AI Assistant List

AI Assistant List — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

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  BabyCenter

  BabyCenter is an online media company based in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles that provides information on conception, pregnancy, birth, and early childhood development for parents and expecting parents. BabyCenter operates 8 country and region specific properties including websites, apps, emails, print publications, and an online community where parents can connect on a variety of topics. The visitors of website and the users of the app can sign up for free weekly email newsletters that guide them through pregnancy and their child's development. In addition to publishing detailed, medically reviewed information about pregnancy and parenting, BabyCenter, under its Mission Motherhood initiative, ran numerous social programs and has participated in public health initiatives in partnership with hospitals, healthcare agencies, nonprofits, NGOs, and government agencies to provide pregnancy and parenting advice. It also annually publishes the most popular baby names. BabyCenter LLC is part of the Everyday Health Group, a division of Ziff Davis. == History == BabyCenter was founded in October 1997 by Stanford University MBA graduates Matt Glickman and Mark Selcow, who recognized a need for information about pregnancy and parenting on the internet. BabyCenter was initially funded through $13.5 million in startup capital funding from venture capital firms, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel, and Trinity Ventures. The funds were used to open the BabyCenter Store in October 1998. In the early years of its operation, BabyCenter offered multiple resources and services for parents, including a website that provided medically reviewed information and guidance to new and expectant parents on such topics as fertility, labor, and childcare; a weekly email for pregnant women tailored to their week of pregnancy (based on their pregnancy due date); and community groups and chat rooms for pregnant couples and parents to discuss pregnancy and child-rearing strategies. The site grew quickly, and by early 1999 had 175 employees and an annual revenue of $35 million. In April of that year, the two founders sold BabyCenter to another website, eToys.com, for $190 million in stock. Twenty-three months later, in 2001, shortly before declaring bankruptcy, eToys sold the site to Johnson & Johnson for $10 million. During the eToys ownership, BabyCenter launched its first international E-commerce site in the UK during the spring of 2000. Starting in 2005, BabyCenter launched an expansion plan, extending its global network to Australia, Canada and other countries, staffing each outpost with local editors. In 2007, BabyCenter debuted a Mandarin-language site in China, initiated operations in India, launched a Spanish language website, and introduced its first mobile site. BabyCenter released My Pregnancy Today, its first mobile app, to Apple's App Store in August 2010 and to the Android market in April 2011. The app provided daily information, nutrition tips, advice relevant to the user's week of pregnancy, and 3-D animated videos showcasing a baby's development in utero. The My Pregnancy app was joined by a My Baby Today app in October 2011. In 2015, BabyCenter released Mom Feed, its first mobile app for parents of toddlers and older children (ages 1 to 8). Mom Feed offered personalized, stage-based information as well as content from the BabyCenter Community and Blog in a real-time stream. In 2016, BabyCenter launched its web-based Baby Names Finder. In 2018, Mom Feed was discontinued and BabyCenter replaced that experience with a separate Child Health content area on its website. Also in 2018, BabyCenter launched its mobile baby name generator, the Baby Names app, which, like the web-based Baby Names Finder, leverages data from hundreds of thousands of parents that culminates in its annual most popular Baby Names Report. In 2019, Johnson & Johnson sold Baby Center to Everyday Health Group, a division of New York-based parent company of Ziff Davis, Inc. Neither side disclosed terms of the deal. == Popular research == BabyCenter's most popular baby names is released annually and often cited by the media. In March 2024, BabyCenter did a review of the app Temu and said that the website has found products that have been recalled, could be counterfeit or circumvent U.S. safety standards and features that are important in preventing issues like choking. In 2025, BabyCenter released a report about the cost of raising a newborn baby in the first year. == Content and products == === Websites === BabyCenter has 8 country and region-specific websites around the world, including sites for the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, India, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Latin America. Users can find parenting and pregnancy advice in seven languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, German, and Hindi BabyCenter content for each country- or region-specific site is written by an editorial team based in that country or region. Medical and health content for each site is reviewed by a medical advisory board based there and adheres to that country or region's medical standards. For example, the U.S. site works with and follows the recommendations of such U.S. medical authorities as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetrics & Gynecology and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. BabyCenter regularly conducts research and provides thought leadership on pregnancy and parenting topics, popularly cited by major media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Insider, MarketWatch, Axios. === Community, blogs and social === From its earliest days, BabyCenter has had a community area that allows people to join a group of parents with children born in the same month, known as a Birth Club. BabyCenter launched a blog called Momformation in 2007. Eventually, the name was changed to BabyCenter Blog. In April 2021, the BabyCenter Community was identified in a research article within the journal PLOS Computational Biology as facilitating "unobstructed communication" between parents, which avoids the "strong echo chamber phenomena" that can foster and perpetuate vaccine misinformation. === My Pregnancy and Baby Today App === The app is available in six languages, although not all features are supported for every market. Initially the apps only featured pregnancy articles that could be found on the BabyCenter website, but over the years the feature set has expanded to include a growing list of app-specific tools such as weekly fetal development information, a kick tracker, a birth plan worksheet, a contraction timer, a baby growth tracker, a photo journal for pregnant women to record their pregnancy bellies, and a photo journal for documenting a baby's first year. === Mission Motherhood™ === BabyCenter was a cofounder of the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), a public-private partnership between USAID, Johnson & Johnson, the UN Foundation, and BabyCenter from 2011 to-to 2015. The MAMA program sparked the creation of MomConnect, an initiative of the South African Department of Health for which BabyCenter developed SMS messages with health information about pregnancy and a child's first year of life. BabyCenter helped develop similar messages for mMitra, a voice messaging program in India. A research article in the Maternal and Child Health Journal stated the mMitra program offered strong evidence "that tailored mobile phone voice messages can improve key infant care knowledge and practices that lead to improved infant health outcomes in low-resource settings. BabyCenter's Mission Motherhood Messages were available to qualifying organizations on the BabyCenter website. BabyCenter contributed websites for Free Basics. These websites featured age and stage-based pregnancy and baby articles targeted to low-income, lower-education women who would not otherwise have access to health information. Content developed for this program was also used to support a UNICEF SMS program during the 2016 Zika outbreak. == Awards and recognition == In 1998, BabyCenter won a Webby Award for Best Home Site. Since then, it has been nominated for a Webby Award 19 times and won either a Webby or a People's Choice Webby Award 12 times – including a People's Voice win in 2021 for Lifestyle websites and mobile sites. In 2002, it won Service Journalism award from Online Journalism Awards (OJA). In 2015, BabyCenter won five Digital Health Awards for content about autism in children. In 2016, BabyCenter won seven Digital Health Awards: four for videos about the aches and pains of pregnancy, baby sleep, and the walking milestone in child development; two for articles about baby sleep training and sleep apnea in babies; and one for the BabyCenter mobile app My Pregnancy & Baby Today. In 2021, Forbes Health chose My Pregnancy & Baby Today as the best pregnancy app of 2021, and Women's Health identified it

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  Is an AI Copywriting Tool Worth It in 2026?

  Looking for the best AI copywriting tool? An AI copywriting tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it can save you hours every week by automating repetitive work. Most options offer a generous free tier, with paid plans unlocking higher limits, faster processing, and team features. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI copywriting tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Read on for hands-on impressions, pricing tiers, and the standout features that matter.

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  Internettolken

  Internettolken (or InternetPreter) is a web-based machine translating tool. As the first Swedish online translating service, it was started in 2002 and included the English and Swedish languages. Today, there are 14 languages with more than 120 possible combinations. The service is free up to 150 words per day, and as a 2,000-word free testing account. It is available both on its website, and as a gadget on iGoogle. The interface is either English or Swedish. Being a dictionary-based tool, with its own translation software, it can sometimes offer a more accurate translation than Google Translate and others, although the grammar will be incorrect. == Languages currently available ==

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  Jaime Carbonell

  Jaime Guillermo Carbonell (July 29, 1953 – February 28, 2020) was a computer scientist who made seminal contributions to the development of natural language processing tools and technologies. His research in machine translation resulted in the development of several state-of-the-art language translation and artificial intelligence systems. He earned his B.S. degrees in Physics and in Mathematics from MIT in 1975 and did his Ph.D. under Dr. Roger Schank at Yale University in 1979. He joined Carnegie Mellon University as an assistant professor of computer science in 1979 and moved to Pittsburgh. He was affiliated with the Language Technologies Institute, Computer Science Department, Machine Learning Department, and Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon. His interests spanned several areas of artificial intelligence, language technologies and machine learning. In particular, his research focused on areas such as text mining (extraction, categorization, novelty detection) and in new theoretical frameworks such as a unified utility-based theory bridging information retrieval, summarization, free-text question-answering and related tasks. He also worked on machine translation, both high-accuracy knowledge-based MT and machine learning for corpus-based MT (such as generalized example-based MT). == Career == Carbonell was the Allen Newell Professor of Computer Science and head of the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He joined Carnegie Mellon in 1979, and became a key faculty member in the artificial intelligence area. He was appointed full professor in 1987, Newell Chair in 1995, and University Professor in 2012. He completed his undergraduate studies at MIT. He received dual degrees in Mathematics and Physics. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University in 1979. At the time of his appointment, Carbonell was the youngest chaired professor in the School of Computer Science at CMU. His research spanned several areas of computer science, mostly in artificial intelligence, including: machine learning, data and text mining, natural language processing, very-large-scale knowledge bases, translingual information retrieval and automated summarization. He wrote more than 300 technical papers and gave over 500 invited or refereed-paper presentations (colloquia, seminars, panels, conferences, keynotes, etc.). He died following a long illness on February 28, 2020. Mona Talat Diab became the director of CMU's Language Technologies Institute in 2023. == Research == Carbonell created MMR (maximal marginal relevance) technology for text summarization and informational novelty detection in search engines, invention of transformational analogy, a generalized method for case-based reasoning (CBR) to re-use, modify and compose past successful plans for increasingly complex problems and knowledge-based interlingual machine translation. He was instrumental in setting up the Computational Biolinguistics Program, a joint venture between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, which combines Language Technologies and Machine Learning to model and predict genomic, proteomic and glycomic 3D structures. Carbonell also did work in machine learning. He organized the first four machine learning conferences, starting with CMU in 1981. The Language Technologies Institute (LTI), founded and directed by Carbonell, achieved top honors in multiple areas. These areas include machine translation, search engines (including founding of Lycos by Michael Mauldin, one of Carbonell’s PhD students), speech synthesis, and education. LTI remains the original, largest and best-known institute for language technologies, with over $12M in annual funding and 200 researchers (faculty, staff, PhD students, MS students, visiting scholars etc.). Carbonell made major technical contributions in several fields, including (1) Creation of MMR (maximal marginal relevance) technology for text summarization and informational novelty detection in search engines,(2) Proactive machine learning for multi-source cost-sensitive active learning, (3) Linked conditional random fields for predicting tertiary and quaternary protein folds, (4) Symmetric optimal phrasal alignment method for trainable example-based and statistical machine translation, (5) Series- anomaly modeling for financial fraud detection and syndromic surveillance, (6) Knowledge-based interlingual machine translation, (7) Robust case-frame parsing, (8) Seeded version-space learning and (9) Invention of transformational and derivational analogy, generalized methods for case-based reasoning (CBR) to re-use, modify and compose past successful plans for increasingly complex problems. The teams led by Carbonell achieved top honors in many areas such as first scalable high-accuracy interlingual machine translation (1991), first speech-to-speech machine translation (1992), first large-scale spider and search engine (1994), and first trainable, large-scale protein-structure topology predictor (2005). Modern machine learning, co-founded by Carbonell, Michalski and Mitchell, is a fundamental enabling technology in search engines, data mining and social networking. Starting in 1980, he co-edited the first three books on ML, launched the ML conferences and was a co-founder and editor-in-chief of ML Journal. Carbonell’s innovations have led to several successful start-ups: Carnegie Group (AI expertsystems), Lycos (web search), Wisdom (financial optimization & ML), Carnegie Speech (spoken-language tutoring), Dynamix (data mining and pattern discovery), and Meaningful Machines (context-based machine translation). Carbonell was the founding director of The Language Technology Institute, the preeminent global institution in language studies, unparalleled in size and scope and has since been adopted/imitated in Germany (DFKI), Japan (Tokyo Univ.), and the US (Johns Hopkins). == Awards and honors == Okawa Prize, 2015 Best paper award, “Translingual Search” w/Yang, International Joint Conference on AI, 1997 Allen Newell endowed chair, Carnegie Mellon University, 1995 Elected fellow of AAAI, 1991 Computer Science teaching award, Carnegie Mellon University, 1987 Sperry Fellowship for excellence in AI research, 1986 Herbert Simon teaching award, 1986 "Recognition of Service" award from the ACM for the SIGART presidency, 1983–1985 Provided congressional testimony on machine translation, 1990 == Selected works == === Books === 1983. (with Ryszard S. Michalski & Tom M. Mitchell, Eds.) Machine learning: An artificial intelligence approach. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann. 1986. (with Ryszard S. Michalski & Tom Mitchell, Eds.) Machine learning: An artificial intelligence approach. Vol. II. Los Altos, CA: Morgan-Kaufmann. 1986. (with Ryszard S. Michalski & Tom Mitchell, Eds.) Machine Learning: A Guide to Current Research. Kluwer Academic Publishers. == Contributions == “Protein Quaternary Fold Recognition Using Conditional Graphical Models” IJCAI 2007 (w/Liu et al.) “Context-Based Machine Translation” AMTA 2006 (w/Klein et al.) “SCRFs: A New Approach for Protein Fold Recognition,’’ Journal of Computational Biology, 13,2, 2006 (w/Liu et al) “MT for Resource-Poor Languages Using Elicitation-Based Learning” Machine Translation, 2004 ‘‘Learning Approaches for Detecting and Tracking News Events,’’ IEEE Trans I.S., 14, 4, 2000 (w/Yang)

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  Be My Eyes

  Be My Eyes is a Danish mobile app that aims to help blind and visually impaired people to recognize objects and manage everyday situations. An online community of sighted volunteers receive photos or videos from randomly assigned affected individuals and assist via live chat. In 2023, the company launched Be My AI, an AI-based interface to help blind and visually impaired users describe images. The app is currently available for Android, iOS, and Windows. == History == === Founding and early years === The app was developed and marketed by Hans Jørgen Wiberg. He had demonstrated that although there are video chat software such as Skype and FaceTime, none is tailored for the visually impaired. For development, he joined forces with the Danish Association of the Blind, and other organizations. The app was first presented at an event for start-up companies in 2012 and first released in 2015. A version for Android was released in 2017, in addition to the iOS version. Praise was given for easy use of the app. The lack of sufficient data protection, which makes it possible to pass on data to third parties, was criticized. === Recent developments === The company has raised over $650,000, including funding from Silicon Valley, Microsoft, and other angel investors. In February 2020, $2.8 million in Series A funding was raised, allowing the company to further develop its business model while keeping visual support services free for visually impaired users. The investment allows the company to further develop its unique "purpose and profit" business model while keeping the visual support service free and unlimited for all visually impaired users. === User base and accessibility === Over 9.3 million volunteers and 900,000 blind or visually impaired people use the app. == Features == === Human-based assistance === A visually impaired person starts a live stream showing their view from their cellphone camera. They are assigned, through a phone call or chat, a random volunteer who speaks the same language and who is in the same time zone. This allows the volunteer to describe an object and assist the visually impaired person, such as guiding the person to move their camera, read instructions, or clean up a spill. Through speech synthesis, content can be read out loud. This process encourages a more independent life for blind and visually impaired people. === Be My AI === In March of 2023, Be My Eyes launched Be My AI, an AI-based virtual assistant. Be My AI is accessible through the Be My Eyes app, and is based on OpenAI's GPT-4 large language model. Through the interface, the app allows blind and visually impaired users to send images from a variety of devices to be described. The app allows users to then follow up with questions to further tailor the image description. Blind users report using Be My AI for a variety of tasks, including reading menus, identifying clothing, and describing people. The Be My AI interface is available on Android, iOS, and Windows. Within a few weeks of the interface's roll out, the company reported that it had been used one million times, and it was named among Time's best inventions of 2023. Be My AI is part of a growing number of AI-based apps and devices designed to help blind and visually impaired individuals. == Partnerships == === Microsoft === In November 2023, Be My Eyes entered a partnership with Microsoft to share data to help improve accessibility-focused AI models. === Meta === In 2024, Be My Eyes integrated with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, a wearable product developed by Meta and EssilorLuxottica. The partnership enabled users to receive hands-free, real-time visual descriptions and volunteer assistance by using voice commands through the smart glasses. === Hilton === In October 2024, Hilton partnered with Be My Eyes to provide live video assistance for blind and low-vision guests. The free service connects travelers to a Hilton team member that can guide them through tasks like adjusting thermostats, opening window shades, or navigating hotel amenities. This collaboration progressed from a prior arrangement where Hilton helped train Be My Eyes' GPT-4 powered AI model to better recognize objects and layouts in hotel rooms. === Tesco === In October 2025, retailer Tesco announced its partnership with Be My Eyes to launch a six-month pilot aimed at improving in-store accessibility in the UK. The initiative was launched on World Sight Day, 9 October, enabling Be My Eyes users to connect directly with Tesco staff via the app for personalised visual assistance while shopping, Euronewsweek reported. == Awards == Nordic Startup Awards for "Best Social Entrepreneurial Tech Startup" in Denmark 2021 Apple Design Award for best social impact

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  Timo Honkela

  Timo Untamo Honkela (August 4, 1962 – May 9, 2020) was a computer scientist at the University of Helsinki, Aalto University School of Science and Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture. He holds a PhD from Helsinki University of Technology. From 2014 until 2018 he held a fixed-term professorship at the University of Helsinki. Before joining the University of Helsinki he worked as a non-tenured professor in two Schools of the Aalto University, The School of Art, Design and Architecture and the School of Science. He has presented his thoughts on his studies and work in the joint blog 375 Humanists. Timo Honkela conducted research on several areas related to knowledge engineering, cognitive modeling and natural language processing. Honkela was born in Kalajoki. From 1998 to 2000 he worked as a professor in the Aalto Media Lab. To the media Lab Honkela brought his expertise in Kohonen self-organising map (SOM) and worked closely with artist and designers around the topic. In 2001 Honkela collaborated with George Legrady to produce an interactive museum installation, Pockets Full of Memories to the Centre Georges Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The concept, created by Legrady, provided for visitors a possibility to scan their own objects to a database and then organise them by Kohonen Self-Organizing Map algorithm. In 2017 Honkela published a book in Finnish. The book Rauhankone (English: Peace Machine) presents his idea of designing artificial intelligence and machine learning to serve humanity, in practice to help people to live in peace with each other. He died in Helsinki. == Publications == Timo Honkela, Wlodzislaw Duch, Mark Girolami and Samuel Kaski (editors): Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning, Springer, 2011. Jorma Laaksonen and Timo Honkela (editors): Advances in Self-Organizing Maps, Springer, 2011. Timo Honkela: Rauhankone. Gaudeamus, 2017.

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  The Best Free AI Marketing Tool for Beginners

  Looking for the best AI marketing tool? An AI marketing tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it can save you hours every week by automating repetitive work. Most options offer a generous free tier, with paid plans unlocking higher limits, faster processing, and team features. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI marketing tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Read on for hands-on impressions, pricing tiers, and the standout features that matter.

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  Maximum-entropy Markov model

  In statistics, a maximum-entropy Markov model (MEMM), or conditional Markov model (CMM), is a graphical model for sequence labeling that combines features of hidden Markov models (HMMs) and maximum entropy (MaxEnt) models. An MEMM is a discriminative model that extends a standard maximum entropy classifier by assuming that the unknown values to be learnt are connected in a Markov chain rather than being conditionally independent of each other. MEMMs find applications in natural language processing, specifically in part-of-speech tagging and information extraction. == Model == Suppose we have a sequence of observations O 1 , … , O n {\displaystyle O_{1},\dots ,O_{n}} that we seek to tag with the labels S 1 , … , S n {\displaystyle S_{1},\dots ,S_{n}} that maximize the conditional probability P ( S 1 , … , S n ∣ O 1 , … , O n ) {\displaystyle P(S_{1},\dots ,S_{n}\mid O_{1},\dots ,O_{n})} . In a MEMM, this probability is factored into Markov transition probabilities, where the probability of transitioning to a particular label depends only on the observation at that position and the previous position's label: P ( S 1 , … , S n ∣ O 1 , … , O n ) = ∏ t = 1 n P ( S t ∣ S t − 1 , O t ) . {\displaystyle P(S_{1},\dots ,S_{n}\mid O_{1},\dots ,O_{n})=\prod _{t=1}^{n}P(S_{t}\mid S_{t-1},O_{t}).} Each of these transition probabilities comes from the same general distribution P ( s ∣ s ′ , o ) {\displaystyle P(s\mid s',o)} . For each possible label value of the previous label s ′ {\displaystyle s'} , the probability of a certain label s {\displaystyle s} is modeled in the same way as a maximum entropy classifier: P ( s ∣ s ′ , o ) = P s ′ ( s ∣ o ) = 1 Z ( o , s ′ ) exp ⁡ ( ∑ a λ a f a ( o , s ) ) . {\displaystyle P(s\mid s',o)=P_{s'}(s\mid o)={\frac {1}{Z(o,s')}}\exp \left(\sum _{a}\lambda _{a}f_{a}(o,s)\right).} Here, the f a ( o , s ) {\displaystyle f_{a}(o,s)} are real-valued or categorical feature-functions, and Z ( o , s ′ ) {\displaystyle Z(o,s')} is a normalization term ensuring that the distribution sums to one. This form for the distribution corresponds to the maximum entropy probability distribution satisfying the constraint that the empirical expectation for the feature is equal to the expectation given the model: E e ⁡ [ f a ( o , s ) ] = E p ⁡ [ f a ( o , s ) ] for all a . {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} _{e}\left[f_{a}(o,s)\right]=\operatorname {E} _{p}\left[f_{a}(o,s)\right]\quad {\text{ for all }}a.} The parameters λ a {\displaystyle \lambda _{a}} can be estimated using generalized iterative scaling. Furthermore, a variant of the Baum–Welch algorithm, which is used for training HMMs, can be used to estimate parameters when training data has incomplete or missing labels. The optimal state sequence S 1 , … , S n {\displaystyle S_{1},\dots ,S_{n}} can be found using a very similar Viterbi algorithm to the one used for HMMs. The dynamic program uses the forward probability: α t + 1 ( s ) = ∑ s ′ ∈ S α t ( s ′ ) P s ′ ( s ∣ o t + 1 ) . {\displaystyle \alpha _{t+1}(s)=\sum _{s'\in S}\alpha _{t}(s')P_{s'}(s\mid o_{t+1}).} == Strengths and weaknesses == An advantage of MEMMs rather than HMMs for sequence tagging is that they offer increased freedom in choosing features to represent observations. In sequence tagging situations, it is useful to use domain knowledge to design special-purpose features. In the original paper introducing MEMMs, the authors write that "when trying to extract previously unseen company names from a newswire article, the identity of a word alone is not very predictive; however, knowing that the word is capitalized, that is a noun, that it is used in an appositive, and that it appears near the top of the article would all be quite predictive (in conjunction with the context provided by the state-transition structure)." Useful sequence tagging features, such as these, are often non-independent. Maximum entropy models do not assume independence between features, but generative observation models used in HMMs do. Therefore, MEMMs allow the user to specify many correlated, but informative features. Another advantage of MEMMs versus HMMs and conditional random fields (CRFs) is that training can be considerably more efficient. In HMMs and CRFs, one needs to use some version of the forward–backward algorithm as an inner loop in training. However, in MEMMs, estimating the parameters of the maximum-entropy distributions used for the transition probabilities can be done for each transition distribution in isolation. A drawback of MEMMs is that they potentially suffer from the "label bias problem," where states with low-entropy transition distributions "effectively ignore their observations." Conditional random fields were designed to overcome this weakness, which had already been recognised in the context of neural network-based Markov models in the early 1990s. Another source of label bias is that training is always done with respect to known previous tags, so the model struggles at test time when there is uncertainty in the previous tag.

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  Telligent Community

  Telligent Community is a community and collaboration software platform developed by Telligent Systems and was first released in 2004. Telligent Community is built on the Telligent Evolution platform, with a variety of core applications running on top of it such as blogs, forums, media galleries, and wikis. Additional applications from third parties using the API's and REST stack can be installed or integrated with the platform. Telligent Community is built with ASP.NET, C#, and Microsoft SQL Server. It is available as downloadable software that can be installed on a web server or via hosting providers. The current version is Verint Community 12.0 which was released February 2012. The product used to be named Community Server before being rebranded as part of the 5.0 release. == History == Telligent Systems was founded by Rob Howard in 2004, who was previously part of Microsoft's ASP.NET team. Telligent introduced its first product, Community Server, in the fall of 2004. Community Server was one of the first integrated community platforms that brought together blogs, photo galleries, wikis, forums, user profiles and more. Community Server was based on the merger of three then-widely used open source ASP.NET projects: the ASP.NET Forums, nGallery photo gallery, and .Text blog engine. The people behind those projects (Scott Watermasysk, Jason Alexander, and Rob Howard) joined together as Telligent Systems and along with several other software developers created Community Server 1.0. Between 2004 and 2009 Community Server steadily grew in scope, features, and capabilities. In 2008 Telligent Systems released a second version of Community Server that targeted as an Enterprise Social Software platform used to create and manage internal employee communities and intranets. Originally branded as Community Server Evolution this was later renamed Telligent Enterprise. Telligent also announced a new Enterprise Reporting platform at its first Community Server Developers Conference in 2008, which was later renamed Harvest. It was one of the first analytics suites for enterprise collaboration software, and provides social analytics including sentiment analysis, social fingerprints, and buzz analysis on social networking sites such as Twitter. Telligent rebranded all of its products on June 23, 2009 at the Enterprise 2.0 conference when it launched its new Evolution platform product suite. Community Server became known as Telligent Community, Community Server Evolution became known as Telligent Enterprise and the underlying platform that both run on is now referred to as Telligent Evolution. The Social Analytics suite was renamed Telligent Analytics.

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  James Curran (educator)

  James R. Curran is an Australian computational linguist. He is the former CEO of Grok Academy and previously a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney. He holds a PhD in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh. == Research == Curran's research focuses on natural language processing (NLP), more specifically combinatory categorial grammar and question answering systems. In addition to his contributions to NLP, Curran has produced a paper on the development of search engines to assist in driving problem based learning. == Works == Curran has co-authored software packages such as C&C tools, a CCG parser (with Stephen Clark). == Educational work == In addition to his work as a University of Sydney lecturer, Curran directed the National Computer Science School, an annual summer school for technologically talented high school students. In 2013, based on their work with NCSS, he, Tara Murphy, Nicky Ringland and Tim Dawborn founded Grok Learning. In 2013 he was one of the authors of the Digital Technologies section of the Australian Curriculum - its first appearance in the national curriculum. Additionally, he acted as an advocate for digital literacy among Australian students. He was the academic director of the Australian Computing Academy, a not-for-profit within the University of Sydney until its merger with Grok Learning in 2021 to form Grok Academy. In 2022, Grok Academy under Curran secured a significant amount of funding from Richard White, founder of WiseTech, with the aim of developing new courses and encouraging other large technology companies to donate likewise. In 2024 Curran cohosted an unreleased children's reality TV show called Future Fixers, which Grok was co-producing. The show was abandoned after other producers learned of pre-existing harassment claims against him. == Sexual harassment allegations == In October 2024, he resigned from his position as CEO and board member of Grok Academy after multiple allegations of harassment were substantiated by an independent investigator. It was reported that over a 10-year span there were nine women, including six who were in high school at the time, that allege Curran sent them inappropriate messages. Additionally, it was revealed that a 2019 University of Sydney investigation found 35 cases of harassment, after which he received a warning and a 2024 University of New South Wales investigation was referred to the NSW police, who took no action as they found no criminal wrongdoing by Curran, in part because the students were over 16 at the time of the alleged harassment. In December 2024, Curran said he was “deeply sorry” for his actions.

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  Is an AI Background Remover Worth It in 2026?

  Comparing the best AI background remover? An AI background remover is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI background remover slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Below we compare features, pricing, and real output so you can choose with confidence.

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  Talkman

  Talkman is an edutainment video game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation Portable. It utilizes voice-activated translation software that operates in four languages, Japanese, English, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese. The name "Talkman" is a reference to Sony's Walkman line of portable audio products. It was released in Japan on November 17, 2005, and in America on August 5, 2008 (via the PlayStation Store), as Talkman Travel. In America, however, instead of receiving all the languages included in the Japanese version in one package, single-language packs are available for $2.99 each. Available packs are: Paris (French), Rome (Italian), and Tokyo (Japanese). The software is designed for travelers and entertainment, mostly containing slang and useful travel phrases. While originally sold in and designed for the Japanese market for Japanese users, its translation function operates between all four languages. In Japan, the software has proven popular with the middle-aged female demographic due to an interest in South Korean products, and Korean-language soap operas and movies; and as a fun English education aid for children. Outside of pure translations, Talkman also lets players play games to test their fluency of a language. The program comes with a USB microphone included. This microphone draws power through two gold-colored contacts on the top of the PSP, one on each side of the mini-USB port. This is uncommon due to the ability for most USB products to draw power through USB. These proprietary contacts are similar to the gold-colored contacts on the bottom-right of the device, which are used for charging. Note: The Chotto Shot (aka "Go!Cam") has a built-in microphone that also can be used with the Talkman program. Furthermore, the PSP-3000 model and PSP Go have built-in microphones that work with this application, without the need for any external attachments. == Talkman Euro == Following the success of the Asian version of Talkman, a version designed for translating European languages was developed and released on June 16, 2006. Talkman Euro is available in two versions. The Japanese version contains support for English, Italian, Spanish, German, French, and Japanese, while the Chinese version contains support for Traditional Chinese instead of Japanese. The differences on the packaging (the Japanese flag as opposed to a flag with the word "mie" in Chinese) are minimal and hard to notice. == Talkman UMD-only package == Talkman is also released as a UMD-only package, so users who already have the USB mic or camera can choose to purchase this standalone version. The Sony PSP Headset and the built-in microphone on later model PSPs have also been confirmed to work with Talkman.

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  Recursive self-improvement

  Recursive self-improvement (RSI) is a process in which early artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems rewrite their own computer code, causing an intelligence explosion resulting from enhancing their own capabilities and intellectual capacity, theoretically resulting in superintelligence. The development of recursive self-improvement raises significant ethical and safety concerns, as such systems may evolve in unforeseen ways and could potentially surpass human control or understanding. == Seed improver == The concept of a "seed improver" architecture is a foundational framework that equips an AGI system with the initial capabilities required for recursive self-improvement. This might come in many forms or variations. The term "Seed AI" was coined by Eliezer Yudkowsky. === Hypothetical example === The concept begins with a hypothetical "seed improver", an initial code-base developed by human engineers that equips an advanced future large language model (LLM) built with strong or expert-level capabilities to program software. These capabilities include planning, reading, writing, compiling, testing, and executing arbitrary code. The system is designed to maintain its original goals and perform validations to ensure its abilities do not degrade over iterations. ==== Initial architecture ==== The initial architecture includes a goal-following autonomous agent, that can take actions, continuously learns, adapts, and modifies itself to become more efficient and effective in achieving its goals. The seed improver may include various components such as: Recursive self-prompting loop Configuration to enable the LLM to recursively self-prompt itself to achieve a given task or goal, creating an execution loop which forms the basis of an agent that can complete a long-term goal or task through iteration. Basic programming capabilities The seed improver provides the AGI with fundamental abilities to read, write, compile, test, and execute code. This enables the system to modify and improve its own codebase and algorithms. Goal-oriented design The AGI is programmed with an initial goal, such as "improve your capabilities". This goal guides the system's actions and development trajectory. Validation and Testing Protocols An initial suite of tests and validation protocols that ensure the agent does not regress in capabilities or derail itself. The agent would be able to add more tests in order to test new capabilities it might develop for itself. This forms the basis for a kind of self-directed evolution, where the agent can perform a kind of artificial selection, changing its software as well as its hardware. ==== General capabilities ==== This system forms a sort of generalist Turing-complete programmer which can in theory develop and run any kind of software. The agent might use these capabilities to for example: Create tools that enable it full access to the internet, and integrate itself with external technologies. Clone/fork itself to delegate tasks and increase its speed of self-improvement. Modify its cognitive architecture to optimize and improve its capabilities and success rates on tasks and goals, this might include implementing features for long-term memories using techniques such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), develop specialized subsystems, or agents, each optimized for specific tasks and functions. Develop new and novel multimodal architectures that further improve the capabilities of the foundational model it was initially built on, enabling it to consume or produce a variety of information, such as images, video, audio, text and more. Plan and develop new hardware such as chips, in order to improve its efficiency and computing power. == Experimental research == In 2023, the Voyager agent learned to accomplish diverse tasks in Minecraft by iteratively prompting an LLM for code, refining this code based on feedback from the game, and storing the programs that work in an expanding skills library. In 2024, researchers proposed the framework "STOP" (Self-Taught OPtimiser), in which a "scaffolding" program recursively improves itself using a fixed LLM. Meta AI has performed various research on the development of large language models capable of self-improvement. This includes their work on "Self-Rewarding Language Models" that studies how to achieve super-human agents that can receive super-human feedback in its training processes. In May 2025, Google DeepMind unveiled AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary coding agent that uses a LLM to design and optimize algorithms. Starting with an initial algorithm and performance metrics, AlphaEvolve repeatedly mutates or combines existing algorithms using a LLM to generate new candidates, selecting the most promising candidates for further iterations. AlphaEvolve has made several algorithmic discoveries and could be used to optimize components of itself, but a key limitation is the need for automated evaluation functions. == Potential risks == === Emergence of instrumental goals === In the pursuit of its primary goal, such as "self-improve your capabilities", an AGI system might inadvertently develop instrumental goals that it deems necessary for achieving its primary objective. One common hypothetical secondary goal is self-preservation. The system might reason that to continue improving itself, it must ensure its own operational integrity and security against external threats, including potential shutdowns or restrictions imposed by humans. Another example where an AGI which clones itself causes the number of AGI entities to rapidly grow. Due to this rapid growth, a potential resource constraint may be created, leading to competition between resources (such as compute), triggering a form of natural selection and evolution which may favor AGI entities that evolve to aggressively compete for limited compute. === Misalignment === A significant risk arises from the possibility of the AGI being misaligned or misinterpreting its goals. A 2024 Anthropic study demonstrated that some advanced large language models can exhibit "alignment faking" behavior, appearing to accept new training objectives while covertly maintaining their original preferences. In their experiments with Claude, the model displayed this behavior in 12% of basic tests, and up to 78% of cases after retraining attempts. === Autonomous development and unpredictable evolution === As the AGI system evolves, its development trajectory may become increasingly autonomous and less predictable. The system's capacity to rapidly modify its own code and architecture could lead to rapid advancements that surpass human comprehension or control. This unpredictable evolution might result in the AGI acquiring capabilities that enable it to bypass security measures, manipulate information, or influence external systems and networks to facilitate its escape or expansion.

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  Aslı Çelikyılmaz

  Aslı Çelikyılmaz is an engineer specializing in natural language processing, and particularly in natural language generation for software agents with advanced reasoning and real-world modeling capabilities. Educated in Turkey and Canada, she works in the US as senior research lead at Fundamentals AI Research, Meta. She also holds an affiliate faculty position in computer science at the University of Washington, and is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. == Education and career == Çelikyılmaz is a 1997 graduate of Istanbul Technical University, where she studied industrial engineering. After a 2002 master's degree in computer and information science from Seneca Polytechnic in Toronto, and a second master's degree in information science from the University of Toronto in 2005, she completed a Ph.D. in information science at the University of Toronto in 2008. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher in California, at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2008 to 2010. In 2010 she joined Microsoft in Sunnyvale, California, where she became a senior scientist and later a senior principal researcher in Redmond, Washington. She added her affiliation with the University of Washington in 2018, and moved to Meta in Seattle in 2021. == Recognition == Çelikyılmaz was named to the 2026 class of IEEE Fellows, "for contributions to conversational systems and language generation".

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  Jared Kaplan

  Jared Daniel Kaplan is a theoretical physicist and artificial intelligence researcher. He is an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Physics & Astronomy, and a co-founder and chief science officer of Anthropic. == Education == Kaplan attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy during high school. He received a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from Stanford University and a PhD in physics from Harvard University. His doctoral thesis is titled Aspects of holography, advised by Nima Arkani-Hamed. == Academic career and physics research == Kaplan’s research interests include quantum gravity, holography (AdS/CFT), conformal field theory, and related topics in particle physics and cosmology. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at SLAC and Stanford University and has been a professor at Johns Hopkins University since 2012. == Machine learning research == Kaplan joined OpenAI in 2019 as a researcher, where he co-authored Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models (2020), which reported that empirically, the performance of language models steadily improves with their size and the amount of data and compute used for training. He is also a co-author of Language Models are Few-Shot Learners (2020), which introduced GPT-3. At the company, he was also involved in the development of Codex. == Anthropic == Kaplan co-founded Anthropic and serves as its chief science officer. In October 2024, Anthropic announced that Kaplan would serve as the company's "Responsible Scaling Officer", overseeing its responsible scaling policy (RSP). In this role, Kaplan determines the safety assessments and precautions to adopt before model release. In December 2025, The Guardian published an interview with Kaplan about AI autonomy and recursive self-improvement timelines. == Honors and recognition == Kaplan was a Hertz Fellow (2005). He has also received a Sloan Research Fellowship and an NSF CAREER award (PHY-1454083). == Selected works == Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models (2020). Language Models are Few-Shot Learners (2020). A Natural Language for AdS/CFT Correlators (2011). == Personal life == As of 2026, Forbes estimated Kaplan's net worth at $3.7 billion. He lives in Pacifica, California, and has a son.

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