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  • Piranesi (software)

    Piranesi (software)

    Piranesi is an interactive paint system that enables the user to create artistic images from 3D scenes created using conventional modeling applications. == Image format == Piranesi uses the proprietary EPix file format. For every pixel, additional information is stored, such as distance from the viewer and material settings. EPix files can be rendered from 3D scenes using a fixed viewpoint by Piranesi's companion software, Vedute.

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  • AI Customer-support Bots: Free vs Paid (2026)

    AI Customer-support Bots: Free vs Paid (2026)

    Curious about the best AI customer-support bot? An AI customer-support bot 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 customer-support bot 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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  • Cobham's theorem

    Cobham's theorem

    Cobham's theorem is a theorem in combinatorics on words that has important connections with number theory, notably transcendental numbers, and automata theory. Informally, the theorem gives the condition for the members of a set S of natural numbers written in bases b1 and base b2 to be recognised by finite automata. Specifically, consider bases b1 and b2 such that they are not powers of the same integer. Cobham's theorem states that S written in bases b1 and b2 is recognised by finite automata if and only if S differs by a finite set from a finite union of arithmetic progressions. The theorem was proved by Alan Cobham in 1969 and has since given rise to many extensions and generalisations. == Definitions == Let n > 0 {\displaystyle n>0} be an integer. The representation of a natural number n {\textstyle n} in base b {\textstyle b} is the sequence of digits n 0 n 1 ⋯ n h {\displaystyle n_{0}n_{1}\cdots n_{h}} such that n = n 0 + n 1 b + ⋯ + n h b h {\displaystyle n=n_{0}+n_{1}b+\cdots +n_{h}b^{h}} where 0 ≤ n 0 , n 1 , … , n h < b {\displaystyle 0\leq n_{0},n_{1},\ldots ,n_{h} 0 {\displaystyle n_{h}>0} . The word n 0 n 1 ⋯ n h {\displaystyle n_{0}n_{1}\cdots n_{h}} is often denoted ⟨ n ⟩ b {\displaystyle \langle n\rangle _{b}} , or more simply, n b {\displaystyle n_{b}} . A set of natural numbers S is recognisable in base b {\textstyle b} or more simply b {\textstyle b} -recognisable or b {\textstyle b} -automatic if the set { n b ∣ n ∈ S } {\displaystyle \{n_{b}\mid n\in S\}} of the representations of its elements in base b {\displaystyle b} is a language recognisable by a finite automaton on the alphabet { 0 , 1 , … , b − 1 } {\displaystyle \{0,1,\ldots ,b-1\}} . Two positive integers k {\displaystyle k} and ℓ {\displaystyle \ell } are multiplicatively independent if there are no non-negative integers p {\displaystyle p} and q {\displaystyle q} such that k p = ℓ q {\displaystyle k^{p}=\ell ^{q}} . For example, 2 and 3 are multiplicatively independent, but 8 and 16 are not since 8 4 = 16 3 {\displaystyle 8^{4}=16^{3}} . Two integers are multiplicatively dependent if and only if they are powers of a same third integer. == Problem statements == === Original problem statement === More equivalent statements of the theorem have been given. The original version by Cobham is the following: Another way to state the theorem is by using automatic sequences. Cobham himself calls them "uniform tag sequences." The following form is found in Allouche and Shallit's book:We can show that the characteristic sequence of a set of natural numbers S recognisable by finite automata in base k is a k-automatic sequence and that conversely, for all k-automatic sequences u {\displaystyle u} and all integers 0 ≤ i < k {\displaystyle 0\leq i 1 {\displaystyle \alpha >1} is the dominant eigenvalue of the matrix of morphism f {\displaystyle f} , namely, the matrix M ( f ) = ( m x , y ) x ∈ B , y ∈ A {\displaystyle M(f)=(m_{x,y})_{x\in B,y\in A}} , where m x , y {\displaystyle m_{x,y}} is the number of occurrences of the letter x {\displaystyle x} in the word f ( y ) {\displaystyle f(y)} . A set S of natural numbers is α {\displaystyle \alpha } -recognisable if its characteristic sequence s {\displaystyle s} is α {\displaystyle \alpha } -substitutive. A last definition: a Perron number is an algebraic number z > 1 {\displaystyle z>1} such that all its conjugates belong to the disc { z ′ ∈ C , | z ′ | < z } {\displaystyle \{z'\in \mathbb {C} ,|z'| Read more →

  • Danqi Chen

    Danqi Chen

    Danqi Chen (Chinese: 陈丹琦; pinyin: Chén Dānqí, IPA: [ʈ͡ʂʰə̌n tan t͡ɕʰǐ]; born in Changsha, China) is a Chinese computer scientist and assistant professor at Princeton University specializing in the AI field of natural language processing (NLP). In 2019, she joined the Princeton NLP group, alongside Sanjeev Arora, Christiane Fellbaum, and Karthik Narasimhan. She was previously a visiting scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University and her BS from Tsinghua University. Chen is the author of Neural Reading Comprehension and Beyond, a dissertation on using artificial intelligence to access knowledge in ordinary and structured documents. She is the author or co-author of a number of journal articles, including Reading Wikipedia to Answer Open-Domain Questions. Google's SyntaxNet is based on algorithms developed by Danqi Chen and Christopher Manning at Stanford. Her primary research interests are in text understanding and knowledge representation and reasoning. She won a gold medal at the 2008 International Informatics Olympiad. She is known among friends as CDQ. A well known algorithm in competitive programming, CDQ Divide and Conquer, is named after this acronym. She is married to Huacheng Yu, an assistant professor in theoretical computer science at Princeton University.

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  • Global serializability

    Global serializability

    In concurrency control of databases, transaction processing (transaction management), and other transactional distributed applications, global serializability (or modular serializability) is a property of a global schedule of transactions. A global schedule is the unified schedule of all the individual database (and other transactional object) schedules in a multidatabase environment (e.g., federated database). Complying with global serializability means that the global schedule is serializable, has the serializability property, while each component database (module) has a serializable schedule as well. In other words, a collection of serializable components provides overall system serializability, which is usually incorrect. A need in correctness across databases in multidatabase systems makes global serializability a major goal for global concurrency control (or modular concurrency control). With the proliferation of the Internet, Cloud computing, Grid computing, and small, portable, powerful computing devices (e.g., smartphones), as well as increase in systems management sophistication, the need for atomic distributed transactions and thus effective global serializability techniques, to ensure correctness in and among distributed transactional applications, seems to increase. In a federated database system or any other more loosely defined multidatabase system, which are typically distributed in a communication network, transactions span multiple (and possibly distributed) databases. Enforcing global serializability in such system, where different databases may use different types of concurrency control, is problematic. Even if every local schedule of a single database is serializable, the global schedule of a whole system is not necessarily serializable. The massive communication exchanges of conflict information needed between databases to reach conflict serializability globally would lead to unacceptable performance, primarily due to computer and communication latency. Achieving global serializability effectively over different types of concurrency control has been open for several years. == The global serializability problem == === Problem statement === The difficulties described above translate into the following problem: Find an efficient (high-performance and fault tolerant) method to enforce Global serializability (global conflict serializability) in a heterogeneous distributed environment of multiple autonomous database systems. The database systems may employ different concurrency control methods. No limitation should be imposed on the operations of either local transactions (confined to a single database system) or global transactions (span two or more database systems). === Quotations === Lack of an appropriate solution for the global serializability problem has driven researchers to look for alternatives to serializability as a correctness criterion in a multidatabase environment (e.g., see Relaxing global serializability below), and the problem has been characterized as difficult and open. The following two quotations demonstrate the mindset about it by the end of the year 1991, with similar quotations in numerous other articles: "Without knowledge about local as well as global transactions, it is highly unlikely that efficient global concurrency control can be provided... Additional complications occur when different component DBMSs [Database Management Systems] and the FDBMSs [Federated Database Management Systems] support different concurrency mechanisms... It is unlikely that a theoretically elegant solution that provides conflict serializability without sacrificing performance (i.e., concurrency and/or response time) and availability exists." === Proposed solutions === Several solutions, some partial, have been proposed for the global serializability problem. Among them: Global conflict graph (serializability graph, precedence graph) checking Distributed Two-phase locking (Distributed 2PL) Distributed Timestamp ordering Tickets (local logical timestamps which define local total orders, and are propagated to determine global partial order of transactions) == Relaxing global serializability == Some techniques have been developed for relaxed global serializability (i.e., they do not guarantee global serializability; see also Relaxing serializability). Among them (with several publications each): Quasi serializability Two-level serializability Another common reason nowadays for Global serializability relaxation is the requirement of availability of internet products and services. This requirement is typically answered by large scale data replication. The straightforward solution for synchronizing replicas' updates of a same database object is including all these updates in a single atomic distributed transaction. However, with many replicas such a transaction is very large, and may span several computers and networks that some of them are likely to be unavailable. Thus such a transaction is likely to end with abort and miss its purpose. Consequently, Optimistic replication (Lazy replication) is often utilized (e.g., in many products and services by Google, Amazon, Yahoo, and alike), while global serializability is relaxed and compromised for eventual consistency. In this case relaxation is done only for applications that are not expected to be harmed by it. Classes of schedules defined by relaxed global serializability properties either contain the global serializability class, or are incomparable with it. What differentiates techniques for relaxed global conflict serializability (RGCSR) properties from those of relaxed conflict serializability (RCSR) properties that are not RGCSR is typically the different way global cycles (span two or more databases) in the global conflict graph are handled. No distinction between global and local cycles exists for RCSR properties that are not RGCSR. RCSR contains RGCSR. Typically RGCSR techniques eliminate local cycles, i.e., provide local serializability (which can be achieved effectively by regular, known concurrency control methods); however, obviously they do not eliminate all global cycles (which would achieve global serializability).

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  • Michael I. Jordan

    Michael I. Jordan

    Michael Irwin Jordan (born February 25, 1956) is an American scientist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, research scientist at the Inria Paris, and researcher in machine learning, statistics, and artificial intelligence. Jordan was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2010 for contributions to the foundations and applications of machine learning. He is one of the leading figures in machine learning, and in 2016 Science reported him as the world's most influential computer scientist. In 2022, Jordan won the inaugural World Laureates Association Prize in Computer Science or Mathematics, "for fundamental contributions to the foundations of machine learning and its application." == Education == Jordan received a Bachelor of Science magna cum laude in psychology from the Louisiana State University in 1978, a Master of Science in mathematics from Arizona State University in 1980, and a Doctor of Philosophy in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego in 1985. At UC San Diego, Jordan was a student of David Rumelhart and a member of the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) Group in the 1980s. == Career and research == Jordan is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where his appointment is split across EECS and Statistics. He was a professor at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT from 1988 to 1998. In the 1980s Jordan started developing recurrent neural networks as a cognitive model. In recent years, his work is less driven from a cognitive perspective and more from the background of traditional statistics. Jordan popularised Bayesian networks in the machine learning community and is known for pointing out links between machine learning and statistics. He was also prominent in the formalisation of variational methods for approximate inference and the popularisation of the expectation–maximization algorithm in machine learning. === Resignation from Machine Learning === In 2001, Jordan and others resigned from the editorial board of the journal Machine Learning. In a public letter, they argued for less restrictive access and pledged support for a new open access journal, the Journal of Machine Learning Research, which was created by Leslie Kaelbling to support the evolution of the field of machine learning. === Honors and awards === Jordan has received numerous awards, including a best student paper award (with X. Nguyen and M. Wainwright) at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2004), a best paper award (with R. Jacobs) at the American Control Conference (ACC 1991), the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award, the IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Award, and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. In 2002 he was named an AAAI Fellow "for significant contributions to reasoning under uncertainty, machine learning, and human motor control." In 2004 he was named an IMS Fellow "for contributions to graphical models and machine learning." In 2005 he was named an IEEE Fellow "for contributions to probabilistic graphical models and neural information processing systems." In 2007 he was named an ASA Fellow. In 2010 he was named a Cognitive Science Society Fellow and named an ACM Fellow "for contributions to the theory and application of machine learning." In 2012 he was named a SIAM Fellow "for contributions to machine learning, in particular variational approaches to statistical inference." In 2014 he was named an International Society for Bayesian Analysis Fellow "for his outstanding research contributions at the interface of statistics, computer sciences and probability, for his leading role in promoting Bayesian methods in machine learning, engineering and other fields, and for his extensive service to ISBA in many roles." Jordan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been named a Neyman Lecturer and a Medallion Lecturer by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He received the David E. Rumelhart Prize in 2015 and the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in 2009. He also won the 2020 IEEE John von Neumann Medal. In 2016, Jordan was identified as the "most influential computer scientist", based on an analysis of the published literature by the Semantic Scholar project. In 2019, Jordan argued that the artificial intelligence revolution hasn't happened yet and that the AI revolution required a blending of computer science with statistics. In 2022, Jordan was awarded the inaugural World Laureates Association Prize by non-governmental and non-profit international organization World Laureates Association, for fundamental contributions to the foundations of machine learning and its application. For 2024 he received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of "Information and Communication Technologies".

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  • Best AI Bug Finders in 2026

    Best AI Bug Finders in 2026

    In search of the best AI bug finder? An AI bug finder 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 bug finder 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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  • AI Logo Makers Reviews: What Actually Works in 2026

    AI Logo Makers Reviews: What Actually Works in 2026

    Shopping for the best AI logo maker? An AI logo maker 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 logo maker 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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  • Stixel

    Stixel

    In computer vision, a stixel (portmanteau of "stick" and "pixel") is a superpixel representation of depth information in an image, in the form of a vertical stick that approximates the closest obstacles within a certain vertical slice of the scene. Introduced in 2009, stixels have applications in robotic navigation and advanced driver-assistance systems, where they can be used to define a representation of robotic environments and traffic scenes with a medium level of abstraction. == Definition == One of the problems of scene understanding in computer vision is to determine horizontal freespace around the camera, where the agent can move, and the vertical obstacles delimiting it. An image can be paired with depth information (produced e.g. from stereo disparity, lidar, or monocular depth estimation), allowing a dense tridimensional reconstruction of the observed scene. One drawback of dense reconstruction is the large amount of data involved, since each pixel in the image is mapped to an element of a point cloud. Vision problems characterised by planar freespace delimited by mostly vertical obstacles, such as traffic scenes or robotic navigation, can benefit from a condensed representation that allows to save memory and processing time. Stixels are thin vertical rectangles representing a slice of a vertical surface belonging to the closest obstacle in the observed scene. They allow to dramatically reduce the amount of information needed to represent a scene in such problems. A stixel is characterised by three parameters: vertical coordinate of the bottom, height of the stick, and depth. Stixels have fixed width, with each stixel spanning over a certain number of image columns, allowing downsampling of the horizontal image resolution. In the original formulation, each column of the image would contain at most one stixel, and later extensions were developed to allow multiple stixels on each column, allowing to represent multiple objects at different distances. == Stixel estimation == The input to stixel estimation is a dense depth map, that can be computed from stereo disparity or other means. The original approach computes an occupancy grid that can be segmented to estimate the freespace, with dynamic programming providing an efficient method to find an optimal segmentation. Alternative approaches can be used instead of occupancy grid mapping, such as manifold-based methods. The freespace boundary provides the base points of the obstacles at closest longitudinal distance, however multiple objects at different distances might appear in each column of the image. To fully define the obstacles, their height should be estimated, and this is accomplished by segmenting the depth of the object from the depth of the background. A membership function over the pixels can be defined based on the depth value, where the membership represents the confidence of a pixel belonging to the closest vertical obstacle or to the background, and a cut separating the obstacles from the background can again be computed effectively with dynamic programming. Once both the freespace and the obstacle height are known, the stixels can be estimated by fusing the information over the columns spanned by each stixel, and finally a refined depth of the stixel can be estimated via model fitting over the depth of the pixels covered by the stixel, possibly paired with confidence information (e.g. disparity confidence produced by methods such as semi-global matching).

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  • Wasserstein GAN

    Wasserstein GAN

    The Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network (WGAN) is a variant of generative adversarial network (GAN) proposed in 2017 that aims to "improve the stability of learning, get rid of problems like mode collapse, and provide meaningful learning curves useful for debugging and hyperparameter searches". Compared with the original GAN discriminator, the Wasserstein GAN discriminator provides a better learning signal to the generator. This allows the training to be more stable when generator is learning distributions in very high dimensional spaces. == Motivation == === The GAN game === The original GAN method is based on the GAN game, a zero-sum game with 2 players: generator and discriminator. The game is defined over a probability space ( Ω , B , μ r e f ) {\displaystyle (\Omega ,{\mathcal {B}},\mu _{ref})} , The generator's strategy set is the set of all probability measures μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} on ( Ω , B ) {\displaystyle (\Omega ,{\mathcal {B}})} , and the discriminator's strategy set is the set of measurable functions D : Ω → [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle D:\Omega \to [0,1]} . The objective of the game is L ( μ G , D ) := E x ∼ μ r e f [ ln ⁡ D ( x ) ] + E x ∼ μ G [ ln ⁡ ( 1 − D ( x ) ) ] . {\displaystyle L(\mu _{G},D):=\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{ref}}[\ln D(x)]+\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[\ln(1-D(x))].} The generator aims to minimize it, and the discriminator aims to maximize it. A basic theorem of the GAN game states that Repeat the GAN game many times, each time with the generator moving first, and the discriminator moving second. Each time the generator μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} changes, the discriminator must adapt by approaching the ideal D ∗ ( x ) = d μ r e f d ( μ r e f + μ G ) . {\displaystyle D^{}(x)={\frac {d\mu _{ref}}{d(\mu _{ref}+\mu _{G})}}.} Since we are really interested in μ r e f {\displaystyle \mu _{ref}} , the discriminator function D {\displaystyle D} is by itself rather uninteresting. It merely keeps track of the likelihood ratio between the generator distribution and the reference distribution. At equilibrium, the discriminator is just outputting 1 2 {\displaystyle {\frac {1}{2}}} constantly, having given up trying to perceive any difference. Concretely, in the GAN game, let us fix a generator μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} , and improve the discriminator step-by-step, with μ D , t {\displaystyle \mu _{D,t}} being the discriminator at step t {\displaystyle t} . Then we (ideally) have L ( μ G , μ D , 1 ) ≤ L ( μ G , μ D , 2 ) ≤ ⋯ ≤ max μ D L ( μ G , μ D ) = 2 D J S ( μ r e f ‖ μ G ) − 2 ln ⁡ 2 , {\displaystyle L(\mu _{G},\mu _{D,1})\leq L(\mu _{G},\mu _{D,2})\leq \cdots \leq \max _{\mu _{D}}L(\mu _{G},\mu _{D})=2D_{JS}(\mu _{ref}\|\mu _{G})-2\ln 2,} so we see that the discriminator is actually lower-bounding D J S ( μ r e f ‖ μ G ) {\displaystyle D_{JS}(\mu _{ref}\|\mu _{G})} . === Wasserstein distance === Thus, we see that the point of the discriminator is mainly as a critic to provide feedback for the generator, about "how far it is from perfection", where "far" is defined as Jensen–Shannon divergence. Naturally, this brings the possibility of using a different criteria of farness. There are many possible divergences to choose from, such as the f-divergence family, which would give the f-GAN. The Wasserstein GAN is obtained by using the Wasserstein metric, which satisfies a "dual representation theorem" that renders it highly efficient to compute: A proof can be found in the main page on Wasserstein metric. == Definition == By the Kantorovich-Rubenstein duality, the definition of Wasserstein GAN is clear:A Wasserstein GAN game is defined by a probability space ( Ω , B , μ r e f ) {\displaystyle (\Omega ,{\mathcal {B}},\mu _{ref})} , where Ω {\displaystyle \Omega } is a metric space, and a constant K > 0 {\displaystyle K>0} . There are 2 players: generator and discriminator (also called "critic"). The generator's strategy set is the set of all probability measures μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} on ( Ω , B ) {\displaystyle (\Omega ,{\mathcal {B}})} . The discriminator's strategy set is the set of measurable functions of type D : Ω → R {\displaystyle D:\Omega \to \mathbb {R} } with bounded Lipschitz-norm: ‖ D ‖ L ≤ K {\displaystyle \|D\|_{L}\leq K} . The Wasserstein GAN game is a zero-sum game, with objective function L W G A N ( μ G , D ) := E x ∼ μ G [ D ( x ) ] − E x ∼ μ r e f [ D ( x ) ] . {\displaystyle L_{WGAN}(\mu _{G},D):=\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[D(x)]-\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{ref}}[D(x)].} The generator goes first, and the discriminator goes second. The generator aims to minimize the objective, and the discriminator aims to maximize the objective: min μ G max D L W G A N ( μ G , D ) . {\displaystyle \min _{\mu _{G}}\max _{D}L_{WGAN}(\mu _{G},D).} By the Kantorovich-Rubenstein duality, for any generator strategy μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} , the optimal reply by the discriminator is D ∗ {\displaystyle D^{}} , such that L W G A N ( μ G , D ∗ ) = K ⋅ W 1 ( μ G , μ r e f ) . {\displaystyle L_{WGAN}(\mu _{G},D^{})=K\cdot W_{1}(\mu _{G},\mu _{ref}).} Consequently, if the discriminator is good, the generator would be constantly pushed to minimize W 1 ( μ G , μ r e f ) {\displaystyle W_{1}(\mu _{G},\mu _{ref})} , and the optimal strategy for the generator is just μ G = μ r e f {\displaystyle \mu _{G}=\mu _{ref}} , as it should. == Comparison with GAN == In the Wasserstein GAN game, the discriminator provides a better gradient than in the GAN game. Consider for example a game on the real line where both μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} and μ r e f {\displaystyle \mu _{ref}} are Gaussian. Then the optimal Wasserstein critic D W G A N {\displaystyle D_{WGAN}} and the optimal GAN discriminator D {\displaystyle D} are plotted as below: For fixed discriminator, the generator needs to minimize the following objectives: For GAN, E x ∼ μ G [ ln ⁡ ( 1 − D ( x ) ) ] {\displaystyle \mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[\ln(1-D(x))]} . For Wasserstein GAN, E x ∼ μ G [ D W G A N ( x ) ] {\displaystyle \mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[D_{WGAN}(x)]} . Let μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} be parametrized by θ {\displaystyle \theta } , then we can perform stochastic gradient descent by using two unbiased estimators of the gradient: ∇ θ E x ∼ μ G [ ln ⁡ ( 1 − D ( x ) ) ] = E x ∼ μ G [ ln ⁡ ( 1 − D ( x ) ) ⋅ ∇ θ ln ⁡ ρ μ G ( x ) ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[\ln(1-D(x))]=\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[\ln(1-D(x))\cdot \nabla _{\theta }\ln \rho _{\mu _{G}}(x)]} ∇ θ E x ∼ μ G [ D W G A N ( x ) ] = E x ∼ μ G [ D W G A N ( x ) ⋅ ∇ θ ln ⁡ ρ μ G ( x ) ] {\displaystyle \nabla _{\theta }\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[D_{WGAN}(x)]=\mathbb {E} _{x\sim \mu _{G}}[D_{WGAN}(x)\cdot \nabla _{\theta }\ln \rho _{\mu _{G}}(x)]} where we used the reparameterization trick. As shown, the generator in GAN is motivated to let its μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} "slide down the peak" of ln ⁡ ( 1 − D ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \ln(1-D(x))} . Similarly for the generator in Wasserstein GAN. For Wasserstein GAN, D W G A N {\displaystyle D_{WGAN}} has gradient 1 almost everywhere, while for GAN, ln ⁡ ( 1 − D ) {\displaystyle \ln(1-D)} has flat gradient in the middle, and steep gradient elsewhere. As a result, the variance for the estimator in GAN is usually much larger than that in Wasserstein GAN. See also Figure 3 of. The problem with D J S {\displaystyle D_{JS}} is much more severe in actual machine learning situations. Consider training a GAN to generate ImageNet, a collection of photos of size 256-by-256. The space of all such photos is R 256 2 {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{256^{2}}} , and the distribution of ImageNet pictures, μ r e f {\displaystyle \mu _{ref}} , concentrates on a manifold of much lower dimension in it. Consequently, any generator strategy μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} would almost surely be entirely disjoint from μ r e f {\displaystyle \mu _{ref}} , making D J S ( μ G ‖ μ r e f ) = + ∞ {\displaystyle D_{JS}(\mu _{G}\|\mu _{ref})=+\infty } . Thus, a good discriminator can almost perfectly distinguish μ r e f {\displaystyle \mu _{ref}} from μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} , as well as any μ G ′ {\displaystyle \mu _{G}'} close to μ G {\displaystyle \mu _{G}} . Thus, the gradient ∇ μ G L ( μ G , D ) ≈ 0 {\displaystyle \nabla _{\mu _{G}}L(\mu _{G},D)\approx 0} , creating no learning signal for the generator. Detailed theorems can be found in. == Training Wasserstein GANs == Training the generator in Wasserstein GAN is just gradient descent, the same as in GAN (or most deep learning methods), but training the discriminator is different, as the discriminator is now restricted to have bounded Lipschitz norm. There are several methods for this. === Upper-bounding the Lipschitz norm === Let the discriminator function D {\displaystyle D} to be implemented by a multilayer perceptron: D = D n ∘ D n − 1 ∘ ⋯ ∘ D 1 {\displaystyle D=D_{n}\circ D_{n-1}\circ \cdots \circ D_{1}} where D i ( x ) = h ( W i x ) {\displaystyle D_{i}(x)=h(W_

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  • Two-way finite automaton

    Two-way finite automaton

    In computer science, in particular in automata theory, a two-way finite automaton is a finite automaton that is allowed to re-read its input. == Two-way deterministic finite automaton == A two-way deterministic finite automaton (2DFA) is an abstract machine, a generalized version of the deterministic finite automaton (DFA) which can revisit characters already processed. As in a DFA, there are a finite number of states with transitions between them based on the current character, but each transition is also labelled with a value indicating whether the machine will move its position in the input to the left, right, or stay at the same position. Equivalently, 2DFAs can be seen as read-only Turing machines with no work tape, only a read-only input tape. 2DFAs were introduced in a seminal 1959 paper by Rabin and Scott, who proved them to have equivalent power to one-way DFAs. That is, any formal language which can be recognized by a 2DFA can be recognized by a DFA which only examines and consumes each character in order. Since DFAs are obviously a special case of 2DFAs, this implies that both kinds of machines recognize precisely the class of regular languages. However, the equivalent DFA for a 2DFA may require exponentially many states, making 2DFAs a much more practical representation for algorithms for some common problems. 2DFAs are also equivalent to read-only Turing machines that use only a constant amount of space on their work tape, since any constant amount of information can be incorporated into the finite control state via a product construction (a state for each combination of work tape state and control state). == Formal description == Formally, a two-way deterministic finite automaton can be described by the following 8-tuple: M = ( Q , Σ , L , R , δ , s , t , r ) {\displaystyle M=(Q,\Sigma ,L,R,\delta ,s,t,r)} where Q {\displaystyle Q} is the finite, non-empty set of states Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } is the finite, non-empty set of input symbols L {\displaystyle L} is the left endmarker R {\displaystyle R} is the right endmarker δ : Q × ( Σ ∪ { L , R } ) → Q × { l e f t , r i g h t } {\displaystyle \delta :Q\times (\Sigma \cup \{L,R\})\rightarrow Q\times \{\mathrm {left,right} \}} s {\displaystyle s} is the start state t {\displaystyle t} is the end state r {\displaystyle r} is the reject state In addition, the following two conditions must also be satisfied: For all q ∈ Q {\displaystyle q\in Q} δ ( q , L ) = ( q ′ , r i g h t ) {\displaystyle \delta (q,L)=(q^{\prime },\mathrm {right} )} for some q ′ ∈ Q {\displaystyle q^{\prime }\in Q} δ ( q , R ) = ( q ′ , l e f t ) {\displaystyle \delta (q,R)=(q^{\prime },\mathrm {left} )} for some q ′ ∈ Q {\displaystyle q^{\prime }\in Q} It says that there must be some transition possible when the pointer reaches either end of the input word. For all symbols σ ∈ Σ ∪ { L } {\displaystyle \sigma \in \Sigma \cup \{L\}} δ ( t , σ ) = ( t , R ) {\displaystyle \delta (t,\sigma )=(t,R)} δ ( r , σ ) = ( r , R ) {\displaystyle \delta (r,\sigma )=(r,R)} δ ( t , R ) = ( t , L ) {\displaystyle \delta (t,R)=(t,L)} δ ( r , R ) = ( r , L ) {\displaystyle \delta (r,R)=(r,L)} It says that once the automaton reaches the accept or reject state, it stays in there forever and the pointer goes to the right most symbol and cycles there infinitely. == Two-way nondeterministic finite automaton == A two-way nondeterministic finite automaton (2NFA) may have multiple transitions defined in the same configuration. Its transition function is δ : Q × ( Σ ∪ { L , R } ) → 2 Q × { l e f t , r i g h t } {\displaystyle \delta :Q\times (\Sigma \cup \{L,R\})\rightarrow 2^{Q\times \{\mathrm {left,right} \}}} . Like a standard one-way NFA, a 2NFA accepts a string if at least one of the possible computations is accepting. Like the 2DFAs, the 2NFAs also accept only regular languages. == Two-way alternating finite automaton == A two-way alternating finite automaton (2AFA) is a two-way extension of an alternating finite automaton (AFA). Its state set is Q = Q ∃ ∪ Q ∀ {\displaystyle Q=Q_{\exists }\cup Q_{\forall }} where Q ∃ ∩ Q ∀ = ∅ {\displaystyle Q_{\exists }\cap Q_{\forall }=\emptyset } . States in Q ∃ {\displaystyle Q_{\exists }} and Q ∀ {\displaystyle Q_{\forall }} are called existential resp. universal. In an existential state a 2AFA nondeterministically chooses the next state like an NFA, and accepts if at least one of the resulting computations accepts. In a universal state 2AFA moves to all next states, and accepts if all the resulting computations accept. == State complexity tradeoffs == Two-way and one-way finite automata, deterministic and nondeterministic and alternating, accept the same class of regular languages. However, transforming an automaton of one type to an equivalent automaton of another type incurs a blow-up in the number of states. Christos Kapoutsis determined that transforming an n {\displaystyle n} -state 2DFA to an equivalent DFA requires n ( n n − ( n − 1 ) n ) {\displaystyle n(n^{n}-(n-1)^{n})} states in the worst case. If an n {\displaystyle n} -state 2DFA or a 2NFA is transformed to an NFA, the worst-case number of states required is ( 2 n n + 1 ) = O ( 4 n n ) {\displaystyle {\binom {2n}{n+1}}=O\left({\frac {4^{n}}{\sqrt {n}}}\right)} . Ladner, Lipton and Stockmeyer. proved that an n {\displaystyle n} -state 2AFA can be converted to a DFA with 2 n 2 n {\displaystyle 2^{n2^{n}}} states. The 2AFA to NFA conversion requires 2 Θ ( n log ⁡ n ) {\displaystyle 2^{\Theta (n\log n)}} states in the worst case, see Geffert and Okhotin. It is an open problem whether every 2NFA can be converted to a 2DFA with only a polynomial increase in the number of states. The problem was raised by Sakoda and Sipser, who compared it to the P vs. NP problem in the computational complexity theory. Berman and Lingas discovered a formal relation between this problem and the L vs. NL open problem, see Kapoutsis for a precise relation. == Sweeping automata == Sweeping automata are 2DFAs of a special kind that process the input string by making alternating left-to-right and right-to-left sweeps, turning only at the endmarkers. Sipser constructed a sequence of languages, each accepted by an n-state NFA, yet which is not accepted by any sweeping automata with fewer than 2 n {\displaystyle 2^{n}} states. == Two-way quantum finite automaton == The concept of 2DFAs was in 1997 generalized to quantum computing by John Watrous's "On the Power of 2-Way Quantum Finite State Automata", in which he demonstrates that these machines can recognize nonregular languages and so are more powerful than DFAs. == Two-way pushdown automaton == A pushdown automaton that is allowed to move either way on its input tape is called two-way pushdown automaton (2PDA); it has been studied by Hartmanis, Lewis, and Stearns (1965). Aho, Hopcroft, Ullman (1968) and Cook (1971) characterized the class of languages recognizable by deterministic (2DPDA) and non-deterministic (2NPDA) two-way pushdown automata; Gray, Harrison, and Ibarra (1967) investigated the closure properties of these languages.

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    In the automata theory, a tagged deterministic finite automaton (TDFA) is an extension of deterministic finite automaton (DFA). In addition to solving the recognition problem for regular languages, TDFA is also capable of submatch extraction and parsing. While canonical DFA can find out if a string belongs to the language defined by a regular expression, TDFA can also extract substrings that match specific subexpressions. More generally, TDFA can identify positions in the input string that match tagged positions in a regular expression (tags are meta-symbols similar to capturing parentheses, but without the pairing requirement). == History == TDFA were first described by Ville Laurikari in 2000. Prior to that it was unknown whether it is possible to perform submatch extraction in one pass on a deterministic finite-state automaton, so this paper was an important advancement. Laurikari described TDFA construction and gave a proof that the determinization process terminates, however the algorithm did not handle disambiguation correctly. In 2007 Chris Kuklewicz implemented TDFA in a Haskell library Regex-TDFA with POSIX longest-match semantics. Kuklewicz gave an informal description of the algorithm and answered the principal question whether TDFA are capable of POSIX longest-match disambiguation, which was doubted by other researchers. In 2017 Ulya Trafimovich described TDFA with one-symbol lookahead. The use of a lookahead symbol reduces the number of registers and register operations in a TDFA, which makes it faster and often smaller than Laurikari TDFA. Trafimovich called TDFA variants with and without lookahead TDFA(1) and TDFA(0) by analogy with LR parsers LR(1) and LR(0). The algorithm was implemented in the open-source lexer generator RE2C. Trafimovich formalized Kuklewicz disambiguation algorithm. In 2018 Angelo Borsotti worked on an experimental Java implementation of TDFA; it was published later in 2021. In 2019 Borsotti and Trafimovich adapted POSIX disambiguation algorithm by Okui and Suzuki to TDFA. They gave a formal proof of correctness of the new algorithm and showed that it is faster than Kuklewicz algorithm in practice. In 2020 Trafimovich published an article about TDFA implementation in RE2C. In 2022 Borsotti and Trafimovich published a paper with a detailed description of TDFA construction. The paper incorporated their past research and presented multi-pass TDFA that are better suited to just-in-time determinization. They also compared TDFA against other algorithms and provided benchmarks. == Formal definition == TDFA have the same basic structure as ordinary DFA: a finite set of states linked by transitions. In addition to that, TDFA have a fixed set of registers that hold tag values, and register operations on transitions that set or copy register values. The values may be scalar offsets, or offset lists for tags that match repeatedly (the latter can be represented efficiently using a trie structure). There is no one-to-one mapping between tags in a regular expression and registers in a TDFA: a single tag may need many registers, and the same register may hold values of different tags. The following definition is according to Trafimovich and Borsotti. The original definition by Laurikari is slightly different. A tagged deterministic finite automaton F {\displaystyle F} is a tuple ( Σ , T , S , S f , s 0 , R , R f , δ , φ ) {\displaystyle (\Sigma ,T,S,S_{f},s_{0},R,R_{f},\delta ,\varphi )} , where: Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } is a finite set of symbols (alphabet) T {\displaystyle T} is a finite set of tags S {\displaystyle S} is a finite set of states with initial state s 0 {\displaystyle s_{0}} and a subset of final states S f ⊆ S {\displaystyle S_{f}\subseteq S} R {\displaystyle R} is a finite set of registers with a subset of final registers R f {\displaystyle R_{f}} (one per tag) δ : S × Σ → S × O ∗ {\displaystyle \delta :S\times \Sigma \rightarrow S\times O^{}} is a transition function φ : S f → O ∗ {\displaystyle \varphi :S_{f}\rightarrow O^{}} is a final function, where O {\displaystyle O} is a set of register operations of the following types: set register i {\displaystyle i} to nil or to the current position: i ← v {\displaystyle i\leftarrow v} , where v ∈ { n , p } {\displaystyle v\in \{\mathbf {n} ,\mathbf {p} \}} copy register j {\displaystyle j} to register i {\displaystyle i} : i ← j {\displaystyle i\leftarrow j} copy register j {\displaystyle j} to register i {\displaystyle i} and append history: i ← j ⋅ h {\displaystyle i\leftarrow j\cdot h} , where h {\displaystyle h} is a string over { n , p } {\displaystyle \{\mathbf {n} ,\mathbf {p} \}} === Example === Figure 0 shows an example TDFA for regular expression ( 1 a 2 ) ∗ 3 ( a | 4 b ) 5 b ∗ {\displaystyle (1a2)^{}3(a|4b)5b^{}} with alphabet Σ = { a , b } {\displaystyle \Sigma =\{a,b\}} and a set of tags T = { 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 } {\displaystyle T=\{1,2,3,4,5\}} that matches strings of the form a … a b … b {\displaystyle a\dots ab\dots b} with at least one symbol. TDFA has four states S = { 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 } {\displaystyle S=\{0,1,2,3\}} three of which are final S f = { 1 , 2 , 3 } {\displaystyle S_{f}=\{1,2,3\}} . The set of registers is R = { r 1 , r 2 , r 3 , r 4 , r 5 } {\displaystyle R=\{r_{1},r_{2},r_{3},r_{4},r_{5}\}} with a subset of final registers R f = { r 1 , r 2 , r 3 , r 4 , r 5 } {\displaystyle R_{f}=\{r_{1},r_{2},r_{3},r_{4},r_{5}\}} where register r i {\displaystyle r_{i}} corresponds to i {\displaystyle i} -th tag. Transitions have operations defined by the δ {\displaystyle \delta } function, and final states have operations defined by the φ {\displaystyle \varphi } function (marked with wide-tipped arrow). For example, to match string a a b {\displaystyle aab} , one starts in state 0, matches the first a {\displaystyle a} and moves to state 1 (setting registers r 1 , r 2 {\displaystyle r_{1},r_{2}} to undefined and r 3 {\displaystyle r_{3}} to the current position 0), matches the second a {\displaystyle a} and loops to state 1 (register values are now r 1 = 0 , r 2 = r 3 = 1 {\displaystyle r_{1}=0,r_{2}=r_{3}=1} ), matches b {\displaystyle b} and moves to state 2 (register values are now r 1 = 1 , r 2 = r 3 = r 4 = 2 {\displaystyle r_{1}=1,r_{2}=r_{3}=r_{4}=2} ), executes the final operations in state 2 (register values are now r 1 = 1 , r 2 = r 3 = r 4 = 2 , r 5 = 3 {\displaystyle r_{1}=1,r_{2}=r_{3}=r_{4}=2,r_{5}=3} ) and finally exits TDFA. == Complexity == Canonical DFA solve the recognition problem in linear time. The same holds for TDFA, since the number of registers and register operations is fixed and depends only on the regular expression, but not on the length of input. The overhead on submatch extraction depends on tag density in a regular expression and nondeterminism degree of each tag (the maximum number of registers needed to track all possible values of the tag in a single TDFA state). On one extreme, if there are no tags, a TDFA is identical to a canonical DFA. On the other extreme, if every subexpression is tagged, a TDFA effectively performs full parsing and has many operations on every transition. In practice for real-world regular expressions with a few submatch groups the overhead is negligible compared to matching with canonical DFA. == TDFA construction == TDFA construction is performed in a few steps. First, a regular expression is converted to a tagged nondeterministic finite automaton (TNFA). Second, a TNFA is converted to a TDFA using a determinization procedure; this step also includes disambiguation that resolves conflicts between ambiguous TNFA paths. After that, a TDFA can optionally go through a number of optimizations that reduce the number of registers and operations, including minimization that reduces the number of states. Algorithms for all steps of TDFA construction with pseudocode are given in the paper by Borsotti and Trafimovich. This section explains TDFA construction on the example of a regular expression a ∗ t b ∗ | a b {\displaystyle a^{}tb^{}|ab} , where t {\displaystyle t} is a tag and { a , b } {\displaystyle \{a,b\}} are alphabet symbols. === Tagged NFA === TNFA is a nondeterministic finite automaton with tagged ε-transitions. It was first described by Laurikari, although similar constructions were known much earlier as Mealy machines and nondeterministic finite-state transducers. TNFA construction is very similar to Thompson's construction: it mirrors the structure of a regular expression. Importantly, TNFA preserves ambiguity in a regular expression: if it is possible to match a string in two different ways, then TNFA for this regular expression has two different accepting paths for this string. TNFA definition by Borsotti and Trafimovich differs from the original one by Laurikari in that TNFA can have negative tags on transitions: they are needed to make the absence of match explicit in cases when there is a bypass for a tagged transition. Figure 1 shows TNFA for the example regu

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