AI Headshot Make

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Valantic

Valantic GmbH (stylised as valantic) is an IT service and consulting company headquartered in Munich, Germany. == History == Valantic GmbH was founded in 2012 under the name Dabero Service Group. Until it was renamed Valantic GmbH in 2017, the company merged with IT service providers and consulting firms. These included, among others, Realtime AG, a company for SAP systems. The companies involved in these mergers were also renamed in 2017 and have since used the Valantic brand name. Realtime AG, for example, became Valantic ERP Services AG. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic pressures, demand increased for IT service providers, particularly those offering customised software, IT consulting, SAP services, customer experience, cybersecurity, IoT, and digital work environments. In the following years, Valantic expanded by integrating additional companies. In 2021, Valantic expanded into other European countries through the integration of the Dutch company ISM eCompany and the Portuguese consulting firm Abaco. In 2022, the consulting firm C-Clear/Atom Ideas from Belgium joined Valantic. In February 2019, DPE Deutsche Private Equity Management III GmbH (DPE) took over the majority shareholding in Valantic. The founder, Holger von Daniels, and the further management retained a 25% stake. By 2025, DPE had invested €500 million in Valantic. In the following years, Valantic expanded its international locations. In 2023, Valantic incorporated the Danish company Inspari into the group, thereby entering the Scandinavian market. Inspari is a company for Microsoft technologies such as Azure and Power Platform. In the same year, Valantic joined forces with the Aiopsgroup, an international provider of online shopping applications for private and business customers of large companies. The company is based in Bulgaria with additional locations across Eastern Europe and other places. Additionally, the SAP applications division was expanded through the merger with the Spanish company Saptools. As a result, the companies became one of the largest European end-to-end consulting and implementation house for SAP services. By the end of 2023, Valantic had locations in 18 countries. In November 2024, Valantic announced its merger with the Danish digital consultancy Venzo. Through the integration of the company, founded in 2007 and oriented towards Microsoft technologies and digital transformation projects in the areas of automation, artificial intelligence, security, infrastructure and change management, Valantic further expanded its presence in Denmark and the Nordic countries. In July 2025, Valantic announced its merger with Utiligence GmbH, a Mannheim-based consulting firm for SAP technologies. Utiligence works primarily for the energy industry and supports companies in the integration of SAP S/4HANA and the digitalisation of business processes. == Company structure == Valantic is a partnership-based organisation, with partners acting as decision-makers in matters relating to corporate strategy, employee development and acquisitions. Valantic pursues a holacratic approach, promoting an open and self-organised way of working instead of hierarchical structures. By merging with other companies, Valantic is expanding its range of services and tapping into international markets and market shares. The new companies use Valantic's core systems and support processes, but usually retain their original structure. In the 2024 financial year, the company generated revenue of €544 million and employed 3,874 on average. Valantic has over 40 locations internationally. == Services == Valantic GmbH is a consulting firm, software provider and implementation partner. The company offers services in the areas of digital strategy and analytics (business intelligence and data science), customer experience management, SAP services, smart industries (Industry 4.0, supply chain management, and production planning and control processes), and financial services automation. The automation of financial services is aimed at financial service providers and banks. Valantic has been offering services in the field of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) since 2023. Part of these services involves enabling companies to use GenAI securely and in compliance with regulations in order to make internal work processes more efficient. Its customers include large corporations, several medium-sized companies and DAX-listed companies. == Research == Since 2018, Valantic has published an annual study on the development of the SAP landscape in German-speaking countries. The study examines topics such as the migration to SAP S/4HANA, cloud strategies, technological trends and the use of artificial intelligence in business processes. The 2025 survey of 201 SAP professionals from the DACH region showed, for example, an increase in ongoing and completed S/4HANA migration projects, as well as a further shift towards private-cloud systems. The use of artificial intelligence continued to grow, as did the use of the SAP Business Technology Platform and the Business Data Cloud. In 2025, Valantic, together with the Handelsblatt Research Institute, published the trend study Digital 2030 – The Rise of Applied AI. The study was based on a survey of around 700 executives from companies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on the economic effects of current digitalisation trends. According to the study, most respondents consider artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and cloud computing to hold the greatest strategic importance for business success by 2030. Around 70% of the participating companies stated that they are already achieving measurable business benefits through the use of AI applications, for example in quality control, document management, logistics, or customer service.
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Brainware

Brainware was an American software company that marketed Automatic identification and data capture and data extraction products. The company was acquired by Hyland Software in 2017. Brainware originally spun out of Dulles, Virginia-based SER Solutions Inc. in February 2006 when SER was acquired by The Gores Group LLC. From February 2006 to March 2012, Brainware's majority owner was San Francisco-based private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. == History == On March 5, 2012, Lexmark International announced it had acquired the company for a cash price of approximately $148 million. The company was added to Lexmark's Perceptive Software division. On July 10, 2017, Hyland Software finalized its acquisition of the Perceptive Business Unit of Lexmark International, Inc. All enterprise software business assets in the Perceptive business unit, including Perceptive Content (formerly ImageNow), Perceptive Intelligent Capture (formerly Brainware), Acuo VNA, PACSGEAR, Claron, Nolij, Saperion, Pallas Athena, ISYS and Twistage, now operate under Hyland's portfolio of products. Brainware was headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia, USA, with sales, support, professional services and R&D offices in London, UK; Kirchzarten, Germany; and Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The company had partnerships with most major enterprise software providers, including Oracle, SAP and Microsoft, and said its software integrated with most available enterprise content management platforms. Brainware also partnered with a number of hardware providers, including Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu and OPEX. Brainware's core solution, Distiller, "disrupted the data capture industry by using contextual document data to deliver higher automated processing than earlier technology" said Henry Ijams, Managing Director and Founder, PayStream Advisors. Brainware was awarded a Technology Excellence Award by PayStream Advisors and their Advisory Board to honor those providers who are delivering industry leading solutions. Brainware said its software "could relieve a company of 60 percent to 80 percent of the work of manually keying in information from unstructured documents," and serviced companies such as NEC, Mayo Clinic, Bechtel, Royal Dutch Shell, and Rabobank. In a 2011 comparison report, Real Story Group classifies Brainware as a "Capture Solutions" vendor, competing directly with Kofax and ReadSoft. Brainware and its customers were profiled in publications including Profit Online, Business Finance, imageSource, Managing Automation, Industryweek, Treasury & Risk and others. The company's enterprise search technology has been profiled by InfoWorld.
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Cognitive Technologies

Cognitive Technologies is a Russian software corporation that develops corporate business applications, AI-based advanced driver assistance systems. Founded in 1993 in Moscow (Russia), the company has offices in Eastern Europe, with R&D Centers in Russia. == History == Cognitive Technologies was founded in 1993 by Olga Uskova and Vladimir Arlazarov. The first employees previously worked in the team that developed the first world computer chess champion "Kaissa". The first programs developed by Cognitive Technologies were optical image and character recognition software – Tiger and CuneiForm. In February 2015 Cognitive Technologies and Kamaz, Russian Dakar Rally-winning truck manufacturer, started working on the self-driving Kamaz truck project. The first field tests took place in June 2015. In 2015 Andrey Chernogorov was appointed CEO of the company. == Products == Cognitive Technologies develops business application software and self-driving vehicle artificial intelligence. The main products are: C-pilot, AI-based ADAS E1 Evfrat – electronic workflow system CognitiveLot – e-purchasing systems == Cooperation with global companies == Under the contract signed between Cognitive Technologies and Hewlett-Packard, all scanners sold in Russia had text recognition software developed by Cognitive Technologies. It was the first contract with HP for an Eastern European company. Afterwards, Cognitive Technologies signed OEM contracts and business agreements with several global IT-companies, including IBM, Canon, Corel, Samsung, Xerox, Brother, Epson, and Olivetti. In 1998 Cognitive Technologies became the first company in Eastern Europe to get the Oracle Complementary Software Provider status. In 2001 Cognitive Technologies sold its Russian language speech corpus to Intel. In 2010 Cognitive Technologies sold its text parsing module to Yandex. The company also signed an agreement with NVIDIA join efforts in the development of intelligent document recognition technologies. == Self-driving car project == The system developed by Cognitive Technologies does not require building smart cities and smart roads equipped with multiple sensors – it works the opposite way, trying to understand the situation on the road like humans do. The system uses a video camera like a driver who uses his eyes, analyzing the information and focusing on the relevant data. For this purpose the system uses a special type of computer vision – foveal computer vision. Only 5–7% of the data gathered by the video cameras and sensors is processed by the system as relevant. The prototype is being tested in Russia on rough roads, on roads without marking, with the goal to prepare the system for work in difficult situations and on bad roads all around the world. == C-Pilot ADAS project == In August 2016 Cognitive Technologies started its own ADAS development project C-Pilot for ground transport control automation. == Self-driving tractors and harvesters project == The experts from Cognitive Technologies claim that the system will track stones, poles, and other obstacles that might be dangerous for the vehicles. This data will enable the engineers to develop an interactive field map, with GPS coordinates for stones and other obstacles. Eventually, this will result in an alteration of the harvester's movement pattern preventing it from running into stones or other objects that may inflict damage. Harvesters will work autonomously on the field, on the territory that is narrowed by radio beacons. == Present international activities == In 2016 Cognitive Technologies has joined the international community OpenPower Foundation, a consortium of open source solutions to developers based on POWER technology from IBM, which includes the world's leading IT map of Google, NVidia, Mellanox, etc. Within the consortium Cognitive Technologies is the initiator of forming of an international working group to develop a single software standard for the self-driving vehicle control. == Awards == In 2016, the leading Russian business newspaper Kommersant, announced that Cognitive Technologies is the TOP-2 Russian software company. TOP-6 Russian software company in 2015 according to Russoft TOP-500 biggest Russian companies according to RBC TOP-2 company of the Russian EDMS market in 2014 according to IDC TOP-20 Russian biggest IT-companies in 2013 according to Cnews Analytics
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AI Copywriting Tools Reviews: What Actually Works in 2026

Shopping for the best AI copywriting tool? An AI copywriting tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it keeps getting smarter as the underlying models improve. Pricing, accuracy, and the size of the model behind the tool are the three factors that most affect daily usefulness. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI copywriting tool 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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StatMuse

StatMuse Inc. is an American artificial intelligence company founded in 2014. It operates an eponymous website that hosts a database of sports statistics covering the four major North American sports leagues, the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), NCAA Division I men's basketball, NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, the Big Five association football leagues in Europe, and various professional golf tours. == History == The company was founded by friends Adam Elmore and Eli Dawson in 2014. In email correspondence to the Springfield News-Leader, Elmore detailed that he and Dawson, fans of the National Basketball Association (NBA), were compelled to create StatMuse after they realized there was no online platform where they could search "Lebron James most points" [sic] and quickly get a result "showing his highest scoring games." As a startup, the company's goal was to utilize a type of artificial intelligence called natural language processing (NLP) for sports. In 2015, the company was part of the second group of startups accepted into the Disney Accelerator program. The company secured support from several investors, including The Walt Disney Company, Techstars, Allen & Company, the NFL Players Association, Greycroft and NBA Commissioner David Stern. As part of their partnership with Disney, StatMuse signed a content deal with ESPN (owned by Disney) to provide stats content on social media and television during the 2015–16 NBA season. Initially, the company only had stats available for the NBA, but eventually expanded to provide stats for the other major North American sports leagues. The company's initial demographic was players of fantasy sports, but it eventually expanded to target general sports fans as well. StatMuse offers responses to user queries in the voices of sports-related public figures. Dawson shared with VentureBeat that StatMuse brings people in and records them saying different words and phrases. These celebrity voices were made accessible through Google's Google Assistant service, Microsoft's Cortana virtual assistant, and Amazon's Echo devices. The company launched its phone app in September 2017. The app allows users to access StatMuse's sports statistics database by submitting queries in their natural language. Upon the launch of the phone app, Fitz Tepper of TechCrunch wrote that: "The technology isn't perfect – some of the pauses between words are a bit awkward, making it clear that some phrases are being stitched together on the fly. But this is the exception, and on the whole, most responses sound pretty good." StatMuse plug-ins for Slack and Facebook Messenger were also made, providing text-based sports stats. In 2019, StatMuse received investment from the Google Assistant Investment program. The service launched a premium option dubbed StatMuse+ in May 2023, offering options that had previously been included for free, such as unlimited searches and full results in data tables. The premium version also included early access to new features and a personalized search history, as well as not having ads. The app received a variety of feedback. In January 2024, the service launched a Premier League version of the website dubbed StatMuse FC. It is planned to introduce more leagues on the website.
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How to Choose an AI Text-to-image Tool

Curious about the best AI text-to-image tool? An AI text-to-image tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI text-to-image 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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Is an AI Clip Maker Worth It in 2026?

Trying to pick the best AI clip maker? An AI clip maker 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 clip maker 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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How to Choose an AI Clip Maker

Curious about the best AI clip maker? An AI clip maker is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI clip maker 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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List of security-focused operating systems

This is a list of operating systems specifically focused on security. Similar concepts include security-evaluated operating systems that have achieved certification from an auditing organization, and trusted operating systems that provide sufficient support for multilevel security and evidence of correctness to meet a particular set of requirements. == Linux == === Android-based === GrapheneOS is a security-focused, Android-based mobile OS that uses a hardened kernel, C library, custom memory allocator (hardened_malloc), and a hardened Chromium-based browser named Vanadium. It also offers privacy/security features, such as Duress PIN/Password or disabling the USB-C port at a driver/hardware level to avoid exploitation. It deploys exploit mitigations such as hardware-based memory tagging, secure app spawning, restricted dynamic code loading, and more. === Debian-based === Linux Kodachi is a security-focused operating system. Tails is aimed at preserving privacy and anonymity. KickSecure is a security-focused Linux distribution that aims to be "hardened by default". It uses network hardening, kernel hardening, Strong Linux User Account Isolation, better randomness, root access restrictions, and app-specific hardening. Whonix is an anonymity focused operating system based on KickSecure. It consists of two virtual machines, And all communications are routed through Tor. === Other Linux distributions === Alpine Linux is designed to be small, simple, and secure. It uses musl, BusyBox, and OpenRC instead of the more commonly used glibc, GNU Core Utilities, and systemd. Owl - Openwall GNU/Linux, a security-enhanced Linux distribution for servers. Secureblue, a Fedora Silverblue based distro that uses a hardened kernel, custom memory allocator (hardened_malloc), Trivalent, a security-focused, Chromium-based browser inspired by Vanadium, and many other exploit mitigations. == BSD == OpenBSD is a Unix-like operating system that emphasizes portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security, and integrated cryptography. == Xen == Qubes OS aims to provide security through isolation. Isolation is provided through the use of virtualization technology. This allows the segmentation of applications into secure virtual machines.
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Generalized nondeterministic finite automaton

In the theory of computation, a generalized nondeterministic finite automaton (GNFA), also known as an expression automaton or a generalized nondeterministic finite state machine, is a variation of a nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) where each transition is labeled with any regular expression. The GNFA reads blocks of symbols from the input which constitute a string as defined by the regular expression on the transition. There are several differences between a standard finite state machine and a generalized nondeterministic finite state machine. A GNFA must have only one start state and one accept state, and these cannot be the same state, whereas an NFA or DFA both may have several accept states, and the start state can be an accept state. A GNFA must have only one transition between any two states, whereas a NFA or DFA both allow for numerous transitions between states. In a GNFA, a state has a single transition to every state in the machine, although often it is a convention to ignore the transitions that are labelled with the empty set when drawing generalized nondeterministic finite state machines. == Formal definition == A GNFA can be defined as a 5-tuple, (S, Σ, T, s, a), consisting of a finite set of states (S); a finite set called the alphabet (Σ); a transition function (T : (S ∖ {\displaystyle \setminus } {a}) × (S ∖ {\displaystyle \setminus } {s}) → R); a start state (s ∈ S); an accept state (a ∈ S); where R is the collection of all regular expressions over the alphabet Σ. The transition function takes as its argument a pair of two states and outputs a regular expression (the label of the transition). This differs from other finite state machines, which take as input a single state and an input from the alphabet (or the empty string in the case of nondeterministic finite state machines) and outputs the next state (or the set of possible states in the case of nondeterministic finite state machines). A DFA or NFA can easily be converted into a GNFA and then the GNFA can be easily converted into a regular expression by repeatedly collapsing parts of it to single edges until S = {s, a}. Similarly, GNFAs can be reduced to NFAs by changing regular expression operators into new edges until each edge is labelled with a regular expression matching a single string of length at most 1. NFAs, in turn, can be reduced to DFAs using the powerset construction. This shows that GNFAs recognize the same set of formal languages as DFAs and NFAs.
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Postediting

Post-editing (or postediting) is the process whereby humans amend machine-generated translation to achieve an acceptable final product. A person who post-edits is called a post-editor. The concept of post-editing is linked to that of pre-editing. In the process of translating a text via machine translation, best results may be gained by pre-editing the source text – for example by applying the principles of controlled language – and then post-editing the machine output. It is distinct from editing, which refers to the process of improving human generated text (a process which is often known as revision in the field of translation). Post-edited text may afterwards be revised to ensure the quality of the language choices are proofread to correct simple mistakes. Post-editing involves the correction of machine translation output to ensure that it meets a level of quality negotiated in advance between the client and the post-editor. Light post-editing aims at making the output simply understandable; full post-editing at making it also stylistically appropriate. With advances in machine translation full post-editing is becoming an alternative to manual translation. Practically all computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools now support post-editing of machine translated output. == Post-editing and machine translation == Machine translation left the labs to start being used for its actual purpose in the late seventies at some big institutions such as the European Commission and the Pan-American Health Organization, and then, later, at some corporations such as Caterpillar and General Motors. First studies on post-editing appeared in the eighties, linked to those implementations. To develop appropriate guidelines and training, members of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) and the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) set a Post-editing Special Interest Group in 1999. After the nineties, advances in computer power and connectivity sped machine translation development and allowed for its deployment through the web browser, including as a free, useful adjunct to the main search engines (Google Translate, Bing Translator, Yahoo! Babel Fish). A wider acceptance of less than perfect machine translation was accompanied also by a wider acceptance of post-editing. With the demand for localisation of goods and services growing at a pace that could not be met by human translation, not even assisted by translation memory and other translation management technologies, industry bodies such as the Translation Automation Users Society (TAUS) expect machine translation and post-editing to play a much bigger role within the next few years. The use of Machine Translation suggests sometimes pre-editing. Human translators possess significantly more sophisticated cognitive abilities than machine translation (MT) systems. They leverage a wealth of life experience, common sense, and multi-sensory input to understand context, identify semantic intent, and add cultural nuances to translations. This remains true even as MT capabilities continue to improve. Unlike MT systems, which primarily focus on literal word-for-word conversion, human translators grasp the underlying meaning and intent, even when information is implicit. They "read between the lines," guided by their understanding of the world. Essentially, MT models excel at text string prediction, not true comprehension. Their success often stems from framing problems as prediction tasks, such as in self-driving cars or fraud detection. Studies have demonstrated that integrating adaptive MT with post-editing interfaces can lead to reductions in technical effort and time, improving overall translation efficiency. These systems are also supported by research that highlights the benefits of adaptive MT in real-world translation scenarios. For example, incremental adaptation in Neural Machine Translation (NMT) for professional post-editors has been shown to improve translation quality and reduce time spent on edits, showcasing how human expertise and machine assistance can complement each other effectively. == Light and full post-editing == For many years, no widely accepted, standardized post-editing guidelines existed; however, in 2017, ISO standard 18587:2017: Translation services — Post-editing of machine translation output — Requirements was published. Studies in the eighties distinguished between degrees of post-editing which, in the context of the European Commission Translation Service, were first defined as conventional and rapid or full and rapid. Light and full post-editing seems the wording most used today. Light post-editing implies minimal intervention by the post-editor, with the aim of ensuring quality is "good enough" or "understandable"; the expectation is that the client will use it for inbound purposes only, often when the text is needed urgently, or has a short time span. Full post-editing involves a greater level of intervention to achieve a degree of quality to be negotiated between client and post-editor; the expectation is that the outcome will be a text that is not only understandable but presented in some stylistically appropriate way, so it can be used for assimilation and even for dissemination, for inbound and for outbound purposes. The quality is expected to be publishable and equivalent to that of a human translation. The assumption, however, has been that it takes less effort for translators to work directly from the source text than to post-edit the machine generated version. With advances in machine translation, this may be changing. For some language pairs and for some tasks, and with engines that have been customised with domain specific good quality data, some clients are already requesting translators to post-edit instead of translating from scratch, in the belief that they will attain similar quality at a lower cost. The light/full classification, developed in the nineties when machine translation still came on a CD-ROM, may not suit advances in machine translation at the light post-editing end either. For some language pairs and some tasks, particularly if the source has been pre-edited, raw machine output may be good enough for gisting purposes without requiring subsequent human intervention. == Post-editing efficiency == Post-editing is used when raw machine translation is not good enough and human translation not required. Industry advises post-editing to be used when it can at least double the productivity of manual translation, even fourfold it in the case of light post-editing (1000 words per hour vs. 250 wph). However, post-editing efficiency is difficult to predict. Various studies from both academia and industry have claimed that post-editing is generally faster than translating from scratch, regardless of language pairs or translators' experience. There is, however, no agreement about how much time can be saved through post-editing in practice (if any at all): While the industry reports on time savings around 40%, some academic studies suggest that time savings under actual working conditions are more likely to be between 0–20%, or that it may depend on the terminological proximity between the source and target languages. Professionals have also reported negative productivity gains where corrections require more time than to translate from scratch. == Post-editing and the language industry == After some thirty years, post-editing is still "a nascent profession". What the right profile of the post-editor is, has not yet been fully studied. Post-editing overlaps with translating and editing, but only partially. Most think the ideal post-editor will be a translator keen to be trained on the specific skills required, but there are some who think a bilingual without a background in translation may be easier to train. Not much is known either on who the actual post-editors are, whether they tend to be professional translators, whether they work mostly as in-house employees or self-employed, and on which conditions. Many professional translators dislike post-editing, among other reasons because it tends to be paid at lower rates than conventional translations, with the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI) having been particularly vocal about it.
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Imitation learning

Imitation learning is a paradigm in reinforcement learning, where an agent learns to perform a task by supervised learning from expert demonstrations . It is also called learning from demonstration and apprenticeship learning. It has been applied to underactuated robotics, self-driving cars, quadcopter navigation, helicopter aerobatics, and locomotion. == Approaches == Expert demonstrations are recordings of an expert performing the desired task, often collected as state-action pairs ( o t ∗ , a t ∗ ) {\displaystyle (o_{t}^{},a_{t}^{})} . === Behavior Cloning === Behavior Cloning (BC) is the most basic form of imitation learning. Essentially, it uses supervised learning to train a policy π θ {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }} such that, given an observation o t {\displaystyle o_{t}} , it would output an action distribution π θ ( ⋅ | o t ) {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }(\cdot |o_{t})} that is approximately the same as the action distribution of the experts. BC is susceptible to distribution shift. Specifically, if the trained policy differs from the expert policy, it might find itself straying from expert trajectory into observations that would have never occurred in expert trajectories. This was already noted by ALVINN, where they trained a neural network to drive a van using human demonstrations. They noticed that because a human driver never strays far from the path, the network would never be trained on what action to take if it ever finds itself straying far from the path. === DAgger === DAgger (Dataset Aggregation) improves on behavior cloning by iteratively training on a dataset of expert demonstrations. In each iteration, the algorithm first collects data by rolling out the learned policy π θ {\displaystyle \pi _{\theta }} . Then, it queries the expert for the optimal action a t ∗ {\displaystyle a_{t}^{}} on each observation o t {\displaystyle o_{t}} encountered during the rollout. Finally, it aggregates the new data into the dataset D ← D ∪ { ( o 1 , a 1 ∗ ) , ( o 2 , a 2 ∗ ) , . . . , ( o T , a T ∗ ) } {\displaystyle D\leftarrow D\cup \{(o_{1},a_{1}^{}),(o_{2},a_{2}^{}),...,(o_{T},a_{T}^{})\}} and trains a new policy on the aggregated dataset. === Decision transformer === The Decision Transformer approach models reinforcement learning as a sequence modelling problem. Similar to Behavior Cloning, it trains a sequence model, such as a Transformer, that models rollout sequences ( R 1 , o 1 , a 1 ) , ( R 2 , o 2 , a 2 ) , … , ( R t , o t , a t ) , {\displaystyle (R_{1},o_{1},a_{1}),(R_{2},o_{2},a_{2}),\dots ,(R_{t},o_{t},a_{t}),} where R t = r t + r t + 1 + ⋯ + r T {\displaystyle R_{t}=r_{t}+r_{t+1}+\dots +r_{T}} is the sum of future reward in the rollout. During training time, the sequence model is trained to predict each action a t {\displaystyle a_{t}} , given the previous rollout as context: ( R 1 , o 1 , a 1 ) , ( R 2 , o 2 , a 2 ) , … , ( R t , o t ) {\displaystyle (R_{1},o_{1},a_{1}),(R_{2},o_{2},a_{2}),\dots ,(R_{t},o_{t})} During inference time, to use the sequence model as an effective controller, it is simply given a very high reward prediction R {\displaystyle R} , and it would generalize by predicting an action that would result in the high reward. This was shown to scale predictably to a Transformer with 1 billion parameters that is superhuman on 41 Atari games. === Other approaches === See for more examples. == Related approaches == Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) learns a reward function that explains the expert's behavior and then uses reinforcement learning to find a policy that maximizes this reward. Recent works have also explored multi-agent extensions of IRL in networked systems. Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning (GAIL) uses generative adversarial networks (GANs) to match the distribution of agent behavior to the distribution of expert demonstrations. It extends a previous approach using game theory.
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Himmat (app)

Himmat is a women's safety mobile application of Delhi Police. It was launched by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on 1 January 2015. The app is freely available for Android mobile phones and can be downloaded from Delhi Police website. Delhi Police plans to launch app for other platforms in future. Low registrations and other problems resulted in a parliamentary panel calling the app a failure in 2018. Himmat has gone on to be called as one of India's best safety apps for women.
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Edward Stabler

Edward Stabler is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His primary areas of research are (1) Natural Language Processing (NLP), (2) Parsing and formal language theory, and (3) Philosophy of Logic and Language. He was a member of the faculty at UCLA from 1984 to 2016. His work involves the production of software for minimalist grammars (MGs) and related systems. == Early life and education == Stabler received his Ph.D. from the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT in 1981. == Recent publications == Edward Stabler (2011) Computational perspectives on minimalism. Revised version in C. Boeckx, ed, Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism, pp. 617–642. Edward Stabler (2010) A defense of this perspective against the Evans&Levinson critique appears here, with revised version in Lingua 120(12): 2680-2685. Edward Stabler (2010) After GB. Revised version in J. van Benthem & A. ter Meulen, eds, Handbook of Logic and Language, pp. 395–414. Edward Stabler (2010) Recursion in grammar and performance. Presented at the 2009 UMass recursion conference. Edward Stabler (2009) Computational models of language universals. Revised version appears in M. H. Christiansen, C. Collins, and S. Edelman, eds., Language Universals, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 200-223. Edward Stabler (2008) Tupled pregroup grammars. Revised version appears in P. Casadio and J. Lambek, eds., Computational Algebraic Approaches to Natural Language, Milan: Polimetrica, pages 23–52. Edward Stabler (2006) Sidewards without copying. Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Formal Grammar, edited by P. Monachesi, G. Penn, G. Satta, and S. Wintner. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 2006, pages 133-146.
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Glushkov's construction algorithm

In computer science theory – particularly formal language theory – Glushkov's construction algorithm, invented by Victor Mikhailovich Glushkov, transforms a given regular expression into an equivalent nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA). Thus, it forms a bridge between regular expressions and nondeterministic finite automata: two abstract representations of the same class of formal languages. A regular expression may be used to conveniently describe an advanced search pattern in a "find and replace"–like operation of a text processing utility. Glushkov's algorithm can be used to transform it into an NFA, which furthermore is small by nature, as the number of its states equals the number of symbols of the regular expression, plus one. Subsequently, the NFA can be made deterministic by the powerset construction and then be minimized to get an optimal automaton corresponding to the given regular expression. The latter format is best suited for execution on a computer. From another, more theoretical point of view, Glushkov's algorithm is a part of the proof that NFA and regular expressions both accept exactly the same languages; that is, the regular languages. The converse of Glushkov's algorithm is Kleene's algorithm, which transforms a finite automaton into a regular expression. The automaton obtained by Glushkov's construction is the same as the one obtained by Thompson's construction algorithm, once its ε-transitions are removed. Glushkov's construction algorithm is also called The algorithm of Berry-Sethi, named after Gérard Berry and Ravi Sethi who worked on this construction. == Construction == Given a regular expression e, the Glushkov Construction Algorithm creates a non-deterministic automaton that accepts the language L ( e ) {\displaystyle L(e)} accepted by e. The construction uses four steps: === Step 1 === Linearisation of the expression. Each letter of the alphabet appearing in the expression e is renamed, so that each letter occurs at most once in the new expression e ′ {\displaystyle e'} . Glushkov's construction essentially relies on the fact that e ′ {\displaystyle e'} represents a local language L ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle L(e')} . Let A be the old alphabet and let B be the new one. === Step 2a === Computation of the sets P ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle P(e')} , D ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle D(e')} , and F ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle F(e')} . The first, P ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle P(e')} , is the set of letters which occurs as first letter of a word of L ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle L(e')} . The second, D ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle D(e')} , is the set of letters that can end a word of L ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle L(e')} . The last one, F ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle F(e')} , is the set of letter pairs that can occur in words of L ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle L(e')} , i.e. it is the set of factors of length two of the words of L ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle L(e')} . Those sets are mathematically defined by P ( e ′ ) = { x ∈ B ∣ x B ∗ ∩ L ( e ′ ) ≠ ∅ } {\displaystyle P(e')=\{x\in B\mid xB^{}\cap L(e')\neq \emptyset \}} , D ( e ′ ) = { y ∈ B ∣ B ∗ y ∩ L ( e ′ ) ≠ ∅ } {\displaystyle D(e')=\{y\in B\mid B^{}y\cap L(e')\neq \emptyset \}} , F ( e ′ ) = { u ∈ B 2 ∣ B ∗ u B ∗ ∩ L ( e ′ ) ≠ ∅ } {\displaystyle F(e')=\{u\in B^{2}\mid B^{}uB^{}\cap L(e')\neq \emptyset \}} . They are computed by induction over the structure of the expression, as explained below. === Step 2b === Computation of the set Λ ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle \Lambda (e')} which contains the empty word ε {\displaystyle \varepsilon } if this word belongs to L ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle L(e')} , and is the empty set otherwise. Formally, this is Λ ( e ′ ) = { ε } ∩ L ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle \Lambda (e')=\{\varepsilon \}\cap L(e')} . === Step 3 === Computation of automaton recognizing the local language, as defined by P ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle P(e')} , D ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle D(e')} , F ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle F(e')} , and Λ ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle \Lambda (e')} . By definition, the local language defined by the sets P, D, and F is the set of words which begin with a letter of P, end by a letter of D, and whose factors of length 2 belong to F, optionally also including the empty word; that is, it is the language: L ′ = ( P B ∗ ∩ B ∗ D ) ∖ B ∗ ( B 2 ∖ F ) B ∗ ∪ Λ ( e ′ ) {\displaystyle L'=(PB^{}\cap B^{}D)\setminus B^{}(B^{2}\setminus F)B^{}\cup \Lambda (e')} . Strictly speaking, it is the computation of the automaton for the local language denoted by this linearised expression that is Glushkov's construction. === Step 4 === Remove the linearisation, replacing each indexed letter B by the original letter of A. == Example == Consider the regular expression e = ( a ( a b ) ∗ ) ∗ + ( b a ) ∗ {\displaystyle e=(a(ab)^{})^{}+(ba)^{}} . == Computation of the set of letters == The computation of the sets P, D, F, and Λ is done inductively over the regular expression e ′ {\displaystyle e'} . One must give the values for ∅, ε (the symbols for the empty language and the singleton language containing the empty word), the letters, and the results of the operations + , ⋅ , ∗ {\displaystyle +,\cdot ,^{}} . The most costly operations are the cartesian products of sets for the computation of F. == Properties == The obtained automaton is non-deterministic, and it has as many states as the number of letters of the regular expression, plus one. It has been proven that every Thompson's automaton can be transformed into Glushkov's automaton via a ε-transitions elimination method. == Applications and deterministic expressions == The computation of the automaton by the expression occurs often; it has been systematically used in search functions, in particular by the Unix grep command. Similarly, XML's specification also uses such constructions; for more efficiency, regular expressions of a certain kind, called deterministic expressions, have been studied.
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