AI Code Fixer

AI Code Fixer — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Moving object detection

    Moving object detection

    Moving object detection is a technique used in computer vision and image processing. Multiple consecutive frames from a video are compared by various methods to determine if any moving object is detected. Moving objects detection has been used for wide range of applications like video surveillance, activity recognition, road condition monitoring, airport safety, monitoring of protection along marine border, etc. == Definition == Moving object detection is to recognize the physical movement of an object in a given place or region. By acting segmentation among moving objects and stationary area or region, the moving objects' motion can be tracked and thus analyzed later. To achieve this, consider a video is a structure built upon single frames, moving object detection is to find the foreground moving target(s), either in each video frame or only when the moving target shows the first appearance in the video. == Traditional methods == Among all the traditional moving object detection methods, we could categorize them into four major approaches: Background subtraction, Frame differencing, Temporal Differencing, and Optical Flow. === Frame differencing === Instead of using traditional approach, to use image subtraction operator by subtracting second and images afterwards, the frame differencing method makes comparisons between two successive frames to detect moving targets. === Temporal differencing === The temporal differencing method identifies the moving object by applying pixel-wise difference method with two or three consecutive frames.

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  • Corpus manager

    Corpus manager

    A corpus manager (corpus browser or corpus query system) is a tool for multilingual corpus analysis, which allows effective searching in corpora. A corpus manager usually represents a complex tool that allows one to perform searches for language forms or sequences. It may provide information about the context or allow the user to search by positional attributes, such as lemma, tag, etc. These are called concordances. Other features include the ability to search for collocations, frequency statistics as well as metadata information about the processed text. The narrower meaning of corpus manager refers only to the server side or the corpus query engine, whereas the client side is simply called the user interface. A corpus manager can be software installed on a personal computer or it might be provided as a web service. == List of corpus managers == BNCweb – a web-based interface for the British National Corpus CQPweb - a web-based interface for the study of a large variety of corpora including the Spoken BNC2014 BYU-BNC – a website that allows searches of the British National Corpora and others created at Brigham Young University Coma – a tool extension of the system EXMARaLDA for working with oral corpora on a computer NoSketch Engine – a free open-source corpus management system combining Manatee (back-end) and Bonito (web interface) KonText – an extended and modified web interface to NoSketch Engine (a Bonito replacement) Sketch Engine – text corpus management and analysis software with more than 500 corpora in 90+ languages Spoco WordSmith Tools – a software package primarily for linguists

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  • Cortana (virtual assistant)

    Cortana (virtual assistant)

    Cortana is a discontinued virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for users. Cortana was available in English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese language editions, depending on the software platform and region in which it was used. In 2019, Microsoft began reducing the prevalence of Cortana and converting it from an assistant into different software integrations. It was split from the Windows 10 search bar in April 2019. In January 2020, the Cortana mobile app was removed from certain markets, and on March 31, 2021, the Cortana mobile app was shut down globally. On June 2, 2023, Microsoft announced that support for the Cortana standalone app on Microsoft Windows would end in late 2023 and would be replaced by Microsoft Copilot, an AI chatbot. Support for Cortana in the Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 mobile apps was discontinued in fall of 2023. == History == === Beginnings (2009–2014) === The development of Cortana started in 2009 in the Microsoft Speech products team with general manager Zig Serafin and Chief Scientist Larry Heck. Heck and Serafin established the vision, mission, and long-range plan for Microsoft's digital personal assistant and they built a team with the expertise to create the initial prototypes for Cortana. Some of the key researchers in these early efforts included Microsoft Research researchers Dilek Hakkani-Tür, Gokhan Tur, Andreas Stolcke, and Malcolm Slaney, research software developer Madhu Chinthakunta, and user experience designer Lisa Stifelman. To develop the Cortana digital assistant, the team interviewed human personal assistants. The interviews inspired a number of unique features in Cortana, including the assistant's "notebook" feature. Originally, Cortana was meant to be only a codename, but a petition on Windows Phone's UserVoice site proved to be popular and made the codename official. Cortana was demonstrated for the first time at the Microsoft Build developer conference in San Francisco in April 2014. It was launched as a key ingredient of Microsoft's planned "makeover" of future operating systems for Windows Phone and Windows. It was named after Cortana, a synthetic intelligence character in Microsoft's Halo video game franchise originating in Bungie folklore, with Jen Taylor, the character's voice actress, returning to voice the personal assistant's US-specific version. === Expansion (2015–2018) === In January 2015, Microsoft announced the availability of Cortana for Windows 10 desktops and mobile devices as part of merging Windows Phone into the operating system at large. On May 26, 2015, Microsoft announced that Cortana would also be available on other mobile platforms. An Android release was set for July 2015, but the Android APK file containing Cortana was leaked ahead of its release. It was officially released, along with an iOS version, in December 2015. During E3 2015, Microsoft announced that Cortana would come to the Xbox One as part of a universally designed Windows 10 update for the console. Microsoft integrated Cortana into numerous products such as Microsoft Edge. Microsoft's Cortana assistant was deeply integrated into the browser. Cortana was able to find opening hours when on restaurant sites, show retail coupons for websites, or show weather information in the address bar. At the Worldwide Partners Conference 2015 Microsoft demonstrated Cortana integration with products such as GigJam. Conversely, Microsoft announced in late April 2016 that it would block anything other than Bing and Edge from being used to complete Cortana searches, again raising questions of anti-competitive practices by the company. Microsoft's "Windows in the car" concept included Cortana. The concept makes it possible for drivers to make restaurant reservations and see places before they go there. At Microsoft Build 2016, Microsoft announced plans to integrate Cortana into Skype (Microsoft's video-conferencing and instant messaging service) as a bot to allow users to order food, book trips, transcribe video messages and make calendar appointments through Cortana in addition to other bots. As of 2016, Cortana was able to underline certain words and phrases in Skype conversations that relate to contacts and corporations. A writer from Engadget has criticised the Cortana integration in Skype for responding only to very specific keywords, feeling as if she was "chatting with a search engine" due to the impersonal way the bots replied to certain words such as "Hello" causing the Bing Music bot to bring up Adele's song of that name. Microsoft also announced at Microsoft Build 2016 that Cortana would be able to cloud-synchronise notifications between Windows 10 Mobile's and Windows 10's Action Center, as well as notifications from Android devices. In December 2016, Microsoft announced the preview of Calendar.help, a service that enabled people to delegate the scheduling of meetings to Cortana. Users interact with Cortana by including her in email conversations. Cortana would then check people's availability in Outlook Calendar or Google Calendar, and work with others Cc'd on the email to schedule the meeting. The service relied on automation and human-based computation. In May 2017, Microsoft announced INVOKE, a voice-activated speaker featuring Cortana, in collaboration with Harman Kardon. The premium speaker has a cylindrical design and offers 360-degree sound, the ability to make and receive calls with Skype, and all of the other features currently available with Cortana. In 2017, Microsoft partnered with Amazon to integrate Echo and Cortana with each other, allowing users of each smart assistant to summon the other via a command. This feature preview was released in August 2018. Windows 10 users were able to just say "Hey Cortana, open Alexa" and Echo users were able to say "Alexa, open Cortana" to summon the other assistant. === Decreasing focus and discontinuation (2019–2024) === In January 2019, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that he no longer saw Cortana as a direct competitor against Alexa and Siri. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft began reducing the prevalence of Cortana and converting it from an assistant into different software integrations. It was split from the Windows 10 search bar in April 2019. In January 2020, the Cortana mobile app was removed from certain markets, and then, on July 24, 2020, Cortana was removed from the Xbox dashboard as part of a redesign. On January 31, 2021, Microsoft removed the Cortana mobile application in many markets, including the UK, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India. On March 31, 2021, Microsoft shut down the Cortana apps globally for iOS and Android and removed the apps entirely from their corresponding app stores. To access previously recorded content, users had to use Cortana on Windows 10 or other specialized Microsoft applications. Microsoft also reduced emphasis on Cortana in Windows with the 2021 release of Windows 11. Cortana was not used during the device setup process or pinned to the taskbar by default. On June 2, 2023, Microsoft announced the Cortana standalone app on Windows 10 and Windows 11 which would shut down later in the year. In its support article, Microsoft listed several alternatives, most of which have since been rebranded as Microsoft Copilot. They also added that the change would not impact Cortana in Office 365 and Teams environments. On August 11, 2023, Microsoft updated the Cortana standalone app in Windows, informing that it was deprecated and can no longer be used. Microsoft's support article announcing the deprecation of Cortana was updated to reflect this change. Along with the deprecation of the standalone app, it was announced that Cortana support in Teams mobile, Microsoft Teams displays, and Teams rooms would end in late 2023. The support article states that Cortana in the “Play my emails” feature of the Microsoft Outlook mobile app would continue to be available. Later in June 2024, the support article was updated, stating that Cortana in the voice search and the "Play my emails" feature is now removed from the Microsoft Outlook mobile app, officially marking the discontinuation of Cortana across all Microsoft products. On May 22, 2024, Microsoft announced the Windows 11 24H2 update, which removed Cortana, Tips, and WordPad from systems. == Functionality == Cortana was able to set reminders, recognize natural voice without the requirement for keyboard input, and answer questions using information from the Bing search engine. Searches using Windows 10 are made only with the Microsoft Bing search engine, and all links will open with Microsoft Edge, except when a screen reader such as Narrator was being used, where the links will open in Internet Explorer. Windows Phone 8.1's universal Bing SmartSearch features were incorporated into Cortana, which replaced the

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  • How to Choose an AI Video Editor

    How to Choose an AI Video Editor

    In search of the best AI video editor? An AI video editor is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it turns a rough idea into a polished result in seconds. When choosing one, weigh output quality, pricing, export formats, and how well it fits the tools you already use. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI video editor slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.

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  • Robinson compass mask

    Robinson compass mask

    In image processing, a Robinson compass mask is a type of compass mask used for edge detection. It has eight major compass orientations, each will extract the edges in respect to its direction. A combined use of compass masks of different directions could detect the edges from different angles. == Technical explanation == The Robinson compass mask is defined by taking a single mask and rotating it to form eight orientations: North: [ − 1 0 1 − 2 0 2 − 1 0 1 ] {\displaystyle {\text{North:}}{\begin{bmatrix}-1&0&1\\-2&0&2\\-1&0&1\end{bmatrix}}} North West: [ 0 1 2 − 1 0 1 − 2 − 1 0 ] {\displaystyle {\text{North West:}}{\begin{bmatrix}0&1&2\\-1&0&1\\-2&-1&0\end{bmatrix}}} West: [ 1 2 1 0 0 0 − 1 − 2 − 1 ] {\displaystyle {\text{West:}}{\begin{bmatrix}1&2&1\\0&0&0\\-1&-2&-1\end{bmatrix}}} South West: [ 2 1 0 1 0 − 1 0 − 1 − 2 ] {\displaystyle {\text{South West:}}{\begin{bmatrix}2&1&0\\1&0&-1\\0&-1&-2\end{bmatrix}}} South: [ 1 0 − 1 2 0 − 2 1 0 − 1 ] {\displaystyle {\text{South:}}{\begin{bmatrix}1&0&-1\\2&0&-2\\1&0&-1\end{bmatrix}}} South East: [ 0 − 1 − 2 1 0 − 1 2 1 0 ] {\displaystyle {\text{South East:}}{\begin{bmatrix}0&-1&-2\\1&0&-1\\2&1&0\end{bmatrix}}} East: [ − 1 − 2 − 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 ] {\displaystyle {\text{East:}}{\begin{bmatrix}-1&-2&-1\\0&0&0\\1&2&1\end{bmatrix}}} North East: [ − 2 − 1 0 − 1 0 1 0 1 2 ] {\displaystyle {\text{North East:}}{\begin{bmatrix}-2&-1&0\\-1&0&1\\0&1&2\end{bmatrix}}} The direction axis is the line of zeros in the matrix. Robinson compass mask is similar to kirsch compass masks, but is simpler to implement. Since the matrix coefficients only contains 0, 1, 2, and are symmetrical, only the results of four masks need to be calculated, the other four results are the negation of the first four results. An edge, or contour is an tiny area with neighboring distinct pixel values. The convolution of each mask with the image would create a high value output where there is a rapid change of pixel value, thus an edge point is found. All the detected edge points would line up as edges. == Example == An example of Robinson compass masks applied to the original image. Obviously, the edges in the direction of the mask is enhanced.

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  • Levenshtein automaton

    Levenshtein automaton

    In computer science, a Levenshtein automaton for a string w and a number n is a finite-state automaton that can recognize the set of all strings whose Levenshtein distance from w is at most n. That is, a string x is in the formal language recognized by the Levenshtein automaton if and only if x can be transformed into w by at most n single-character insertions, deletions, and substitutions. == Applications == Levenshtein automata may be used for spelling correction, by finding words in a given dictionary that are close to a misspelled word. In this application, once a word is identified as being misspelled, its Levenshtein automaton may be constructed, and then applied to all of the words in the dictionary to determine which ones are close to the misspelled word. If the dictionary is stored in compressed form as a trie, the time for this algorithm (after the automaton has been constructed) is proportional to the number of nodes in the trie, significantly faster than using dynamic programming to compute the Levenshtein distance separately for each dictionary word. It is also possible to find words in a regular language, rather than a finite dictionary, that are close to a given target word, by computing the Levenshtein automaton for the word, and then using a Cartesian product construction to combine it with an automaton for the regular language, giving an automaton for the intersection language. Alternatively, rather than using the product construction, both the Levenshtein automaton and the automaton for the given regular language may be traversed simultaneously using a backtracking algorithm. Levenshtein automata are used in Lucene for full-text searches that can return relevant documents even if the query is misspelled. == Construction == For any fixed constant n, the Levenshtein automaton for w and n may be constructed in time O(|w|). Mitankin studies a variant of this construction called the universal Levenshtein automaton, determined only by a numeric parameter n, that can recognize pairs of words (encoded in a certain way by bitvectors) that are within Levenshtein distance n of each other. Touzet proposed an effective algorithm to build this automaton. Yet a third finite automaton construction of Levenshtein (or Damerau–Levenshtein) distance are the Levenshtein transducers of Hassan et al., who show finite state transducers implementing edit distance one, then compose these to implement edit distances up to some constant.

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  • GLIMMER

    GLIMMER

    In bioinformatics, GLIMMER (Gene Locator and Interpolated Markov ModelER) is used to find genes in prokaryotic DNA. "It is effective at finding genes in bacteria, archea, viruses, typically finding 98-99% of all relatively long protein coding genes". GLIMMER was the first system that used the interpolated Markov model to identify coding regions. The GLIMMER software is open source and is maintained by Steven Salzberg, Art Delcher, and their colleagues at the Center for Computational Biology at Johns Hopkins University. The original GLIMMER algorithms and software were designed by Art Delcher, Simon Kasif and Steven Salzberg and applied to bacterial genome annotation in collaboration with Owen White. == Versions == === GLIMMER 1.0 === First Version of GLIMMER "i.e., GLIMMER 1.0" was released in 1998 and it was published in the paper Microbial gene identification using interpolated Markov model. Markov models were used to identify microbial genes in GLIMMER 1.0. GLIMMER considers the local composition sequence dependencies which makes GLIMMER more flexible and more powerful when compared to fixed-order Markov model. There was a comparison made between interpolated Markov model used by GLIMMER and fifth order Markov model in the paper Microbial gene identification using interpolated Markov models. "GLIMMER algorithm found 1680 genes out of 1717 annotated genes in Haemophilus influenzae where fifth order Markov model found 1574 genes. GLIMMER found 209 additional genes which were not included in 1717 annotated genes where fifth order Markov model found 104 genes."' === GLIMMER 2.0 === Second Version of GLIMMER i.e., GLIMMER 2.0 was released in 1999 and it was published in the paper Improved microbial identification with GLIMMER. This paper provides significant technical improvements such as using interpolated context model instead of interpolated Markov model and resolving overlapping genes which improves the accuracy of GLIMMER. Interpolated context models are used instead of interpolated Markov model which gives the flexibility to select any base. In interpolated Markov model probability distribution of a base is determined from the immediate preceding bases. If the immediate preceding base is irrelevant amino acid translation, interpolated Markov model still considers the preceding base to determine the probability of given base where as interpolated context model which was used in GLIMMER 2.0 can ignore irrelevant bases. False positive predictions were increased in GLIMMER 2.0 to reduce the number of false negative predictions. Overlapped genes are also resolved in GLIMMER 2.0. Various comparisons between GLIMMER 1.0 and GLIMMER 2.0 were made in the paper Improved microbial identification with GLIMMER which shows improvement in the later version. "Sensitivity of GLIMMER 1.0 ranges from 98.4 to 99.7% with an average of 99.1% where as GLIMMER 2.0 has a sensitivity range from 98.6 to 99.8% with an average of 99.3%. GLIMMER 2.0 is very effective in finding genes of high density. The parasite Trypanosoma brucei, responsible for causing African sleeping sickness is being identified by GLIMMER 2.0" === GLIMMER 3.0 === Third version of GLIMMER, "GLIMMER 3.0" was released in 2007 and it was published in the paper Identifying bacterial genes and endosymbiont DNA with Glimmer. This paper describes several major changes made to the GLIMMER system including improved methods to identify coding regions and start codon. Scoring of ORF in GLIMMER 3.0 is done in reverse order i.e., starting from stop codon and moves back towards the start codon. Reverse scanning helps in identifying the coding portion of the gene more accurately which is contained in the context window of IMM. GLIMMER 3.0 also improves the generated training set data by comparing the long-ORF with universal amino acid distribution of widely disparate bacterial genomes."GLIMMER 3.0 has an average long-ORF output of 57% for various organisms where as GLIMMER 2.0 has an average long-ORF output of 39%." GLIMMER 3.0 reduces the rate of false positive predictions which were increased in GLIMMER 2.0 to reduce the number of false negative predictions. "GLIMMER 3.0 has a start-site prediction accuracy of 99.5% for 3'5' matches where as GLIMMER 2.0 has 99.1% for 3'5' matches. GLIMMER 3.0 uses a new algorithm for scanning coding regions, a new start site detection module, and architecture which integrates all gene predictions across an entire genome." Minimum description length === Theoretical and Biological Foundation === The GLIMMER project helped introduce and popularize the use of variable length models in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics that subsequently have been applied to numerous problems such as protein classification and others. Variable length modeling was originally pioneered by information theorists and subsequently ingeniously applied and popularized in data compression (e.g. Ziv-Lempel compression). Prediction and compression are intimately linked using Minimum Description Length Principles. The basic idea is to create a dictionary of frequent words (motifs in biological sequences). The intuition is that the frequently occurring motifs are likely to be most predictive and informative. In GLIMMER the interpolated model is a mixture model of the probabilities of these relatively common motifs. Similarly to the development of HMMs in Computational Biology, the authors of GLIMMER were conceptually influenced by the previous application of another variant of interpolated Markov models to speech recognition by researchers such as Fred Jelinek (IBM) and Eric Ristad (Princeton). The learning algorithm in GLIMMER is different from these earlier approaches. == Access == GLIMMER can be downloaded from The Glimmer home page (requires a C++ compiler). Alternatively, an online version is hosted by NCBI [1]. == How it works == GLIMMER primarily searches for long-ORFS. An open reading frame might overlap with any other open reading frame which will be resolved using the technique described in the sub section. Using these long-ORFS and following certain amino acid distribution GLIMMER generates training set data. Using these training data, GLIMMER trains all the six Markov models of coding DNA from zero to eight order and also train the model for noncoding DNA GLIMMER tries to calculate the probabilities from the data. Based on the number of observations, GLIMMER determines whether to use fixed order Markov model or interpolated Markov model. If the number of observations are greater than 400, GLIMMER uses fixed order Markov model to obtain there probabilities. If the number of observations are less than 400, GLIMMER uses interpolated Markov model which is briefly explained in the next sub section. GLIMMER obtains score for every long-ORF generated using all the six coding DNA models and also using non-coding DNA model. If the score obtained in the previous step is greater than a certain threshold then GLIMMER predicts it to be a gene. The steps explained above describes the basic functionality of GLIMMER. There are various improvements made to GLIMMER and some of them are described in the following sub-sections. === The GLIMMER system === GLIMMER system consists of two programs. First program called build-imm, which takes an input set of sequences and outputs the interpolated Markov model as follows. The probability for each base i.e., A,C,G,T for all k-mers for 0 ≤ k ≤ 8 is computed. Then, for each k-mer, GLIMMER computes weight. New sequence probability is computed as follows. where n is the length of the sequence S x {\displaystyle S_{x}} is the oligomer at position x. I M M 8 ( S x ) {\displaystyle IMM_{8}(S_{x})} , the 8 t h {\displaystyle 8^{th}} -order interpolated Markov model score is computed as "where Y k ( S x − 1 ) {\displaystyle Y_{k}(S_{x-1})} is the weight of the k-mer at position x-1 in the sequence S and P k ( S x ) {\displaystyle P_{k}(S_{x})} is the estimate obtained from the training data of the probability of the base located at position x in the k t h {\displaystyle k^{th}} -order model." The probability of base S x {\displaystyle S_{x}} given the i previous bases is computed as follows. "The value of Y i ( S x ) {\displaystyle Y_{i}(S_{x})} associated with P i ( S x ) {\displaystyle P_{i}(S_{x})} can be regarded as a measure of confidence in the accuracy of this value as an estimate of the true probability. GLIMMER uses two criteria to determine Y i ( S x ) {\displaystyle Y_{i}(S_{x})} . The first of these is simple frequency occurrence in which the number of occurrences of context string S x , i {\displaystyle S_{x,i}} in the training data exceeds a specific threshold value, then Y i ( S x ) {\displaystyle Y_{i}(S_{x})} is set to 1.0. The current default value for threshold is 400, which gives 95% confidence. When there are insufficient sample occurrences of a context string, build-imm employ additional criteria to determine Y {\displaystyle Y} value. For a

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  • How to Choose an AI Coding Assistant

    How to Choose an AI Coding Assistant

    Looking for the best AI coding assistant? An AI coding assistant 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 coding assistant slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.

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  • Dabbler

    Dabbler

    Dabbler is natural media drawing software for beginners. It was initially developed by Fractal Design Corporation. It is a simplified version of Fractal Design Painter, and included multimedia tutorials and a fullscreen interface. Dabbler was released as "Art Dabbler" after the MetaCreations merger, and rights were eventually transferred to Corel. Dabbler operating systems are Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.

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  • Douwe Kiela

    Douwe Kiela

    Douwe Kiela is a Dutch-American research scientist and entrepreneur working in the field of artificial intelligence with a focus on machine learning and natural language processing. He is a research scientist director at Google DeepMind. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of Contextual AI, an enterprise software company that provides a platform for building grounded AI agents for enterprise knowledge bases. He previously led the research team at Meta AI that introduced the RAG approach in 2020, co-authoring the foundational paper "Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks." Kiela also served as Head of Research at Hugging Face and is an adjunct professor in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University. == Early life and education == Douwe Kiela was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1986. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences from Utrecht University, with a double major in Cognitive Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy. He then obtained an MSc in logic (cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC). Kiela received an MPhil and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, specializing in natural language processing and machine learning. == Career == === Facebook AI Research (Meta) === In 2016, Kiela joined Facebook AI Research (FAIR) as a postdoctoral researcher, later becoming a research scientist in New York. While at Meta, he co-authored papers in natural language processing, with a focus on multimodal and grounded language learning. His projects included creating a virtual assistant bot that could navigate tourists around a city and leading the development of Dynabench, an interactive benchmarking platform released in 2020 that used human feedback to test and improve language models. In 2020, Kiela led the Meta AI research team that introduced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), co-authoring the influential paper "Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks," alongside Patrick Lewis, Ethan Perez, and other researchers. The RAG framework transformed how large language models access and incorporate external information by allowing them to retrieve relevant context from external knowledge bases at query time, rather than relying solely on pre-trained data. This approach addressed key limitations such as hallucination, outdated information, and lack of source attribution. The RAG technique has since become widely adopted in enterprise AI applications and knowledge-intensive natural language processing tasks. === Hugging Face === After leaving Meta, Kiela served as Head of Research at Hugging Face. === Contextual AI === In 2023, Kiela co-founded Contextual AI with Amanpreet Singh, another former researcher at Facebook AI Research and Hugging Face. The Mountain View-based company develops a platform for building grounded AI agents for enterprises, focusing on applications in technology, semiconductor, logistics, finance, and media sectors. Contextual AI raised $20 million in seed funding in June 2023, led by Bain Capital Ventures. In August 2024, the company completed an $80 million Series A funding round led by Greycroft, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, NVentures (Nvidia), HSBC Ventures, and Snowflake Ventures, among others. In May 2026, Kiela joined Google DeepMind as part of a licensing agreement between Google and Contextual AI under which more than 20 Contextual AI researchers joined DeepMind. Following his departure, Jay Chen became interim CEO of Contextual AI. === Academic roles === Douwe Kiela serves as an adjunct professor in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University. In a 2023 interview with the Stanford Daily, he commented on the development of Alpaca, a low-cost instruction-finetuned model based on Meta's LLaMA, and emphasized the importance of open academic research in large language models.

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  • The Best Free AI Background Remover for Beginners

    The Best Free AI Background Remover for Beginners

    In search of the best AI background remover? An AI background remover is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it turns a rough idea into a polished result in seconds. When choosing one, weigh output quality, pricing, export formats, and how well it fits the tools you already use. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI background remover slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.

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  • Probabilistic automaton

    Probabilistic automaton

    In mathematics and computer science, the probabilistic automaton (PA) is a generalization of the nondeterministic finite automaton; it includes the probability of a given transition into the transition function, turning it into a transition matrix. Thus, the probabilistic automaton also generalizes the concepts of a Markov chain and of a subshift of finite type. The languages recognized by probabilistic automata are called stochastic languages; these include the regular languages as a subset. The number of stochastic languages is uncountable. The concept was introduced by Michael O. Rabin in 1963; a certain special case is sometimes known as the Rabin automaton (not to be confused with the subclass of ω-automata also referred to as Rabin automata). In recent years, a variant has been formulated in terms of quantum probabilities, the quantum finite automaton. == Informal Description == For a given initial state and input character, a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) has exactly one next state, and a nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) has a set of next states. A probabilistic automaton (PA) instead has a weighted set (or vector) of next states, where the weights must sum to 1 and therefore can be interpreted as probabilities (making it a stochastic vector). The notions states and acceptance must also be modified to reflect the introduction of these weights. The state of the machine as a given step must now also be represented by a stochastic vector of states, and a state accepted if its total probability of being in an acceptance state exceeds some cut-off. A PA is in some sense a half-way step from deterministic to non-deterministic, as it allows a set of next states but with restrictions on their weights. However, this is somewhat misleading, as the PA utilizes the notion of the real numbers to define the weights, which is absent in the definition of both DFAs and NFAs. This additional freedom enables them to decide languages that are not regular, such as the p-adic languages with irrational parameters. As such, PAs are more powerful than both DFAs and NFAs (which are famously equally powerful). == Formal Definition == The probabilistic automaton may be defined as an extension of a nondeterministic finite automaton ( Q , Σ , δ , q 0 , F ) {\displaystyle (Q,\Sigma ,\delta ,q_{0},F)} , together with two probabilities: the probability P {\displaystyle P} of a particular state transition taking place, and with the initial state q 0 {\displaystyle q_{0}} replaced by a stochastic vector giving the probability of the automaton being in a given initial state. For the ordinary non-deterministic finite automaton, one has a finite set of states Q {\displaystyle Q} a finite set of input symbols Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } a transition function δ : Q × Σ → ℘ ( Q ) {\displaystyle \delta :Q\times \Sigma \to \wp (Q)} a set of states F {\displaystyle F} distinguished as accepting (or final) states F ⊆ Q {\displaystyle F\subseteq Q} . Here, ℘ ( Q ) {\displaystyle \wp (Q)} denotes the power set of Q {\displaystyle Q} . By use of currying, the transition function δ : Q × Σ → ℘ ( Q ) {\displaystyle \delta :Q\times \Sigma \to \wp (Q)} of a non-deterministic finite automaton can be written as a membership function δ : Q × Σ × Q → { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle \delta :Q\times \Sigma \times Q\to \{0,1\}} so that δ ( q , a , q ′ ) = 1 {\displaystyle \delta (q,a,q^{\prime })=1} if q ′ ∈ δ ( q , a ) {\displaystyle q^{\prime }\in \delta (q,a)} and 0 {\displaystyle 0} otherwise. The curried transition function can be understood to be a matrix with matrix entries [ θ a ] q q ′ = δ ( q , a , q ′ ) {\displaystyle \left[\theta _{a}\right]_{qq^{\prime }}=\delta (q,a,q^{\prime })} The matrix θ a {\displaystyle \theta _{a}} is then a square matrix, whose entries are zero or one, indicating whether a transition q → a q ′ {\displaystyle q{\stackrel {a}{\rightarrow }}q^{\prime }} is allowed by the NFA. Such a transition matrix is always defined for a non-deterministic finite automaton. The probabilistic automaton replaces these matrices by a family of right stochastic matrices P a {\displaystyle P_{a}} , for each symbol a in the alphabet Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } so that the probability of a transition is given by [ P a ] q q ′ {\displaystyle \left[P_{a}\right]_{qq^{\prime }}} A state change from some state to any state must occur with probability one, of course, and so one must have ∑ q ′ [ P a ] q q ′ = 1 {\displaystyle \sum _{q^{\prime }}\left[P_{a}\right]_{qq^{\prime }}=1} for all input letters a {\displaystyle a} and internal states q {\displaystyle q} . The initial state of a probabilistic automaton is given by a row vector v {\displaystyle v} , whose components are the probabilities of the individual initial states q {\displaystyle q} , that add to 1: ∑ q [ v ] q = 1 {\displaystyle \sum _{q}\left[v\right]_{q}=1} The transition matrix acts on the right, so that the state of the probabilistic automaton, after consuming the input string a b c {\displaystyle abc} , would be v P a P b P c {\displaystyle vP_{a}P_{b}P_{c}} In particular, the state of a probabilistic automaton is always a stochastic vector, since the product of any two stochastic matrices is a stochastic matrix, and the product of a stochastic vector and a stochastic matrix is again a stochastic vector. This vector is sometimes called the distribution of states, emphasizing that it is a discrete probability distribution. Formally, the definition of a probabilistic automaton does not require the mechanics of the non-deterministic automaton, which may be dispensed with. Formally, a probabilistic automaton PA is defined as the tuple ( Q , Σ , P , v , F ) {\displaystyle (Q,\Sigma ,P,v,F)} . A Rabin automaton is one for which the initial distribution v {\displaystyle v} is a coordinate vector; that is, has zero for all but one entries, and the remaining entry being one. == Stochastic languages == The set of languages recognized by probabilistic automata are called stochastic languages. They include the regular languages as a subset. Let F = Q accept ⊆ Q {\displaystyle F=Q_{\text{accept}}\subseteq Q} be the set of "accepting" or "final" states of the automaton. By abuse of notation, Q accept {\displaystyle Q_{\text{accept}}} can also be understood to be the column vector that is the membership function for Q accept {\displaystyle Q_{\text{accept}}} ; that is, it has a 1 at the places corresponding to elements in Q accept {\displaystyle Q_{\text{accept}}} , and a zero otherwise. This vector may be contracted with the internal state probability, to form a scalar. The language recognized by a specific automaton is then defined as L η = { s ∈ Σ ∗ | v P s Q accept > η } {\displaystyle L_{\eta }=\{s\in \Sigma ^{}\vert vP_{s}Q_{\text{accept}}>\eta \}} where Σ ∗ {\displaystyle \Sigma ^{}} is the set of all strings in the alphabet Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } (so that is the Kleene star). The language depends on the value of the cut-point η {\displaystyle \eta } , normally taken to be in the range 0 ≤ η < 1 {\displaystyle 0\leq \eta <1} . A language is called η-stochastic if and only if there exists some PA that recognizes the language, for fixed η {\displaystyle \eta } . A language is called stochastic if and only if there is some 0 ≤ η < 1 {\displaystyle 0\leq \eta <1} for which L η {\displaystyle L_{\eta }} is η-stochastic. A cut-point is said to be an isolated cut-point if and only if there exists a δ > 0 {\displaystyle \delta >0} such that | v P ( s ) Q accept − η | ≥ δ {\displaystyle \vert vP(s)Q_{\text{accept}}-\eta \vert \geq \delta } for all s ∈ Σ ∗ {\displaystyle s\in \Sigma ^{}} == Properties == Every regular language is stochastic, and more strongly, every regular language is η-stochastic. A weak converse is that every 0-stochastic language is regular; however, the general converse does not hold: there are stochastic languages that are not regular. Every η-stochastic language is stochastic, for some 0 < η < 1 {\displaystyle 0<\eta <1} . Every stochastic language is representable by a Rabin automaton. If η {\displaystyle \eta } is an isolated cut-point, then L η {\displaystyle L_{\eta }} is a regular language. == p-adic languages == The p-adic languages provide an example of a stochastic language that is not regular, and also show that the number of stochastic languages is uncountable. A p-adic language is defined as the set of strings L η ( p ) = { n 1 n 2 n 3 … | 0 ≤ n k < p and 0. n 1 n 2 n 3 … > η } {\displaystyle L_{\eta }(p)=\{n_{1}n_{2}n_{3}\ldots \vert 0\leq n_{k}\eta \}} in the letters 0 , 1 , 2 , … , ( p − 1 ) {\displaystyle 0,1,2,\ldots ,(p-1)} . That is, a p-adic language is merely the set of real numbers in [0, 1], written in base-p, such that they are greater than η {\displaystyle \eta } . It is straightforward to show that all p-adic languages are stochastic. In particular, this implies that the number of stochastic languages is uncountable. A p-adic

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  • Learning rate

    Learning rate

    In machine learning and statistics, the learning rate is a tuning parameter in an optimization algorithm that determines the step size at each iteration while moving toward a minimum of a loss function. Since it influences to what extent newly acquired information overrides old information, it metaphorically represents the speed at which a machine learning model "learns". In the adaptive control literature, the learning rate is commonly referred to as gain. In setting a learning rate, there is a trade-off between the rate of convergence and overshooting. While the descent direction is usually determined from the gradient of the loss function, the learning rate determines how big a step is taken in that direction. Too high a learning rate will make the learning jump over minima, but too low a learning rate will either take too long to converge or get stuck in an undesirable local minimum. In order to achieve faster convergence, prevent oscillations and getting stuck in undesirable local minima the learning rate is often varied during training either in accordance to a learning rate schedule or by using an adaptive learning rate. The learning rate and its adjustments may also differ per parameter, in which case it is a diagonal matrix that can be interpreted as an approximation to the inverse of the Hessian matrix in Newton's method. The learning rate is related to the step length determined by inexact line search in quasi-Newton methods and related optimization algorithms. == Learning rate schedule == Initial rate can be left as system default or can be selected using a range of techniques. A learning rate schedule changes the learning rate during learning and is most often changed between epochs/iterations. This is mainly done with two parameters: decay and momentum. There are many different learning rate schedules but the most common are time-based, step-based and exponential. Decay serves to settle the learning in a nice place and avoid oscillations, a situation that may arise when too high a constant learning rate makes the learning jump back and forth over a minimum, and is controlled by a hyperparameter. Momentum is analogous to a ball rolling down a hill; we want the ball to settle at the lowest point of the hill (corresponding to the lowest error). Momentum both speeds up the learning (increasing the learning rate) when the error cost gradient is heading in the same direction for a long time and also avoids local minima by 'rolling over' small bumps. Momentum is controlled by a hyperparameter analogous to a ball's mass which must be chosen manually—too high and the ball will roll over minima which we wish to find, too low and it will not fulfil its purpose. The formula for factoring in the momentum is more complex than for decay but is most often built in with deep learning libraries such as Keras. Time-based learning schedules alter the learning rate depending on the learning rate of the previous time iteration. Factoring in the decay the mathematical formula for the learning rate is: η n + 1 = η 0 1 + d n {\displaystyle \eta _{n+1}={\frac {\eta _{0}}{1+dn}}} where η {\displaystyle \eta } is the learning rate, η 0 {\displaystyle \eta _{0}} is the original learning rate, d {\displaystyle d} is a decay parameter and n {\displaystyle n} is the iteration step. Step-based learning schedules changes the learning rate according to some predefined steps. The decay application formula is here defined as: η n = η 0 d ⌊ 1 + n r ⌋ {\displaystyle \eta _{n}=\eta _{0}d^{\left\lfloor {\frac {1+n}{r}}\right\rfloor }} where η n {\displaystyle \eta _{n}} is the learning rate at iteration n {\displaystyle n} , η 0 {\displaystyle \eta _{0}} is the initial learning rate, d {\displaystyle d} is how much the learning rate should change at each drop (0.5 corresponds to a halving) and r {\displaystyle r} corresponds to the drop rate, or how often the rate should be dropped (10 corresponds to a drop every 10 iterations). The floor function ( ⌊ … ⌋ {\displaystyle \lfloor \dots \rfloor } ) here drops the value of its input to 0 for all values smaller than 1. Exponential learning schedules are similar to step-based, but instead of steps, a decreasing exponential function is used. The mathematical formula for factoring in the decay is: η n = η 0 e − d n {\displaystyle \eta _{n}=\eta _{0}e^{-dn}} where d {\displaystyle d} is a decay parameter. == Adaptive learning rate == The issue with learning rate schedules is that they all depend on hyperparameters that must be manually chosen for each given learning session and may vary greatly depending on the problem at hand or the model used. To combat this, there are many different types of adaptive gradient descent algorithms such as Adagrad, Adadelta, RMSprop, and Adam which are generally built into deep learning libraries such as Keras.

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  • Best AI Paragraph Rewriters in 2026

    Best AI Paragraph Rewriters in 2026

    In search of the best AI paragraph rewriter? An AI paragraph rewriter is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it turns a rough idea into a polished result in seconds. When choosing one, weigh output quality, pricing, export formats, and how well it fits the tools you already use. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI paragraph rewriter slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.

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    Top 10 AI Text-to-video Tools Compared (2026)

    Trying to pick the best AI text-to-video tool? An AI text-to-video tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it scales effortlessly from a single task to thousands. The best picks balance beginner-friendly simplicity with the depth power users need, and they ship updates often. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI text-to-video tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.

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