AI reveals
authors of
anonymous
19th century
texts on
evolution
Proximus increases
tenfold the capacity of
its transport network
W
ith the help of modern AI software,
representatives at the University of
Antwerp have discovered the authors of two
early papers on evolution.
Some anonymously published papers on
evolution far predate the publication of
Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859).
With the help of modern AI software,
Koen Tanghe (UGent) and Mike Kestemont
(UAntwerpen) have revealed the authors of
two of these papers.
Due to their speculative and controversial
nature, several articles on evolution were
published anonymously during this early
but influential blossoming of evolutionary
thought. Two particularly remarkable articles
were published in 1826 and 1827. They
are among the first academic publications
on evolution in Great Britain and are
likely to have influenced and maybe even
inspired Darwin. However, the question of
the authorship of these texts has always
remained open.
Koen Tanghe (UGent) and Mike Kestemont
(UAntwerpen) have now turned to Artificial
Intelligence to investigate this mystery
from a completely new angle. In the field
of stylometry, algorithms are developed to
attribute anonymous texts to authors on the
basis of stylistic patterns in writing, such as
word frequencies.
By using a state-of-the-art method for
authorship verification, they have succeeded
in confirming content-based conjectures
about the identity of the authors of these
anonymous texts. The results affirm what
several scholars suspected but could not
prove, with the help of AI.
Computational stylometry has already
proven its value in resolving cases of
disputed authorship in literary works and
will, in the future, undoubtedly also further
advance the history of science.
www.intelligentcio.com
P
roximus, headquartered in Belgium,
a leader in telecommunications,
innovates and invests heavily in the
modernisation of its transport network
which interconnects all its sites and
centralised service platforms. With its
TITAN project, Proximus anticipates the
sustained exponential growth of data
traffic and strengthens the backbone
of its network for the coming decade.
The complete migration of all fixed and
mobile voice and data services to the new
infrastructure has already begun and will
continue into 2021.
The telecom sector has undergone a
dramatic development, reflected in an
exponential rise in demand for bandwidth.
Traffic is expected to increase tenfold over
the next decade, driven on the one hand by
video, streaming, audio and cloud services,
and on the other by further growth in the
number of devices requiring higher speeds.
To support this trend, Proximus innovates
and invests heavily both in the access
network – via the deployment of
optical fibre, as well as high-speed DSL
(vectoring) and the reinforcement of the
mobile network – and in the underlying
infrastructure which interconnects all
the Proximus sites and its centralised
service platforms.
The TITAN network (an acronym for
Terabit IP Transport Aggregation
Network) will gradually replace the
existing IP network which carries almost
all the voice, data, TV and mobile traffic
of our residential and professional
customers. This will lead to
a tenfold increase in data capacity
and will facilitate the development of
new services.
To ensure a smooth migration to its new
TITAN network, Proximus will gradually
replace almost 800 major transmission
hubs and reconnect 50,000 optical fibre
connections in 600 buildings. These
infrastructure works will be spread over
2018–21.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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