AI Content To Human

AI Content To Human — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

EffectsLab Pro

EffectsLab Pro is a discontinued visual effects software product developed by FXhome. It has since been superseded by the FXhome HitFilm range. The company also produced a limited functionality version, EffectsLab Lite, containing just the Particle engine. A more extensive product, VisionLab Studio, combined the functionality of EffectsLab Pro and the company's CompositeLab Pro product with enhancements to both. == Effects Engines == The effects are generated by the program's effect engines: The Neon Light engine allows light beams to be drawn onto the video, allowing the generation of lightsaber-like weapons, neon lighting, fantasy glow effects and laser blasts. The Particle engine is used for particle effects, such as smoke, fire, explosions, and weather effects. The Muzzle Flash engine is designed for creating and animating muzzle flashes such as machine gun firing, tank blasts, etc. It's possible to rotate the created muzzle flash in 3D, making it the only engine with 3D use. The Optics engine is designed for creating artificial lens flares and light sources. It is useful for enhancing other light-based effects, and mimicking the distinctive flashes of light that accompany Star Wars' lightsaber battles. The Laser engine (introduced in EffectsLab Pro in late 2007) is designed as a simplified method of creating laser weapon effects, including the ability to add simulated perspective to the effect. == Presets == EffectsLab Pro allows the user to save the effects using presets. Since all effects are generated from settings in the different engines, it is fairly easy to generate an XML style description of the effect. It is also possible to share presets on FXhome's website.
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Bin Yang

Bin Yang (Chinese: 杨彬; Pinyin: Yáng Bīn) is a professor of computer science the department of computer science, Aalborg University. His research interests include data management and machine learning. == Education and career == Bin Yang received his bachelor and master degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University, China in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and his Ph.D. from Fudan University in China in 2010. From 2010 to 2011, he worked at the Databases and Information Systems department at Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik in Germany. From 2011 to 2014, he was employed at the department of computer science, Aarhus University. He has been employed at Aalborg University since 2014. At the present moment, he works on a number of different projects: Time Series Analytics and Spatio-temporal Data Management, funded by Huawei, 2020 - 2022. Light-AI for Cognitive Power Electronics, funded by Villum Synergy Programme, 2020 - 2022. Advance: A Data-Intensive Paradigm for Dynamic, Uncertain Networks, funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2019 - 2023. Algorithmic Foundations for Data-Intensive Routing, funded by The Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education, 2019 - 2021. Astra: AnalyticS of Time seRies in spAtial networks, funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2018 - 2021. Distinguished Scholar, funded by The Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University, 2018 - 2021. == Awards == Bin Yang has received a series of awards throughout his career: Sapere Aude Research Leader, Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2018. Distinguished Scholar, The Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University, 2018. Early Career Distinguished Lecturer, 20th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM), 2019. Distinguished Program Committee Member, 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2019 Best paper award at IEEE 14th International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM2013), Milan, Italy Best demo award at IEEE 14th International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM2013), Milan, Italy 2015 best paper in Pervasive and Embedded Computing, Shanghai Computer Academy == Selected publications == Sean Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, Jilin Hu, Jian Tang, and Bin Yang. Unsupervised Path Representation Learning with Curriculum Negative Sampling. IJCAI 2021. Razvan-Gabriel Cirstea, Tung Kieu, Chenjuan Guo, Bin Yang, and Sinno Jialin Pan. EnhanceNet: Plugin Neural Networks for Enhancing Correlated Time Series Forecasting. ICDE 2021. Sean Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Bin Yang. Context-Aware Path Ranking in Road Networks. TKDE 2021. Simon Aagaard Pedersen, Bin Yang, and Christian S. Jensen. Anytime Stochastic Routing with Hybrid Learning. PVLDB 13(9): 1555-1567 (2020). Tung Kieu, Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Christian S. Jensen. Outlier Detection for Time Series with Recurrent Autoencoder Ensembles. IJCAI 2019, 2725–2732. Jilin Hu, Chenjuan Guo, Bin Yang, and Christian S. Jensen. Stochastic Weight Completion for Road Networks using Graph Convolutional Networks. ICDE 2019, 1274–1285. Chenjuan Guo, Bin Yang, Jilin Hu, and Christian S. Jensen. Learning to Route with Sparse Trajectory Sets. ICDE 2018, 1073–1084. Bin Yang, Jian Dai, Chenjuan Guo, Christian S. Jensen, and Jilin Hu. PACE: A PAth-CEntric Paradigm For Stochastic Path Finding. The VLDB Journal 27(2): 153-178 (2018). Jian Dai, Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Zhiming Ding. Personalized Route Recommendation using Big Trajectory Data. ICDE 2015, 543–554, Seoul, Korea, April 2015. Bin Yang, Manohar Kaul, and Christian S. Jensen. Using Incomplete Information for Complete Weight Annotation of Road Networks. TKDE 26(5):1267-1279. Bin Yang, Chenjuan Guo, and Christian S. Jensen. Travel Cost Inference from Sparse, Spatio-Temporally Correlated Time Series Using Markov Models. PVLDB 6(9):769-780. VLDB 2013, Riva del Garda, Trento, Italy, August 2013.
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Marine Carpuat

Marine Carpuat is a computer scientist who works on machine translation and natural language processing. She is known for her research connecting cross-lingual semantics with machine translation. She has been recognized with a NSF Career Award in 2018, a Google Research award in 2016, and Amazon Faculty Awards in 2016 and 2018. == Education == Marine Carpuat obtained her MPhil and PhD from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2008 under the supervision of Dekai Wu. Her PhD thesis was on the topic of machine translation, and demonstrated the first results showing that explicit modeling of lexical semantics could improve the accuracy of a machine translation system. == Career == After completing her education, Carpuat worked at the National Research Council Canada as a researcher. In 2015, she joined University of Maryland as an assistant professor in Computer Science where she is a member of the CLIP lab. Carpuat works in the area of natural language processing with a focus on machine translation and cross-lingual semantics. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed research papers. Her work is published in the proceedings of computer science conferences, including the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. == Selected honors and distinctions == 2016 Google Research Award 2016, 2018 Amazon Research Awards 2018 NSF Career Award
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Boris Katz

Boris Gershevich Katz (Russian: Борис Гершевич Кац; born October 5, 1947) is a principal American research scientist (computer scientist) at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and head of the Laboratory's InfoLab Group. His research interests include natural language processing and understanding, machine learning and intelligent information access. His brother Victor Kac is a mathematician at MIT. He was able to get out of the USSR with the help of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, before the end of the Cold War. Over the last several decades, Boris Katz has been developing the START natural language system that allows the user to access various types of information using English. == Biography == Boris Katz was born on October 5, 1947, in Chișinău in the family of Hersh Katz (died 1976) and Hayki (Klara) Landman (born 1921, Lipcani, Briceni District - died 2006, Cambridge, Middlesex County), who moved from Lipcani, a town located in the northern Bessarabian, to Chișinău before the war. He graduated from Moscow State University and in November 1978, he left for the United States thanks to the personal intervention of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He defended his thesis as a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences in 1975 under the supervision of Evgenii M. Landis. He currently lives in Boston and heads the InfoLabresearch team at the Laboratory of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Boris Katz is the creator of the START information processing system (since 1993 - on the Internet), the author of several works in the field of processing, generation and perception of natural languages, machine learning, and accelerated access to multimedia information. == Family == Brothers - Victor Gershevich Katz, American mathematician, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Mikhail Gershevich Katz, Israeli mathematician, graduate of Harvard and Columbia (Ph.D., 1984) universities, professor at Bar-Ilan University, author of the monograph "Systolic Geometry and Topology" (Mathematical Surveys and Monographs, vol. 137. American Mathematical Society: Providence, 2007). Daughter - Luba Katz, a bioinformatics scientist (her husband is Alan Jasanoff, a neuroimaging scientist, a professor at MIT, the son of Harvard University professors Jay Jasanoff and Sheila Jasanoff). == Past works == A Knowledge Entry System for Subject Matter Experts: The goal of SHAKEN project is to enable subject matter experts, without any assistance from AI technologists, to assemble the models of processes and mechanisms so that questions about them can be answered by declarative inference and simulation. Exploiting lexical regularities in designing natural language systems Word sense disambiguation for information retrieval HIKE (HPKB integrated knowledge environment)- a query interface and integrated knowledge environment for HPKB Quantitative evaluation of passage retrieval algorithms for question answering Sticky notes for the semantic web Question answering from the web using knowledge annotation and knowledge mining techniques The role of context in question answering systems
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Freemake Video Converter

Freemake Video Converter is a freemium video editing app developed by Ellora Assets Corporation. Designed primarily for entry-level users, the software offers a range of functionalities including video format conversion, DVD ripping, and the creation of photo slideshows and music visualizations. Additionally, Freemake Video Converter is capable of burning video streams that are compatible with various media, such as DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. It also features direct video uploading capabilities to platforms like YouTube., enhancing its utility for content creators. The application's user-friendly interface and broad compatibility make it accessible for individuals with minimal video editing experience. == Features == Freemake Video Converter can perform simple non-linear video editing tasks, such as cutting, rotating, flipping, and combining multiple videos into one file with transition effects. It can also create photo slideshows with background music. Users are then able to upload these videos to YouTube. Freemake Video Converter can read the majority of video, audio, and image formats, and outputs them to AVI, MP4, WMV, Matroska, FLV, SWF, 3GP, DVD, Blu-ray, MPEG and MP3. The program also prepares videos supported by various multimedia devices, including Apple devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad), Xbox, Sony PlayStation, Samsung, Nokia, BlackBerry, and Android mobile devices. The software is able to perform DVD burning and is able to convert videos, photographs, and music into DVD video. The user interface is based on Windows Presentation Foundation technology. Freemake Video Converter supports NVIDIA CUDA technology for H.264 video encoding (starting with version 1.2.0). == Important updates == Freemake Video Converter 2.0 was a major update that integrated two new functions: ripping video from online portals and Blu-ray disc creation and burning. Version 2.1 implemented suggestions from users, including support for subtitles, ISO image creation, and DVD to DVD/Blu-ray conversion. With version 2.3 (earlier 2.2 Beta), support for DXVA has been added to accelerate conversion (up to 50% for HD content). Version 3.0 added HTML5 video creation support and new presets for smartphones. Version 4.0 (introduced in April 2013) added a freemium "Gold Pack" of extra features that can be added if a "donation" is paid. Starting with version 4.0.4, released on 27 August 2013, the program adds a promotional watermark at the end of every video longer than 5 minutes unless Gold Pack is activated. Version 4.1.9, released on 25 November 2015 added support for drag-and-drop functions that were not available in prior versions. Since at least version 4.1.9.44 (1 May 2017), the Freemake Welcome Screen is added at the beginning of the video, and the big Freemake logo is watermarked in the center of the whole video. This decreases the quality of free outputs, and users are forced to pay money to remove the watermark or stop using it. Version 4.1.9.31 (11 August 2016) does not have this restriction. == Licensing issues == FFmpeg has added Freemake Video Converter v1.3 to its Hall of Shame. An issue tracker entry for this product, opened on 16 December 2010, says it is in violation of the GNU General Public License as it is distributing components of the FFmpeg project without including due credit. Ellora Assets Corporation has not responded yet. == Bundled software from sponsors == Since version 4.0, Freemake Video Converter's installer includes a potentially unwanted search toolbar from Conduit as well as SweetPacks malware. Although users can decline the software during installation, the opt-out option is rendered in gray, which could mistakenly give the impression that it's disabled.
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Is an AI Pair Programmer Worth It in 2026?

Shopping for the best AI pair programmer? An AI pair programmer 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 pair programmer slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.
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Top 10 AI Customer-support Bots Compared (2026)

Trying to pick the best AI customer-support bot? An AI customer-support bot 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 customer-support bot 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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AI Video Generators: Free vs Paid (2026)

In search of the best AI video generator? An AI video generator is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it turns a rough idea into a polished result in seconds. When choosing one, weigh output quality, pricing, export formats, and how well it fits the tools you already use. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI video generator 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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Cybernetic Serendipity

Cybernetic Serendipity was an exhibition of cybernetic art curated by Jasia Reichardt, shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England, from 2 August to 20 October 1968, and then toured across the United States. Two stops in the United States were the Corcoran Annex (Corcoran Gallery of Art), Washington, D.C., from 16 July to 31 August 1969, and the newly opened Exploratorium in San Francisco, from 1 November to 18 December 1969. == Content == One part of the exhibition was concerned with algorithms and devices for generating music. Some exhibits were pamphlets describing the algorithms, whilst others showed musical notation produced by computers. Devices made musical effects and played tapes of sounds made by computers. Peter Zinovieff lent part of his studio equipment - visitors could sing or whistle a tune into a microphone and his equipment would improvise a piece of music based on the tune. Another part described computer projects such as Gustav Metzger's self-destructive Five Screens With Computer, a design for a new hospital, a computer programmed structure, and dance choreography. The machines and installations were a very noticeable part of the exhibition. Gordon Pask produced a collection of large mobiles (Colloquy of Mobiles (1968)) with interacting parts that let the viewers join in the conversation. Many machines formed kinetic environments or displayed moving images. Bruce Lacey contributed his radio-controlled robots and a light-sensitive owl. Nam June Paik was represented by Robot K-456 and televisions with distorted images. Jean Tinguely provided two of his painting machines. Edward Ihnatowicz's biomorphic hydraulic ear (Sound Activated Mobile (SAM, 1968)) turned toward sounds and John Billingsley's Albert 1967 turned to face light. Wen-Ying Tsai presented his interactive cybernetic sculptures of vibrating stainless-steel rods, stroboscopic light, and audio feedback control. Several artists exhibited machines that drew patterns that the visitor could take away, or involved visitors in games. Cartoonist Rowland Emett designed the mechanical computer Forget-me-not, which was commissioned by Honeywell. Another section explored the computer's ability to produce text - both essays and poetry. Different programs produced Haiku, children's stories, and essays. One of the first computer-generated poems, by Alison Knowles and James Tenney, was included in the exhibition and catalogue. Computer-generated movies were represented by John Whitney's Permutations and a Bell Labs movie on their technology for producing movies. Some samples included images of tesseracts rotating in four dimensions, a satellite orbiting the Earth, and an animated data structure. Computer graphics were also represented, including pictures produced on cathode ray oscilloscopes and digital plotters. There was a variety of posters and graphics demonstrating the power of computers to do complex (and apparently random) calculations. Other graphics showed a simulated Mondrian and the iconic decreasing squares spiral that appeared on the exhibition's poster and book. The Boeing Company exhibited their use of wireframe graphics. The innovative computer-generated sculpture, Quad 1, was displayed at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibit. Created by the American abstract expressionist sculptor, Robert Mallary, in 1968, Quad 1 is widely believed to be the world's first Computer Aided Design sculpture. Keith Albarn & Partners contributed to the design of the exhibition. Reflecting the prominence of music in the show, a ten-track album Cybernetic Serendipity Music was released by the ICA to accompany the show. Artists featured included Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, and Peter Zinovieff, a detail of whose graphic score for 'Four Sacred April Rounds’ (1968) was used as the cover artwork. == Attendance == Time magazine noted that there had been 40,000 visitors to the London exhibition. Other reports suggested visitor numbers were as high as 44,000 to 60,000. However, the ICA did not accurately count visitors. == After-effects == The exhibition provided the energy for the formation of British Computer Arts Society which continued to explore the interaction between science, technology and art, and put on exhibitions (for example Event One at the Royal College of Art). Several pieces were purchased by the Exploratorium in 1971, some of which are on display to this day. In 2014 the ICA held a retrospective exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: A Documentation which included documents, installation photographs, press reviews and publications and a series of discussions in one of which Peter Zinovieff took part. To coincide with the exhibition, Cybernetic Serendipity Music was re-released as a limited-edition vinyl LP by The Vinyl Factory. The Victoria and Albert Museum marked the 50th anniversary with an exhibition in 2018 entitled "Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers". The V&A exhibition included many works by artists who featured in the original ICA show, plus related ephemera. "Chance and Control" subsequently toured to Chester Visual Arts and Firstsite, Colchester. In 2020, The Centre Pompidou exhibited the replica of Gordon Pask's 1968 Colloquy of Mobiles, reproduced by Paul Pangaro and TJ McLeish in 2018. In 2022 the Australian National University's School of Cybernetics launched the school by presenting an exhibition Australian Cybernetic: a point through time. The exhibition included works from Cybernetic Serendipity (1968), Australia ‘75: Festival of Creative Arts and Science (1975), and contemporary pieces curated by the School of Cybernetics. In describing Reichardt's Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition the school stated that it "represented points of expanding the cybernetic imagination" and was a "ground-breaking" "glimpse of a future in which computers were entangled with people and cultures, and through this she fashioned a blueprint for the future of computing that has since inspired generations".
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Judea Pearl

Judea Pearl (Hebrew: יהודה פרל; born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American electrical engineer, computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief propagation). He is also credited for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models (see article on causality). In 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded Pearl with the Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning". He is the author of several books, including the technical Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference, and The Book of Why, a book on causality aimed at the general public. Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front in 2002. == Biography == Judea Pearl was born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate for Palestine, in 1936 to Eliezer and Tova Pearl, who were Polish Jewish immigrants, grew up in Bnei Brak. His grandfather Chaim Pearl was one of Bnei Brak's founders. He is a descendant of Menachem Mendel of Kotzk on his mother's side. After serving in the Israel Defense Forces and joining a kibbutz, Pearl decided to study engineering in 1956. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Technion 1960. That same year, he emigrated to the United States and pursued graduate studies. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Newark College of Engineering (now New Jersey Institute of Technology) in 1961, and went on to receive an M.S. in physics from Rutgers University and a PhD in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the New York University Tandon School of Engineering) in 1965. He worked at RCA Research Laboratories (now SRI International) in Princeton, New Jersey on superconductive parametric amplifiers and storage devices and at Electronic Memories, Inc., on advanced memory systems. When semiconductors "wiped out" Pearl's work, as he later expressed it, he joined UCLA's School of Engineering in 1970 and started work on probabilistic artificial intelligence. He is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Causal Inference. Pearl is currently a professor of computer science and statistics and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at UCLA. He and his wife, Ruth, had three children. In addition, as of 2011, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor. Former Israeli Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, partnered with Judea Pearl in the documentary With My Whole Broken Heart. == Murder of Daniel Pearl == In 2002, his son, Daniel Pearl, a journalist working for the Wall Street Journal was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, leading Judea and the other members of the family and friends to create the Daniel Pearl Foundation. On the seventh anniversary of Daniel's death, Judea wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?. Emeritus Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks quoted Judea Pearl's beliefs in a lesson on Judaism: "I asked Judea Pearl, father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, why he was working for reconciliation between Jews and Muslims...he replied with heartbreaking lucidity, 'Hate killed my son. Therefore I am determined to fight hate.'" == Views == On his religious views, Pearl states that he is a "practicing disbeliever." He is very connected to Jewish traditions such as holidays and kiddush on Friday night. Pearl sits on the NGO Monitor international advisory board, a right-wing organization based in Jerusalem that reports on non-governmental organization activity from a pro-Israel perspective. == Research == Pearl is credited for "laying the foundations of modern artificial intelligence, so computer systems can process uncertainty and relate causes to effects." He is one of the pioneers of Bayesian networks and the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence, and one of the first to mathematize causal modeling in the empirical sciences. His work is also intended as a high-level cognitive model. He is interested in the philosophy of science, knowledge representation, nonstandard logics, and learning. Pearl is described as "one of the giants in the field of artificial intelligence" by UCLA computer science professor Richard E. Korf. His work on causality has "revolutionized the understanding of causality in statistics, psychology, medicine and the social sciences" according to the Association for Computing Machinery. === Notable contributions === A summary of Pearl's scientific contributions is available in a chronological account authored by Stuart J. Russell (2012). An annotated bibliography of Pearl's contributions was compiled by the ACM in 2012. A video describing Pearl's major contributions to AI is available here. Pearl's opinion pieces, touching on Jewish identity, the war on terrorism, and the Middle East conflict can be accessed here. === Books === Heuristics, Addison-Wesley, 1984 Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems, Morgan-Kaufmann, 1988 Pearl, Judea (2000). Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge University Press. I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, Jewish Lights, 2004. (Winner of a 2004 National Jewish Book Award) Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer, (with Madelyn Glymour and Nicholas Jewell), Wiley, 2016. ISBN 978-1-119-18684-7 A previous survey: Causal inference in statistics: An overview, Statistics Surveys, 3:96–146, 2009. Pearl, Judea; Dana Mackenzie (2018). "The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect". Science. 361 (6405): 855. Bibcode:2018Sci...361..855.. doi:10.1126/science.aau9731. === Awards ===
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Babak Hodjat

Babak Hodjat (Persian: بابک حجت; born November 1, 1967) is a British computer scientist, entrepreneur, and writer. He was the co-founder and CEO of Sentient Technologies and now holds the position of Chief Technology Officer AI at Cognizant. He is a specialist in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In 1998 Hodjat co-founded Dejima Inc and served as CEO and CTO, his patented work on artificial intelligence led to the technology used by Apple for their digital assistant Siri. == Biography == === Early life === Babak Hodjat was born on November 1, 1967, in Wimbledon. His father was a retired university professor in entomology who worked at the British Museum. As a child, he did not like insects and would wander off to the nearby science museum, where he would spend long hours in front of a computer they had on display. He attended middle school in the United States. He studied at the Sharif University of Technology from 1986 to 1995, and received his Master of Science degree in software engineering. In 1994, together with another computer department student Hormoz Shahrzad presented their research titled Introducing a dynamic problem solving scheme based on a learning algorithm in artificial life environments at the first IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence held at Orlando. Hodjat received a PhD in machine intelligence from Kyushu University in 2003 During his time there, he published several works on adaptive agent oriented software architecture and natural language user interfaces. === Career in science and business === Hodjat moved to Silicon Valley, California in 1998 and founded Dejima Inc. (named after the historic Japanese Dejima artificial island). The firm was based on a patented adaptive agent-oriented software engineering platform developed by Hodjat, Christopher Savoie and Makoto Amamiya. Hodjat served as the CTO and as the CEO for 9 months from October 2000. By 2000 the company had offices in San Jose, London and Tokyo. In 2002, the company developed a voice control Natural Interaction Platform (NPI) in collaboration with the Stanford University's research group Archimedes Project. During these years Hodjat continued his research on agent oriented software architecture and natural language user interfaces. In July 2003, Dejima got funding from SRI International within the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes (CALO) project of DARPA and worked on a Perceptive Assistant that Learns (PAL) initiative. Hodjat was the primary inventor of the firm's agent-oriented technology applied to intelligent interfaces for mobile and enterprise computing – a technology that eventually led to Siri. In April 2004, Dejima was acquired by Sybase iAnywhere. Hodjat served as senior director of engineering at Sybase iAnywhere from 2004 to 2008, where he developed AvantGo Platform, mBusiness Anywhere, and Answers Anywhere. In 2006, he co-founded MobileVerbs Inc., a mobile marketing service company, which was acquired by iLoop Mobile in February 2010. In 2007, he teamed with Antoine Blondeau (former CEO of Dejima) and Adam Cheyer (Dejima's vice president and Chief Architect of the CALO project) to establish Genetic Finance Holding Ltd. (where he began as CTO). In 2014 the firm became Sentient Technologies. Hodjat was joined by his long-time research fellow Hormoz Shahrzad who became principal scientist, while Hodjat held the position of chief scientist. In the following years Hodjat has worked on developing massively distributed computing technology and improving machine-learning technique known as evolutionary algorithms. One area that gained special attention from the press was applying Sentient Technologies algorithms to a stock market trading through specially created Sentient Investment Management hedge fund. Following the management change within Sentient Technologies, Hodjat became the company's CEO in February 2017. He continues his business and educational projects (he was on the jury of IBM Watson AI XPRIZE and the Merit Awards committee for the ISAL Award). == Writing == Hodjat is the author of multiple books such as The Konar and the Apple: Fun, Beauty, and Dread--From Ahwaz to California and the science fiction novel "The Narrator" (January 2022; ISBN 978-1-7354860-1-7)(March 2023; ISBN 978-1-7354860-0-0). == Selected publications == Hodjat, B.; Shahrzad, H. (1994). "Introducing a dynamic problem solving scheme based on a learning algorithm in artificial life environments". IEEE International Joint Conference on neural networks (IJCNN-94). Vol. 4. IEEE International Joint Conference on neural networks. pp. 2333–2338. doi:10.1109/ICNN.1994.374583. ISBN 978-0-7803-1901-1. S2CID 60497133. Hodjat, B.; Savoie, C.J.; Amamiya, M. (2006) [1998]. "An adaptive agent oriented software architecture". PRICAI'98: Topics in Artificial Intelligence. Springer. pp. 33–46. arXiv:cs/9812014. doi:10.1007/BFb0095256. ISBN 978-3-540-49461-4. S2CID 5317786. Hodjat, B.; Amamiya, M. (2000-05-25). "Applying the Adaptive Agent Oriented Software Architecture to the Parsing of Context Sensitive Grammars". IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems. E83-D (5): 1142–1152. ISSN 0916-8532. Retrieved 2017-12-14. Hodjat, Babak; Hodjat, Siamak; Treadgold, Nick; Jonsson, Ing-Marie (2006). "CRUSE: a context reactive natural language mobile interface". Proceedings of the 2nd annual international workshop on Wireless internet. WICON. doi:10.1145/1234161.1234181. ISBN 978-1-59593-510-6. S2CID 2388254. O'Reilly, Una-May; Wagy, Mark; Hodjat, Babak (2013). "Chapter 6: EC-Star: A Massive-Scale, Hub and Spoke, Distributed Genetic Programming System". In Riolo, R.; Vladislavleva, E.; Ritchie, M.; Moore, J.H. (eds.). Genetic Programming Theory and Practice X. Springer-Verlag New York. pp. 73–85. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-6846-2. ISBN 978-1-4614-6845-5. S2CID 39650969. Retrieved 2017-12-14. Hodjat, Babak; Hemberg, Erik; Shahrzad, Hormoz; O'Reilly, Una-May (2014). "Chapter 4: Maintenance of a Long Running Distributed Genetic Programming System for Solving Problems Requiring Big Data". In Riolo, Rick; Moore, Jason H.; Kotanchek, Mark (eds.). Genetic Programming Theory and Practice XI. Springer-Verlag New York. pp. 65–83. doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-0375-7. ISBN 978-1-4939-0374-0. S2CID 28843739. Retrieved 2017-12-14. Shahrzad, Hormoz; Hodjat, Babak; Miikkulainen, Risto (2016). "Estimating the Advantage of Age-Layering in Evolutionary Algorithms". Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2016. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. pp. 693–699. doi:10.1145/2908812.2908911. ISBN 978-1-4503-4206-3. S2CID 215516530. == Patents == Babak Hodjat holds 21 patents in the fields of agent-oriented programming, natural language decision engines, distributed evolutionary algorithms for asset management and trading and data mining.
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The Best Free Conversational AI Platform for Beginners

Curious about the best conversational AI platform? An conversational AI platform 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 conversational AI platform 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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Oversampled binary image sensor

An oversampled binary image sensor is an image sensor with non-linear response capabilities reminiscent of traditional photographic film. Each pixel in the sensor has a binary response, giving only a one-bit quantized measurement of the local light intensity. The response function of the image sensor is non-linear and similar to a logarithmic function, which makes the sensor suitable for high dynamic range imaging. == Working principle == Before the advent of digital image sensors, photography, for the most part of its history, used film to record light information. At the heart of every photographic film are a large number of light-sensitive grains of silver-halide crystals. During exposure, each micron-sized grain has a binary fate: Either it is struck by some incident photons and becomes "exposed", or it is missed by the photon bombardment and remains "unexposed". In the subsequent film development process, exposed grains, due to their altered chemical properties, are converted to silver metal, contributing to opaque spots on the film; unexposed grains are washed away in a chemical bath, leaving behind the transparent regions on the film. Thus, in essence, photographic film is a binary imaging medium, using local densities of opaque silver grains to encode the original light intensity information. Thanks to the small size and large number of these grains, one hardly notices this quantized nature of film when viewing it at a distance, observing only a continuous gray tone. The oversampled binary image sensor is reminiscent of photographic film. Each pixel in the sensor has a binary response, giving only a one-bit quantized measurement of the local light intensity. At the start of the exposure period, all pixels are set to 0. A pixel is then set to 1 if the number of photons reaching it during the exposure is at least equal to a given threshold q. One way to build such binary sensors is to modify standard memory chip technology, where each memory bit cell is designed to be sensitive to visible light. With current CMOS technology, the level of integration of such systems can exceed 109~1010 (i.e., 1 giga to 10 giga) pixels per chip. In this case, the corresponding pixel sizes (around 50~nm ) are far below the diffraction limit of light, and thus the image sensor is oversampling the optical resolution of the light field. Intuitively, one can exploit this spatial redundancy to compensate for the information loss due to one-bit quantizations, as is classic in oversampling delta-sigma converters. Building a binary sensor that emulates the photographic film process was first envisioned by Fossum, who coined the name digital film sensor (now referred to as a quanta image sensor). The original motivation was mainly out of technical necessity. The miniaturization of camera systems calls for the continuous shrinking of pixel sizes. At a certain point, however, the limited full-well capacity (i.e., the maximum photon-electrons a pixel can hold) of small pixels becomes a bottleneck, yielding very low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and poor dynamic ranges. In contrast, a binary sensor whose pixels need to detect only a few photon-electrons around a small threshold q has much less requirement for full-well capacities, allowing pixel sizes to shrink further. == Imaging model == === Lens === Consider a simplified camera model shown in Fig.1. The λ 0 ( x ) {\displaystyle \lambda _{0}(x)} is the incoming light intensity field. By assuming that light intensities remain constant within a short exposure period, the field can be modeled as only a function of the spatial variable x {\displaystyle x} . After passing through the optical system, the original light field λ 0 ( x ) {\displaystyle \lambda _{0}(x)} gets filtered by the lens, which acts like a linear system with a given impulse response. Due to imperfections (e.g., aberrations) in the lens, the impulse response, a.k.a. the point spread function (PSF) of the optical system, cannot be a Dirac delta, thus, imposing a limit on the resolution of the observable light field. However, a more fundamental physical limit is due to light diffraction. As a result, even if the lens is ideal, the PSF is still unavoidably a small blurry spot. In optics, such diffraction-limited spot is often called the Airy disk, whose radius R a {\displaystyle R_{a}} can be computed as R a = 1.22 w f , {\displaystyle R_{a}=1.22\,wf,} where w {\displaystyle w} is the wavelength of the light and f {\displaystyle f} is the F-number of the optical system. Due to the lowpass (smoothing) nature of the PSF, the resulting λ ( x ) {\displaystyle \lambda (x)} has a finite spatial-resolution, i.e., it has a finite number of degrees of freedom per unit space. === Sensor === Fig.2 illustrates the binary sensor model. The s m {\displaystyle s_{m}} denote the exposure values accumulated by the sensor pixels. Depending on the local values of s m {\displaystyle s_{m}} , each pixel (depicted as "buckets" in the figure) collects a different number of photons hitting on its surface. y m {\displaystyle y_{m}} is the number of photons impinging on the surface of the m {\displaystyle m} th pixel during an exposure period. The relation between s m {\displaystyle s_{m}} and the photon count y m {\displaystyle y_{m}} is stochastic. More specifically, y m {\displaystyle y_{m}} can be modeled as realizations of a Poisson random variable, whose intensity parameter is equal to s m {\displaystyle s_{m}} , As a photosensitive device, each pixel in the image sensor converts photons to electrical signals, whose amplitude is proportional to the number of photons impinging on that pixel. In a conventional sensor design, the analog electrical signals are then quantized by an A/D converter into 8 to 14 bits (usually the more bits the better). But in the binary sensor, the quantizer is 1 bit. In Fig.2, b m {\displaystyle b_{m}} is the quantized output of the m {\displaystyle m} th pixel. Since the photon counts y m {\displaystyle y_{m}} are drawn from random variables, so are the binary sensor output b m {\displaystyle b_{m}} . === Spatial and temporal oversampling === If it is allowed to have temporal oversampling, i.e., taking multiple consecutive and independent frames without changing the total exposure time τ {\displaystyle \tau } , the performance of the binary sensor is equivalent to the sensor with same number of spatial oversampling under certain condition. It means that people can make trade off between spatial oversampling and temporal oversampling. This is quite important, since technology usually gives limitation on the size of the pixels and the exposure time. == Advantages over traditional sensors == Due to the limited full-well capacity of conventional image pixel, the pixel will saturate when the light intensity is too strong. This is the reason that the dynamic range of the pixel is low. For the oversampled binary image sensor, the dynamic range is not defined for a single pixel, but a group of pixels, which makes the dynamic range high. == Reconstruction == One of the most important challenges with the use of an oversampled binary image sensor is the reconstruction of the light intensity λ ( x ) {\displaystyle \lambda (x)} from the binary measurement b m {\displaystyle b_{m}} . Maximum likelihood estimation can be used for solving this problem. Fig. 4 shows the results of reconstructing the light intensity from 4096 binary images taken by single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) camera. A better reconstruction quality with fewer temporal measurements and faster, hardware friendly implementation, can be achieved by more sophisticated algorithms.
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