cleansing the total responses received for the data analysis through SPSS 21 with alpha level 0.05. Internal consistency test was done before the descriptive analysis. After assuring the reliability of the dataset, the correlation test, multiple regression test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) test were carried out to fulfil the requirements of meeting the research objectives. Five determinants for value addition were identified along with the key themes for each area. They are staffing, delivery process, use of tools, governance, and technology infrastructure. The cross-functional and self-organised teams built around the value streams, employing a properly interconnected software delivery process with the right governance in the delivery pipelines, selection of tools and providing the right infrastructure increases the value delivery. Moreover, the constraints for value addition are poor interconnection in the internal processes, rigid functional hierarchies, inaccurate selections and uses of tools, inflexible team arrangements and inadequate focus for the technology infrastructure. The findings add to the existing body of knowledge on increasing the value addition by employing effective processes, practices and tools and the impacts of inaccurate applications the same in the global software engineering industry
    • …
    corecore