Load file

Load file

A load file in the litigation community is commonly referred to as the file used to import data (coded, captured or extracted data from ESI processing) into a database; or the file used to link images. These load files carry commands, commanding the software to carry out certain functions with the data found in them. Load files are usually ASCII text files that have delimited fields of information. Such load files may have data about documents to be imported into a document management software such as Concordance or Summation. Or they may have the path or directory where images may reside so that the software can link such images to their corresponding records. Some database programs take one load file for importing images and another for importing data while others take only one load file for both pieces of information. OCR or Search-able Text which is considered "data" is also imported into most database programs via the same load files. Though some people prefer to load the OCR into their databases by running a separate command to search and find the desired text. Commonly used databases and their corresponding file extensions are: Summation (DII , CSV), Concordance (OPT, DAT), Sanction (SDT), IPRO (LFP), Ringtail (MDB) and DB/TextWorks (TXT).

Embodied agent

In artificial intelligence, an embodied agent, also sometimes referred to as an interface agent, is an intelligent agent that interacts with the environment through a physical body within that environment. Agents that are represented graphically with a body, for example a human or a cartoon animal, are also called embodied agents, although they have only virtual, not physical, embodiment. A branch of artificial intelligence focuses on empowering such agents to interact autonomously with human beings and the environment. Mobile robots are one example of physically embodied agents; Ananova and Microsoft Agent are examples of graphically embodied agents. Embodied conversational agents are embodied agents (usually with a graphical front-end as opposed to a robotic body) that are capable of engaging in conversation with one another and with humans employing the same verbal and nonverbal means that humans do (such as gesture, facial expression, and so forth). == Embodied conversational agents == Embodied conversational agents are a form of intelligent user interface. Graphically embodied agents aim to unite gesture, facial expression and speech to enable face-to-face communication with users, providing a powerful means of human-computer interaction. == Advantages == Face-to-face communication allows communication protocols that give a much richer communication channel than other means of communicating. It enables pragmatic communication acts such as conversational turn-taking, facial expression of emotions, information structure and emphasis, visualization and iconic gestures, and orientation in a three-dimensional environment. This communication takes place through both verbal and non-verbal channels such as gaze, gesture, spoken intonation and body posture. Research has found that users prefer a non-verbal visual indication of an embodied system's internal state to a verbal indication, demonstrating the value of additional non-verbal communication channels. As well as this, the face-to-face communication involved in interacting with an embodied agent can be conducted alongside another task without distracting the human participants, instead improving the enjoyment of such an interaction. Furthermore, the use of an embodied presentation agent results in improved recall of the presented information. Embodied agents also provide a social dimension to the interaction. Humans willingly ascribe social awareness to computers, and thus interaction with embodied agents follows social conventions, similar to human to human interactions. This social interaction both raises the believably and perceived trustworthiness of agents, and increases the user's engagement with the system. Rickenberg and Reeves found that the presence of an embodied agent on a website increased the level of user trust in that website, but also increased users' anxiety and affected their performance, as if they were being watched by a real human. Another effect of the social aspect of agents is that presentations given by an embodied agent are perceived as being more entertaining and less difficult than similar presentations given without an agent. Research shows that perceived enjoyment, followed by perceived usefulness and ease of use, is the major factor influencing user adoption of embodied agents. A study in January 2004 by Byron Reeves at Stanford demonstrated how digital characters could "enhance online experiences" through explaining how virtual characters essentially add a sense of familiarity to the user experience and make it more approachable. This increase in likability in turn helps make the products better, which benefits both the end users and those creating the product. === Applications === The rich style of communication that characterizes human conversation makes conversational interaction with embodied conversational agents ideal for many non-traditional interaction tasks. A familiar application of graphically embodied agents is computer games; embodied agents are ideal for this setting because the richer communication style makes interacting with the agent enjoyable. Embodied conversational agents have also been used in virtual training environments, portable personal navigation guides, interactive fiction and storytelling systems, interactive online characters and automated presenters and commentators. Major virtual assistants like Siri, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant do not come with any visual embodied representation, which is believed to limit the sense of human presence by users. The U.S. Department of Defense utilizes a software agent called SGT STAR on U.S. Army-run Web sites and Web applications for site navigation, recruitment and propaganda purposes. Sgt. Star is run by the Army Marketing and Research Group, a division operated directly from The Pentagon. Sgt. Star is based upon the ActiveSentry technology developed by Next IT, a Washington-based information technology services company. Other such bots in the Sgt. Star "family" are utilized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency for intelligence gathering purposes.

Probit model

In statistics, a probit model is a type of regression where the dependent variable can take only two values, for example married or not married. The word is a portmanteau, coming from probability + unit. The purpose of the model is to estimate the probability that an observation with particular characteristics will fall into a specific one of the categories; moreover, classifying observations based on their predicted probabilities is a type of binary classification model. A probit model is a popular specification for a binary response model. As such it treats the same set of problems as does logistic regression using similar techniques. When viewed in the generalized linear model framework, the probit model employs a probit link function. It is most often estimated using the maximum likelihood procedure, such an estimation being called a probit regression. == Conceptual framework == Suppose a response variable Y is binary, that is it can have only two possible outcomes which we will denote as 1 and 0. For example, Y may represent presence/absence of a certain condition, success/failure of some device, answer yes/no on a survey, etc. We also have a vector of regressors X, which are assumed to influence the outcome Y. Specifically, we assume that the model takes the form P ( Y = 1 ∣ X ) = Φ ( X T β ) , {\displaystyle P(Y=1\mid X)=\Phi (X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta ),} where P is the probability and Φ {\displaystyle \Phi } is the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the standard normal distribution. The parameters β are typically estimated by maximum likelihood. It is possible to motivate the probit model as a latent variable model. Suppose there exists an auxiliary random variable Y ∗ = X T β + ε , {\displaystyle Y^{\ast }=X^{T}\beta +\varepsilon ,} where ε ~ N(0, 1). Then Y can be viewed as an indicator for whether this latent variable is positive: Y = { 1 Y ∗ > 0 0 otherwise } = { 1 X T β + ε > 0 0 otherwise } {\displaystyle Y=\left.{\begin{cases}1&Y^{}>0\\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}\right\}=\left.{\begin{cases}1&X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta +\varepsilon >0\\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}\right\}} The use of the standard normal distribution causes no loss of generality compared with the use of a normal distribution with an arbitrary mean and standard deviation, because adding a fixed amount to the mean can be compensated by subtracting the same amount from the intercept, and multiplying the standard deviation by a fixed amount can be compensated by multiplying the weights by the same amount. To see that the two models are equivalent, note that P ( Y = 1 ∣ X ) = P ( Y ∗ > 0 ) = P ( X T β + ε > 0 ) = P ( ε > − X T β ) = P ( ε < X T β ) by symmetry of the normal distribution = Φ ( X T β ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}P(Y=1\mid X)&=P(Y^{\ast }>0)\\&=P(X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta +\varepsilon >0)\\&=P(\varepsilon >-X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta )\\&=P(\varepsilon 0 {\displaystyle t,\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }n_{t}/n=c_{t}>0} . Denote p ^ t = r t / n t {\displaystyle {\hat {p}}_{t}=r_{t}/n_{t}} σ ^ t 2 = 1 n t p ^ t ( 1 − p ^ t ) φ 2 ( Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{2}={\frac {1}{n_{t}}}{\frac {{\hat {p}}_{t}(1-{\hat {p}}_{t})}{\varphi ^{2}{\big (}\Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t}){\big )}}}} Then Berkson's minimum chi-square estimator is a generalized least squares estimator in a regression of Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) {\displaystyle \Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t})} on x ( t ) {\displaystyle x_{(t)}} with weights σ ^ t − 2 {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}} : β ^ = ( ∑ t = 1 T σ ^ t − 2 x ( t ) x ( t ) T ) − 1 ∑ t = 1 T σ ^ t − 2 x ( t ) Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\beta }}={\Bigg (}\sum _{t=1}^{T}{\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}x_{(t)}x_{(t)}^{\operatorname {T} }{\Bigg )}^{-1}\sum _{t=1}^{T}{\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}x_{(t)}\Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t})} It can be shown that this estimator is consistent (as n→∞ and T fixed), asymptotically normal and efficient. Its advantage is the presence of a closed-form formula for the estimator. However, it is only meaningful to carry out this analysis when individual observations are not available, only their aggregated counts r t {\displaystyle r_{t}} , n t {\disp

One-shot learning (computer vision)

One-shot learning is an object categorization problem, found mostly in computer vision. Whereas most machine learning-based object categorization algorithms require training on hundreds or thousands of examples, one-shot learning aims to classify objects from one, or only a few, examples. The term few-shot learning is also used for these problems, especially when more than one example is needed. == Motivation == The ability to learn object categories from few examples, and at a rapid pace, has been demonstrated in humans. It is estimated that a child learns almost all of the 10 ~ 30 thousand object categories in the world by age six. This is due not only to the human mind's computational power, but also to its ability to synthesize and learn new object categories from existing information about different, previously learned categories. Given two examples from two object categories: one, an unknown object composed of familiar shapes, the second, an unknown, amorphous shape; it is much easier for humans to recognize the former than the latter, suggesting that humans make use of previously learned categories when learning new ones. The key motivation for solving one-shot learning is that systems, like humans, can use knowledge about object categories to classify new objects. == Background == As with most classification schemes, one-shot learning involves three main challenges: Representation: How should objects and categories be described? Learning: How can such descriptions be created? Recognition: How can a known object be filtered from enveloping clutter, irrespective of occlusion, viewpoint, and lighting? One-shot learning differs from single object recognition and standard category recognition algorithms in its emphasis on knowledge transfer, which makes use of previously learned categories. Model parameters: Reuses model parameters, based on the similarity between old and new categories. Categories are first learned on numerous training examples, then new categories are learned using transformations of model parameters from those initial categories or selecting relevant parameters for a classifier. Feature sharing: Shares parts or features of objects across categories. One algorithm extracts "diagnostic information" in patches from already learned categories by maximizing the patches' mutual information, and then applies these features to the learning of a new category. A dog category, for example, may be learned in one shot from previous knowledge of horse and cow categories, because dog objects may contain similar distinguishing patches. Contextual information: Appeals to global knowledge of the scene in which the object appears. Such global information can be used as frequency distributions in a conditional random field framework to recognize objects. Alternatively context can consider camera height and scene geometry. Algorithms of this type have two advantages. First, they learn object categories that are relatively dissimilar; and second, they perform well in ad hoc situations where an image has not been hand-cropped and aligned. == Theory == The Bayesian one-shot learning algorithm represents the foreground and background of images as parametrized by a mixture of constellation models. During the learning phase, the parameters of these models are learned using a conjugate density parameter posterior and variational Bayesian expectation–maximization (VBEM). In this stage the previously learned object categories inform the choice of model parameters via transfer by contextual information. For object recognition on new images, the posterior obtained during the learning phase is used in a Bayesian decision framework to estimate the ratio of p(object | test, train) to p(background clutter | test, train) where p is the probability of the outcome. === Bayesian framework === Given the task of finding a particular object in a query image, the overall objective of the Bayesian one-shot learning algorithm is to compare the probability that object is present vs the probability that only background clutter is present. If the former probability is higher, the algorithm reports the object's presence, otherwise the algorithm reports its absence. To compute these probabilities, the object class must be modeled from a set of (1 ~ 5) training images containing examples. To formalize these ideas, let I {\displaystyle I} be the query image, which contains either an example of the foreground category O f g {\displaystyle O_{fg}} or only background clutter of a generic background category O b g {\displaystyle O_{bg}} . Also let I t {\displaystyle I_{t}} be the set of training images used as the foreground category. The decision of whether I {\displaystyle I} contains an object from the foreground category, or only clutter from the background category is: R = p ( O f g | I , I t ) p ( O b g | I , I t ) = p ( I | I t , O f g ) p ( O f g ) p ( I | I t , O b g ) p ( O b g ) , {\displaystyle R={\frac {p(O_{fg}|I,I_{t})}{p(O_{bg}|I,I_{t})}}={\frac {p(I|I_{t},O_{fg})p(O_{fg})}{p(I|I_{t},O_{bg})p(O_{bg})}},} where the class posteriors p ( O f g | I , I t ) {\displaystyle p(O_{fg}|I,I_{t})} and p ( O b g | I , I t ) {\displaystyle p(O_{bg}|I,I_{t})} have been expanded by Bayes' theorem, yielding a ratio of likelihoods and a ratio of object category priors. We decide that the image I {\displaystyle I} contains an object from the foreground class if R {\displaystyle R} exceeds a certain threshold T {\displaystyle T} . We next introduce parametric models for the foreground and background categories with parameters θ {\displaystyle \theta } and θ b g {\displaystyle \theta _{bg}} respectively. This foreground parametric model is learned during the learning stage from I t {\displaystyle I_{t}} , as well as prior information of learned categories. The background model we assume to be uniform across images. Omitting the constant ratio of category priors, p ( O f g ) p ( O b g ) {\displaystyle {\frac {p(O_{fg})}{p(O_{bg})}}} , and parametrizing over θ {\displaystyle \theta } and θ b g {\displaystyle \theta _{bg}} yields R ∝ ∫ p ( I | θ , O f g ) p ( θ | I t , O f g ) d θ ∫ p ( I | θ b g , O b g ) p ( θ b g | I t , O b g ) d θ b g = ∫ p ( I | θ ) p ( θ | I t , O f g ) d θ ∫ p ( I | θ b g ) p ( θ b g | I t , O b g ) d θ b g {\displaystyle R\propto {\frac {\int {p(I|\theta ,O_{fg})p(\theta |I_{t},O_{fg})}d\theta }{\int {p(I|\theta _{bg},O_{bg})p(\theta _{bg}|I_{t},O_{bg})}d\theta _{bg}}}={\frac {\int {p(I|\theta )p(\theta |I_{t},O_{fg})}d\theta }{\int {p(I|\theta _{bg})p(\theta _{bg}|I_{t},O_{bg})}d\theta _{bg}}}} , having simplified p ( I | θ , O f g ) {\displaystyle p(I|\theta ,O_{fg})} and p ( I | θ , O b g ) {\displaystyle p(I|\theta ,O_{bg})} to p ( I | θ f g ) {\displaystyle p(I|\theta _{fg})} and p ( I | θ b g ) . {\displaystyle p(I|\theta _{bg}).} The posterior distribution of model parameters given the training images, p ( θ | I t , O f g ) {\displaystyle p(\theta |I_{t},O_{fg})} is estimated in the learning phase. In this estimation, one-shot learning differs sharply from more traditional Bayesian estimation models that approximate the integral as δ ( θ M L ) {\displaystyle \delta (\theta ^{ML})} . Instead, it uses a variational approach using prior information from previously learned categories. However, the traditional maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters is used for the background model and the categories learned in advance through training. === Object category model === For each query image I {\displaystyle I} and training images I t {\displaystyle I_{t}} , a constellation model is used for representation. To obtain this model for a given image I {\displaystyle I} , first a set of N interesting regions is detected in the image using the Kadir–Brady saliency detector. Each region selected is represented by a location in the image, X i {\displaystyle X_{i}} and a description of its appearance, A i {\displaystyle A_{i}} . Letting X = ∑ i = 1 N X i , A = ∑ i = 1 N A i {\displaystyle X=\sum _{i=1}^{N}X_{i},A=\sum _{i=1}^{N}A_{i}} and X t {\displaystyle X_{t}} and A t {\displaystyle A_{t}} the analogous representations for training images, the expression for R becomes: R ∝ ∫ p ( X , A | θ , O f g ) p ( θ | X t , A t , O f g ) d θ ∫ p ( X , A | θ b g , O b g ) p ( θ b g | X t , A t , O b g ) d θ b g = ∫ p ( X , A | θ ) p ( θ | X t , A t , O f g ) d θ ∫ p ( X , A | θ b g ) p ( θ b g | X t , A t , O b g ) d θ b g {\displaystyle R\propto {\frac {\int {p(X,A|\theta ,O_{fg})p(\theta |X_{t},A_{t},O_{fg})}d\theta }{\int {p(X,A|\theta _{bg},O_{bg})p(\theta _{bg}|X_{t},A_{t},O_{bg})}d\theta _{bg}}}={\frac {\int {p(X,A|\theta )p(\theta |X_{t},A_{t},O_{fg})}d\theta }{\int {p(X,A|\theta _{bg})p(\theta _{bg}|X_{t},A_{t},O_{bg})}\,d\theta _{bg}}}} The likelihoods p ( X , A | θ ) {\displaystyle p(X,A|\theta )} and p ( X , A | θ b g ) {\displaystyle p(X,A|\theta _{bg})} are represented as mixtures of constellation models. A typical constellation model has

Latent Dirichlet allocation

In natural language processing, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is a generative statistical model that explains how a collection of text documents can be described by a set of unobserved "topics." For example, given a set of news articles, LDA might discover that one topic is characterized by words like "president", "government", and "election", while another is characterized by "team", "game", and "score". It is one of the most common topic models. The LDA model was first presented as a graphical model for population genetics by J. K. Pritchard, M. Stephens and P. Donnelly in 2000. The model was subsequently applied to machine learning by David Blei, Andrew Ng, and Michael I. Jordan in 2003. Although its most frequent application is in modeling text corpora, it has also been used for other problems, such as in clinical psychology, social science, and computational musicology. The core assumption of LDA is that documents are represented as a random mixture of latent topics, and each topic is characterized by a probability distribution over words. The model is a generalization of probabilistic latent semantic analysis (pLSA), differing primarily in that LDA treats the topic mixture as a Dirichlet prior, leading to more reasonable mixtures and less susceptibility to overfitting. Learning the latent topics and their associated probabilities from a corpus is typically done using Bayesian inference, often with methods like Gibbs sampling or variational Bayes. == History == In the context of population genetics, LDA was proposed by J. K. Pritchard, M. Stephens and P. Donnelly in 2000. LDA was applied in machine learning by David Blei, Andrew Ng and Michael I. Jordan in 2003. == Overview == === Population genetics === In population genetics, the model is used to detect the presence of structured genetic variation in a group of individuals. The model assumes that alleles carried by individuals under study have origin in various extant or past populations. The model and various inference algorithms allow scientists to estimate the allele frequencies in those source populations and the origin of alleles carried by individuals under study. The source populations can be interpreted ex-post in terms of various evolutionary scenarios. In association studies, detecting the presence of genetic structure is considered a necessary preliminary step to avoid confounding. === Clinical psychology, mental health, and social science === In clinical psychology research, LDA has been used to identify common themes of self-images experienced by young people in social situations. Other social scientists have used LDA to examine large sets of topical data from discussions on social media (e.g., tweets about prescription drugs). Additionally, supervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation with covariates (SLDAX) has been specifically developed to combine latent topics identified in texts with other manifest variables. This approach allows for the integration of text data as predictors in statistical regression analyses, improving the accuracy of mental health predictions. One of the main advantages of SLDAX over traditional two-stage approaches is its ability to avoid biased estimates and incorrect standard errors, allowing for a more accurate analysis of psychological texts. In the field of social sciences, LDA has proven to be useful for analyzing large datasets, such as social media discussions. For instance, researchers have used LDA to investigate tweets discussing socially relevant topics, like the use of prescription drugs and cultural differences in China. By analyzing these large text corpora, it is possible to uncover patterns and themes that might otherwise go unnoticed, offering valuable insights into public discourse and perception in real time. === Musicology === In the context of computational musicology, LDA has been used to discover tonal structures in different corpora. === Machine learning === One application of LDA in machine learning – specifically, topic discovery, a subproblem in natural language processing – is to discover topics in a collection of documents, and then automatically classify any individual document within the collection in terms of how "relevant" it is to each of the discovered topics. A topic is considered to be a set of terms (i.e., individual words or phrases) that, taken together, suggest a shared theme. For example, in a document collection related to pet animals, the terms dog, spaniel, beagle, golden retriever, puppy, bark, and woof would suggest a DOG_related theme, while the terms cat, siamese, Maine coon, tabby, manx, meow, purr, and kitten would suggest a CAT_related theme. There may be many more topics in the collection – e.g., related to diet, grooming, healthcare, behavior, etc. that we do not discuss for simplicity's sake. (Very common, so called stop words in a language – e.g., "the", "an", "that", "are", "is", etc., – would not discriminate between topics and are usually filtered out by pre-processing before LDA is performed. Pre-processing also converts terms to their "root" lexical forms – e.g., "barks", "barking", and "barked" would be converted to "bark".) If the document collection is sufficiently large, LDA will discover such sets of terms (i.e., topics) based upon the co-occurrence of individual terms, though the task of assigning a meaningful label to an individual topic (i.e., that all the terms are DOG_related) is up to the user, and often requires specialized knowledge (e.g., for collection of technical documents). The LDA approach assumes that: The semantic content of a document is composed by combining one or more terms from one or more topics. Certain terms are ambiguous, belonging to more than one topic, with different probability. (For example, the term training can apply to both dogs and cats, but are more likely to refer to dogs, which are used as work animals or participate in obedience or skill competitions.) However, in a document, the accompanying presence of specific neighboring terms (which belong to only one topic) will disambiguate their usage. Most documents will contain only a relatively small number of topics. In the collection, e.g., individual topics will occur with differing frequencies. That is, they have a probability distribution, so that a given document is more likely to contain some topics than others. Within a topic, certain terms will be used much more frequently than others. In other words, the terms within a topic will also have their own probability distribution. When LDA machine learning is employed, both sets of probabilities are computed during the training phase, using Bayesian methods and an expectation–maximization algorithm. LDA is a generalization of older approach of probabilistic latent semantic analysis (pLSA), The pLSA model is equivalent to LDA under a uniform Dirichlet prior distribution. pLSA relies on only the first two assumptions above and does not care about the remainder. While both methods are similar in principle and require the user to specify the number of topics to be discovered before the start of training (as with k-means clustering) LDA has the following advantages over pLSA: LDA yields better disambiguation of words and a more precise assignment of documents to topics. Computing probabilities allows a "generative" process by which a collection of new "synthetic documents" can be generated that would closely reflect the statistical characteristics of the original collection. Unlike LDA, pLSA is vulnerable to overfitting especially when the size of corpus increases. The LDA algorithm is more readily amenable to scaling up for large data sets using the MapReduce approach on a computing cluster. == Model == With plate notation, which is often used to represent probabilistic graphical models (PGMs), the dependencies among the many variables can be captured concisely. The boxes are "plates" representing replicates, which are repeated entities. The outer plate represents documents, while the inner plate represents the repeated word positions in a given document; each position is associated with a choice of topic and word. The variable names are defined as follows: M denotes the number of documents N is number of words in a given document (document i has N i {\displaystyle N_{i}} words) α is the parameter of the Dirichlet prior on the per-document topic distributions β is the parameter of the Dirichlet prior on the per-topic word distribution θ i {\displaystyle \theta _{i}} is the topic distribution for document i φ k {\displaystyle \varphi _{k}} is the word distribution for topic k z i j {\displaystyle z_{ij}} is the topic for the j-th word in document i w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} is the specific word. The fact that W is grayed out means that words w i j {\displaystyle w_{ij}} are the only observable variables, and the other variables are latent variables. As proposed in the original paper, a sparse Dirichlet prior can be used to model the to

H (company)

H Company, also known simply as H, is a French artificial intelligence startup which develops "action-oriented" artificial intelligence agents for enterprise automation and productivity. In May 2024, H Company closed a record-setting $220 million seed round, at the time the largest AI raise in Europe. In 2026, H Company released Holo 3, the latest generation of its computer-use AI models. The update marked a major advance in agentic AI, enabling agents to navigate any user interface, interpret screens, and complete complex, multi-step tasks across enterprise systems—much like a human user. This breakthrough positioned H Company at the frontier of computer-use autonomy, accelerating the integration of AI in enterprise workflows. == History == H Company was founded in 2023 in Paris by Laurent Sifre, Charles Kantor, and three DeepMind veterans: Daan Wiestra, Karl Tuyls, Julien Perollat. In May 2024, the firm secured what was then the largest European AI seed round, totaling $220 million led by US investors including Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), Amazon, and backed by Accel, Bpifrance, UiPath, Eurazeo, Xavier Niel, Yuri Milner, Bernard Arnault, Samsung and others. In August 2024, three cofounders (Wiestra, Tuyls, Perollat) left the company over operational disagreements. In November 2024, H launched Runner H, its first agentic-API platform, which combined a large language model (LLM) and a reduced, 2-billion parameter vision-language model (VLM). In May 2025, H Company acquired Mithril Security, and in June 2025 the company widened its offering for agentic models. In June 2025, Gautier Cloix (formerly CEO Palantir France) replaced Charles Kantor as CEO of H Company, aiming to pivot the company towards a "forward deployed engineers" model. In July 2025, H Company introduced Surfer-H-CLI, an open-source, web-native Chrome agent designed for browser-based automation—able to search, scroll, click, and type on behalf of users and controllable via any visual language model (VLM). When paired with its June 2025 open-sourced 3B-parameter Holo-1 model, Surfer-H-CLI achieved 92.2% WebVoyager benchmark accuracy. == Activity == H Company creates enterprise AI models and agents (agentic AI) to automate and optimize complex workflows. H Company specifically designs AI agents called computer use capable of autonomously interfacing with any software (local or cloud-based) to detect and automate repetitive operations. H Company is based in Paris, France, with international offices in London and New York. H Company raised $220 million since its inception. Gautier Cloix is president and CEO of the company. H Company client include the French national lottery FDJ United. In March 2026, H Company released Holo3, a family of artificial intelligence models designed to operate digital systems by interacting directly with user interfaces. Holo3 enables agents ("virtual humanoids") to understand what is displayed in front-end environments—such as web pages, desktop applications, and other graphical user interfaces—and perform actions such as clicking, typing, and navigating across them to complete multi-step tasks. On the OSWorld-Verified benchmark, Holo3 reportedly achieved about 78.9%, surpassing the scores of OpenAI’s GPT‑5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 on this specific test, at roughly one-tenth of the inference cost of these proprietary systems. The release has been presented as a significant step toward automating routine digital workflows, allowing organizations to offload repetitive on-screen work, such as data entry and reconciliation across multiple tools, to AI-based agents.

Exploratory blockmodeling

Exploratory blockmodeling is an (inductive) approach (or a group of approaches) in blockmodeling regarding the specification of an ideal blockmodel. This approach, also known as hypotheses-generating, is the simplest approach, as it "merely involves the definition of the block types permitted as well as of the number of clusters." With this approach, researcher usually defines the best possible blockmodel, which then represent the base for the analysis of the whole network. This approach is usually based on: previous analyses and theoretical considerations, using stricker blockmodel and block types, where the structural equivalence is stricker than the regular equivalence and using smaller number of classes. The opposite approach is called a confirmatory blockmodeling.