AI For Students Gemini

AI For Students Gemini — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • XLeratorDB

    XLeratorDB

    XLeratorDB is a suite of database function libraries that enable Microsoft SQL Server to perform a wide range of additional (non-native) business intelligence and ad hoc analytics. The libraries, which are embedded and run centrally on the database, include more than 450 individual functions similar to those found in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The individual functions are grouped and sold as six separate libraries based on usage: finance, statistics, math, engineering, unit conversions and strings. WestClinTech, the company that developed XLeratorDB, claims it is "the first commercial function package add-in for Microsoft SQL Server." == Company history == WestClinTech (LLC), founded by software industry veterans Charles Flock and Joe Stampf in 2008, is located in Irvington, New York, United States. Flock was a co-founder of The Frustum Group, developer of the OPICS enterprise banking and trading platform, which was acquired by London-based Misys, PLC in 1996. Stampf joined Frustum in 1994 and with Flock remained active with the company after acquisition, helping to develop successive generations of OPICS now employed by over 150 leading financial institutions worldwide. Following a full year of research, development and testing, WestClinTech introduced and recorded its first commercial sale of XLeratorDB in April 2009. In September 2009, XLeratorDB became available to all Federal agencies through NASA's Strategic Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP-IV) program, a government-wide acquisition contract. == Technology == XLeratorDB uses Microsoft SQL CLR(Common Language Runtime) technology. SQL CLR allows managed code to be hosted by, and run in, the Microsoft SQL Server environment. SQL CLR relies on the creation, deployment and registration of .NET Framework assemblies that are physically stored in managed code dynamic-link libraries (DLL). The assemblies may contain .NET namespaces, classes, functions, and properties. Because managed code compiles to native code prior to execution, functions using SQL CLR can achieve significant performance increases versus the equivalent functions written in T-SQL in some scenarios. XLeratorDB requires Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2005 Express editions, or later (compatibility mode 90 or higher). The product installs with PERMISSION_SET=SAFE. SAFE mode, the most restrictive permission set, is accessible by all users. Code executed by an assembly with SAFE permissions cannot access external system resources such as files, the network, the internet, environment variables, or the registry. == Functions == In computer science, a function is a portion of code within a larger program which performs a specific task and is relatively independent of the remaining code. As used in database and spreadsheet applications these functions generally represent mathematical formulas widely used across a variety of fields. While this code may be user-generated, it is also embedded as a pre-written sub-routine in applications. These functions are typically identified by common nomenclature which corresponds to their underlying operations: e.g. IRR identifies the function which calculates Internal Rate of Return on a series of periodic cash flows. === Function uses === As subroutines, functions can be integrated and used in a variety of ways, and as part of larger, more complicated applications. Within large enterprise applications they may, for example, play an important role in defining business rules or risk management parameters, while remaining virtually invisible to end users. Within database management systems and spreadsheets, however, these kinds of functions also represent discrete sets of tools; they can be accessed directly and utilized on a stand-alone basis, or in more complex, user-defined configurations. In this context, functions can be used for business intelligence and ad hoc analysis of data in fields such as finance, statistics, engineering, math, etc. === Function types === XLeratorDB uses three kinds of functions to perform analytic operations: scalar, aggregate, and a hybrid form which WestClinTech calls Range Queries. Scalar functions take a single value, perform an operation and return a single value. An example of this type of function is LOG, which returns the logarithm of a number to a specified base. Aggregate functions operate on a series of values but return a single, summarizing value. An example of this type of function is AVG, which returns the average of values in a specified group. In XLeratorDB there are some functions which have characteristics of aggregate functions (operating on multiple series of values) but cannot be processed in SQL CLR using single column inputs, such as AVG does. For example, irregular internal rate of return (XIRR), a financial function, operates on a collection of cash flow values from one column, but must also apply variable period lengths from another column and an initial iterative assumption from a third, in order to return a single, summarizing value. WestClinTech documentation notes that Range Queries specify the data to be included in the result set of the function independently of the WHERE clause associated with the T-SQL statement, by incorporating a SELECT statement into the function as a string argument; the function then traps that SELECT statement, executes it internally and processes the result. Some XLeratorDB functions that employ Range Queries are: NPV, XNPV, IRR, XIRR, MIRR, MULTINOMIAL, and SERIESSUM. Within the application these functions are identified by a "_q" naming convention: e.g. NPV_q, IRR_q, etc. == Analytic functions == === SQL Server functions === Microsoft SQL Server is the #3 selling database management system (DBMS), behind Oracle and IBM. (While versions of SQL Server have been on the market since 1987, XLeratorDB is compatible with only the 2005 edition and later.) Like all major DBMS, SQL Server performs a variety of data mining operations by returning or arraying data in different views (also known as drill-down). In addition, SQL Server uses Transact-SQL (T-SQL) to execute four major classes of pre-defined functions in native mode. Functions operating on the DBMS offer several advantages over client layer applications like Excel: they utilize the most up-to-date data available; they can process far larger quantities of data; and, the data is not subject to exporting and transcription errors. SQL Server 2008 includes a total of 58 functions that perform relatively basic aggregation (12), math (23) and string manipulation (23) operations useful for analytics; it includes no native functions that perform more complex operations directly related to finance, statistics or engineering. === Excel functions === Microsoft Excel, a component of Microsoft Office suite, is one of the most widely used spreadsheet applications on the market today. In addition to its inherent utility as a stand-alone desktop application, Excel overlaps and complements the functionality of DBMS in several ways: storing and arraying data in rows and columns; performing certain basic tasks such as pivot table and aggregating values; and facilitating sharing, importing and exporting of database data. Excel's chief limitation relative to a true database is capacity; Excel 2003 is limited to some 65k rows and 256 columns; Excel 2007 extends this capacity to roughly 1million rows and 16k columns. By comparison, SQL Server is able to manage over 500k terabytes of memory. Excel offers, however, an extensive library of specialized pre-written functions which are useful for performing ad hoc analysis on database data. Excel 2007 includes over 300 of these pre-defined functions, although customized functions can also be created by users, or imported from third party developers as add-ons. Excel functions are grouped by type: === Excel business intelligence functions === Operating on the client computing layer Excel plays an important role as a business intelligence tool because it: performs a wide array of complex analytic functions not native to most DBMS software offers far greater ad hoc reporting and analytic flexibility than most enterprise software provides a medium for sharing and collaborating because of its ubiquity throughout the enterprise Microsoft reinforces this positioning with Business Intelligence documentation that positions Excel in a clearly pivotal role. === XLeratorDB vs. Excel functions === While operating within the database environment, XLeratorDB functions utilize the same naming conventions and input formats, and in most cases, return the same calculation results as Excel functions. XLeratorDB, coupled with SQL Server's native capabilities, compares to Excel's function sets as follows:

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  • Is an AI Art Generator Worth It in 2026?

    Is an AI Art Generator Worth It in 2026?

    Curious about the best AI art generator? An AI art generator 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 art generator 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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  • Douwe Kiela

    Douwe Kiela

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

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  • Max Welling

    Max Welling

    Max Welling (born 1968) is a Dutch computer scientist in machine learning at the University of Amsterdam. In August 2017, the university spin-off Scyfer BV, co-founded by Welling, was acquired by Qualcomm. He has since then served as a Vice President of Technology at Qualcomm Netherlands. He is also a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research AI4Science, based in Amsterdam. Welling received his PhD in physics with a thesis on quantum gravity under the supervision of Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft (1998) at the Utrecht University. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles in machine learning, computer vision, statistics and physics, and has most notably invented variational autoencoders (VAEs), together with Diederik P Kingma. In 2025 Welling was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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  • 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).

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  • Michael L. Littman

    Michael L. Littman

    Michael Lederman Littman (born August 30, 1966) is a computer scientist, researcher, educator, and author. His research interests focus on reinforcement learning. He is currently a University Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, where he has taught since 2012. As of July 2025, he is also the university’s inaugural Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence. == Career == Before graduate school, Littman worked with Thomas Landauer at Bellcore and was granted a patent for one of the earliest systems for cross-language information retrieval. Littman received his Ph.D. in computer science from Brown University in 1996. From 1996 to 1999, he was a professor at Duke University. During his time at Duke, he worked on an automated crossword solver PROVERB, which won an Outstanding Paper Award in 1999 from AAAI and competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. From 2000 to 2002, he worked at AT&T. From 2002 to 2012, he was a professor at Rutgers University; he chaired the department from 2009-12. In Summer 2012 he returned to Brown University as a full professor. He has also taught at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was listed as an adjunct professor. Littman served as the Division Director for Information and Intelligent Systems (the AI division) at the National Science Foundation from 2022-2025. After serving a term, he returned to Brown University as their first Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence where he coordinates the intersection of AI with research, teaching, operations, policy, and communication at the university level. == Research == Littman's research interests are varied but have focused mostly on reinforcement learning and related fields, particularly, in machine learning more generally, game theory, computer networking, partially observable Markov decision process solving, computer solving of analogy problems and other areas. He is also interested in computing education more broadly and has authored a book on programming for everyone. == Leadership and Service == Littman has chaired the panel for The One Hundred‑Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100) 2021 Report and will chair the standing committee for the 2026 report. During his time at the National Science Foundation, he co-led the development of the 2023 National Strategic Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan. == Personal Notes == Littman is also known for his playful approach to communication. He has produced multiple education and parody videos (for example a machine-learning version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller with his oft-collaborator Charles Lee Isbell, Jr.) as part of his teaching outreach. Among his hobbies, he has been noted riding an electric unicycle to his office at the NSF. == Awards == Elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for "contributions to the design and analysis of sequential decision-making algorithms in artificial intelligence". Winner of the IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award (2014) Winner of the AAAI “Shakey” Award for Overfitting: Machine Learning Music Video (2014) Elected as a AAAI Fellow in 2010 for "significant contributions to the fields of reinforcement learning, decision making under uncertainty, and statistical language applications". Winner of the AAAI “Shakey” Award for Short Video for Aibo Ingenuity (2007) Winner of the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching at Rutgers (2011) Winner of the Robert B. Cox Award at Duke (1999) Winner of the AAAI Outstanding Paper Award (1999)

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  • Quotient automaton

    Quotient automaton

    In computer science, in particular in formal language theory, a quotient automaton can be obtained from a given nondeterministic finite automaton by joining some of its states. The quotient recognizes a superset of the given automaton; in some cases, handled by the Myhill–Nerode theorem, both languages are equal. == Formal definition == A (nondeterministic) finite automaton is a quintuple A = ⟨Σ, S, s0, δ, Sf⟩, where: Σ is the input alphabet (a finite, non-empty set of symbols), S is a finite, non-empty set of states, s0 is the initial state, an element of S, δ is the state-transition relation: δ ⊆ S × Σ × S, and Sf is the set of final states, a (possibly empty) subset of S. A string a1...an ∈ Σ is recognized by A if there exist states s1, ..., sn ∈ S such that ⟨si-1,ai,si⟩ ∈ δ for i=1,...,n, and sn ∈ Sf. The set of all strings recognized by A is called the language recognized by A; it is denoted as L(A). For an equivalence relation ≈ on the set S of A’s states, the quotient automaton A/≈ = ⟨Σ, S/≈, [s0], δ/≈, Sf/≈⟩ is defined by the input alphabet Σ being the same as that of A, the state set S/≈ being the set of all equivalence classes of states from S, the start state [s0] being the equivalence class of A’s start state, the state-transition relation δ/≈ being defined by δ/≈([s],a,[t]) if δ(s,a,t) for some s ∈ [s] and t ∈ [t], and the set of final states Sf/≈ being the set of all equivalence classes of final states from Sf. The process of computing A/≈ is also called factoring A by ≈. == Example == For example, the automaton A shown in the first row of the table is formally defined by ΣA = {0,1}, SA = {a,b,c,d}, sA0 = a, δA = { ⟨a,1,b⟩, ⟨b,0,c⟩, ⟨c,0,d⟩ }, and SAf = { b,c,d }. It recognizes the finite set of strings { 1, 10, 100 }; this set can also be denoted by the regular expression "1+10+100". The relation (≈) = { ⟨a,a⟩, ⟨a,b⟩, ⟨b,a⟩, ⟨b,b⟩, ⟨c,c⟩, ⟨c,d⟩, ⟨d,c⟩, ⟨d,d⟩ }, more briefly denoted as a≈b,c≈d, is an equivalence relation on the set {a,b,c,d} of automaton A’s states. Building the quotient of A by that relation results in automaton C in the third table row; it is formally defined by ΣC = {0,1}, SC = {a,c}, sC0 = a, δC = { ⟨a,1,a⟩, ⟨a,0,c⟩, ⟨c,0,c⟩ }, and SCf = { a,c }. It recognizes the finite set of all strings composed of arbitrarily many 1s, followed by arbitrarily many 0s, i.e. { ε, 1, 10, 100, 1000, ..., 11, 110, 1100, 11000, ..., 111, ... }; this set can also be denoted by the regular expression "10". Informally, C can be thought of resulting from A by glueing state a onto state b, and glueing state c onto state d. The table shows some more quotient relations, such as B = A/a≈b, and D = C/a≈c. == Properties == For every automaton A and every equivalence relation ≈ on its states set, L(A/≈) is a superset of (or equal to) L(A). Given a finite automaton A over some alphabet Σ, an equivalence relation ≈ can be defined on Σ by x ≈ y if ∀ z ∈ Σ: xz ∈ L(A) ↔ yz ∈ L(A). By the Myhill–Nerode theorem, A/≈ is a deterministic automaton that recognizes the same language as A. As a consequence, the quotient of A by every refinement of ≈ also recognizes the same language as A.

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  • Ancient text corpora

    Ancient text corpora

    Ancient text corpora are the entire collection of texts from the period of ancient history, defined in this article as the period from the beginning of writing up to 300 AD. These corpora are important for the study of literature, history, linguistics, and other fields, and are a fundamental component of the world's cultural heritage. Chinese, Latin, and Greek are examples of ancient languages with significant text corpora, although much of these corpora are known to us via transmission (frequently via medieval manuscript copies) rather than in their original form. These texts – both transmitted and original – provide valuable insights into the history and culture of different regions of the world, and have been studied for centuries by scholars and researchers. Other ancient texts – particularly stone inscriptions and papyrus scrolls – have been published following archaeological research, notably the cuneiform corpus of c.10 million words and the c.5 million words in ancient Egyptian. Through advances in technology and digitization, ancient text corpora are more accessible than ever before. Tools such as the Perseus Digital Library and the Digital Corpus of Sanskrit have made it easier for researchers to access and analyze these texts. == Quantifying the corpora == Two types of ancient texts are known to modern scholars – those that have only survived in younger manuscripts, but whose great age is undisputed (this applies to the bulk of the Chinese, Brahmi, Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Avestan tradition), and those known from original inscriptions, papyri and other manuscripts. Counting of the words in each corpus presents significant methodological challenges – in principle, every single occurrence of a word in the text is counted separately, but in the case of parallel transmission of literary texts, only a single transmission is taken into account. Just as the Book of the Dead and the coffin texts are only included once in the number given for the Egyptian, the Greek and Latin literary works should only be counted according to one manuscript. If, on the other hand, tombs, royal inscriptions or economic documents of certain ancient languages often show a more or less identical form, this is not evaluated as a purely "parallel tradition". Attached prepositions are counted as separate words, except in the case of the definite article in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek since it has no equivalent in most languages, so its frequency would significantly affect the comparability of numbers. === Languages with known size estimates === === South Asian === Sanskrit (Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit) Indus script (3,800 items, c.20,000 characters) Brahmi script Old Tamil Early Indian epigraphy and Indian epic poetry Kharosthi Pali literature List of historic Indian texts === Mesoamerican === Olmec hieroglyphs Maya script === East Asian === Old Chinese Chinese classics The pre-Qin corpus: a collection of ancient Chinese texts written before the Qin dynasty (221 BCE). The corpus includes texts from Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and other schools of thought. The pre-Han corpus: a collection of ancient Chinese texts written before the Han dynasty (202 BCE). The corpus includes texts from Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and other schools of thought. See the Chinese Text Project Chinese bronze inscriptions, Oracle bone script, Seal script, Clerical script === Central Iranian languages === Prior to 300 AD, the Central Iranian languages are mainly in the form of Sassanid stone inscriptions in the two closely related idioms Middle Persian (Pahlavi scripts and Inscriptional Parthian), there are 5000 for the corpus of Middle Persian (mostly 3rd, but also 4th/5th centuries) and for the corpus of Parthian (3rd century) 3000 words. To what extent some of the Manichaean Middle Persian literary texts may date back to the 3rd century is difficult to estimate; Mani is said to have personally written the Shabuhragan totaling about 5000 words. In any case, if we combine Middle Persian and Parthian, we come to over 10,000 words. === Proto-Sinaitic === Proto-Sinaitic script has no more than about 400 letters (number of words is unknown since the script has not been fully interpreted). To a similar extent, there are probably approximately contemporaneous Proto-Canaanite inscriptions (ibid.). === Anatolian === Luwian cuneiform, approx. 3000 words the Palaic language few hundred words. Hieroglyphic Luwian the Lycian alphabet (the best attested Anatolian successor language written in alphabetic script) with about 5000 words The Lydian alphabet 109 inscriptions comprising about 1500 words The Phrygian alphabet the in-tomb inscriptions from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD (approx. 1000 words) and in the so-called "old Phrygian" inscriptions less than 300 words The Carian alphabets whose texts, mainly from Egypt, contain around 600 words. === Old Italic === the Umbrian language attested essentially by the sacrificial instructions of the Iguvinian Tables with 5000 words the Oscan language (ibid.) with 2000 words the Messapic language with probably a good 1000 words (the estimate is difficult because most texts in this hardly understandable language do not use word separators) the Venetic language a few hundred words the Faliscan language a few hundred words Cisalpine Celtic inscriptions amount to approximately 2000 words, to which are added a number of glosses by classical authors === Iberia === Iberian scripts, more rarely written in Greek or Latin script, approx. 2500 words Celtiberian script, which refers to Celtic language testimonies in Iberian, but also in Latin script from Spain (approx. 1000 words) Southwest Paleohispanic script, 78 inscriptions, a few hundred words Lusitanian language, three monuments in Latin script, approx. 60 words === Germanic Northern Europe === Runic inscriptions dated before the 4th century amount to about 30 pieces, which contain no more than 50 words in total === Africa === Geʽez script: comparatively few inscriptions with a total of around 1,000 words before 300 AD. Following Christianization in the 4th century, more extensive texts are known. Libyco-Berber alphabet: over 1,000 inscriptions from the Maghreb, which are dated to Roman times. Most texts do not use a word separator; Peust estimates that the total number of words could be around 5,000 Meroitic script (Ancient Nubian): about 900 texts are known, which Peust estimates may contain approximately 10,000 words, albeit with uncertainty from the fact that the word separator is not used consistently in the Meroitic script. === Aegean === The Cretan Linear A inscriptions that have not yet been deciphered are available in about 2500 texts, which contain a total of around 20,000 characters. The total number of words can hardly be determined; Peust tentatively put it in the same order of magnitude as in Meroitic. In addition to the Linear A texts, there are also inscriptions Cretan hieroglyphs of a few hundred characters and texts written in the Greek alphabet, but not in Greek, with a few dozen words Cypriot syllabary in the first millennium BC, in which mostly Greek texts were recorded. The relevant texts comprise around 100 to 200 words. === Micro corpora === There are a significant number of ancient micro-corpus languages. Estimating the total number of attested ancient languages may be as difficult as estimating their corpus size. For example, Greek and Latin sources hand down an enormous amount of foreign-language glosses, the seriousness of which is not always certain. == Preservation and curation == Historic preservation and maintaining ancient text corpora presents several challenges, including issues with preservation, translation, and digitization. Many ancient texts have been lost over time, and those that survive may be damaged or fragmented. Translating ancient languages and scripts requires specialized expertise, and digitizing texts can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. == Corpus linguistics == The field of corpus linguistics studies language as expressed in text corpora. This includes the analysis of word frequency, collocations, grammar, and semantics. Ancient text corpora provide a valuable resource for corpus linguistics research, enabling scholars to explore the evolution of language and culture over time.

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  • Compute (machine learning)

    Compute (machine learning)

    In machine learning and deep learning, compute is the amount of computing power or computational resources required to train machine learning models and large language models. More broadly, compute is the computational power or resources necessary for a computer or computer program to function. == Definition == Compute is commonly defined as the amount of computing power or computational resources required to train machine learning and large language models. The term "compute" has also been more broadly applied to cloud computing, referencing processing power, memory, networking, storage, and other resources required for the computation of any program. Compute is measured in petaflop/s-days and is used to document AI training. A petaflop/s-day (pfs-day) consists of performing 1015 neural net operations per second for one day, or a total of about 1020 operations. The compute-time product serves as a mental convenience, similar to kilowatt-hour for energy. An amount of compute is meant to give an idea of the number of actual operations performed. == History == In a 2018 analysis titled "AI and compute", artificial intelligence company OpenAI introduced the concept of compute. OpenAI identified two eras of training AI systems in terms of compute-usage. From 1959 to 2012, compute roughly followed Moore’s law. Between 2012 and 2018, the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs increased exponentially, growing by more than 300,000 times — roughly doubling every 3.4 months. By comparison, Moore’s Law doubled every two years over the same period. One of the largest models, released in 2020, used 600,000 times more computing power than the 2012 model. After 2020, compute growth began to slow down, with the compute needed for the largest AI models continuing to slow down in 2023. The notion of compute has become increasingly used from the mid-2020s onwards. == Compute growth and AI progress == Larger AI models trained on more data and using more computational resources, tend to perform better. This happens even if the algorithms themselves remain unchanged. As early as 2018, OpenAI noted the exponential increase in compute to be have a key role in AI progress. OpenAI considers three factors drive the advance of AI: algorithmic innovation, data, and the amount of compute available for training. AI models with more compute not only improve in the tasks they were trained on but can develop emergent abilities. Incremental improvements can lead to more abrupt leaps in capabilities. AI provider SpaceXAI said in 2026 that their AI progress is driven by compute and used it a key metric in the AI training of its supercomputer Colossus, the which contains 1 million GPUs. Anthropic has a contract of $1.25 billion per month with SpaceXAI to buy all the compute capacity at Colossus 1 data center. === Criticism and policy === Increasing, promoting or constraining progress in artificial intelligence has often be done via controlling the amount of compute. Policymarkers have enacted policies and provided support to make compute resources more accessible to domestic AI researchers. In a January 2022 report, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) suggested to institutions that increasingly powerful and generalizable AI (AGI) will likely require other strategies than maximizing compute. Some AI researchers are also concerned that government might exclusively focus on scaling compute instead of other strategies. The CSET has reported on the various bottlenecks which could explain why deep learning needs for compute have slow down: training is expensive and training extremely large models generates traffic jams across many processors that are difficult to manage. there is a limited supply of AI chips (see AI chip memory shortage). CSET advances that the main resource is human capital, specifically talented researchers — according to a 2023 published survey of more than 400 AI researchers, academic and private sector workers. The survey found that AI researchers are not primarily or exclusively constrained by compute access. However, both academic and industry AI researchers equally report concerns that insufficient compute could prevent them from contributing meaningfully to AI research in the future. High compute users are more concerned about compute access. When asked about which resource provided by the government would be the most useful to them, some AI researchers select compute, other prefer grant funding. For this goal, CSET advised policymakers to ensure that even researchers with smaller budgets could effectively contribute to AI research. Other proposed strategies include using contemporary AI algorithms, managing modern AI infrastructure or focusing on interdisciplinary work between the AI field and other fields of computer science. A 2024 study on compute access found that academic-only AI research teams often have less compute intensive research topics, especially foundation models, compared to industry AI labs. As a consequence, academia is likely to play a smaller role in advancing such techniques. The researchers suggest nationally-sponsored computing infrastructure as well as open science initiatives to boost academic compute access. === Data === A 2022 study found that current large language models are significantly under-trained, a consequence of focusing on scaling language models whilst keeping the amount of training data constant. By training over 400 language models of various parameter and token size, they found that "for compute-optimal training", the model size and the number of training tokens should ideally be scaled equally: for every doubling of model size the number of training tokens should also be doubled.

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  • How to Choose an AI Customer-support Bot

    How to Choose an AI Customer-support Bot

    Comparing the best AI customer-support bot? An AI customer-support bot is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI customer-support bot 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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  • Katia Sycara

    Katia Sycara

    Ekaterini Panagiotou Sycara (Greek: Κάτια Συκαρά) is a Greek computer scientist. She is an Edward Fredkin Research Professor of Robotics in the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University internationally known for her research in artificial intelligence, particularly in the fields of negotiation, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. She directs the Advanced Agent-Robotics Technology Lab at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. She also serves as academic advisor for PhD students at both Robotics Institute and Tepper School of Business. == Education and early life == Born in Greece, she went to the United States to pursue advanced education through various scholarships, including a Fulbright (1965-1969). She received a B.S. in applied mathematics from Brown University, M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and PhD in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology. == Research and career == Sycara is a pioneer in the field of semantic web, case-based reasoning, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. She has authored or co-authored more than 700 technical papers dealing with multi-agent systems, software agents, web services, semantic web, human–computer interaction, human-robot interaction, negotiation, case-based reasoning and the application of these techniques to crisis action planning, scheduling, manufacturing, healthcare management, financial planning and e-commerce.[1] She has led multimillion-dollar research effort funded by DARPA, NASA, AFOSR, ONR, AFRL, NSF and industry. Through an ONR MURI program and though the COABS DARPA program, Prof. Sycara's group has developed the RETSINA multiagent infrastructure, a toolkit that enables the development of heterogeneous software agents that can dynamically coordinate in open information environments (e.g. the Internet). RETSINA has been used in multiple applications including supporting human joint mission teams for crisis response; creating autonomous agents for situation awareness and information fusion; financial portfolio management, negotiations and coalition formation for e-commerce, and coordinating robots for Urban Search and Rescue. Sycara is one of the contributors to the development of OWL-S, the Darpa-sponsored language for Semantic Web services, as well as matchmaking and brokering software for agent discovery, service integration and semantic interoperation. === Academic service === Sycara is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems; Editor-in-Chief, of the Springer Series on Agents; and Area Editor of AI and Management Science, the journal "Group Decision and Negotiation." She is a member of the Editorial Board, the Kluwer book series on "Multiagent Systems, Artificial Societies and Simulated Organizations"; member of the editorial board, the journals "Agent Oriented Software Engineering", "Web Intelligence and Agent Technologies", "Journal of Infonomics", "Fundamenda Informaticae", and "Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications"; and member of the editorial board of the "ETAI journal on the Semantic Web" (1998–2001). She was on the Editorial Board of "IEEE Intelligent Systems and their Applications" (1992–1996), and "AI in Engineering" (1990–1996). She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of France Telecom, 2003-2009; member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of the Greek National Research Center Demokritos, 2004-2012; member of the AAAI Executive Council (1996–99); member of the OASIS Technical committee on the development of UDDI (Universal Description and Discovery for Interoperability) software which is an industry standard; and an invited expert for W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) Working Group on Web Services Architecture. She was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the International Foundation of Multiagent Systems (IFMAS), and founding member of the Semantic Web Science Association. Sycara served as the program chair of the Second International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2003); general chair, of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents 98); chair of the Steering Committee of the Agents Conference (1999–2001); scholarship chair of AAAI (1993–1999); and the US co-chair for the US-Europe Semantic Web Services Initiative. === Awards and honors === Sycara is a Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a Fellow of American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Sycara is the recipient of the 2002 ACM/SIGART Agents Research Award. She is also the recipient of the 2015 Group Decision and Negotiation (GDN) Award of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) GDN Section for her outstanding contributions to the field of group decision and negotiation. According to the citation of the award: Katia Sycara is widely acknowledged as one of the leading researchers in the field of autonomous software agents and in particular on problems related to joint decision making and negotiations of such agents. Her work is characterized by a unique combination of methods from Artificial Intelligence and research on human negotiations, and thus has contributed to significant advances in both fields. Sycara's robot teams have won multiple international awards. In the 2005 Robocup Urban Search and Rescue (US Open) held in Atlanta, her team won the First-in-Class Award for Autonomy, and the First-in-Class Award for Mobility. Two years later, again in Atlanta, she led another team that became a world champions in the 2007 International Robocup Search and Rescue Simulation League Competition. In 2008, her robotic team placed third in the Worldwide Robocup Championship Competition in the Urban Search and Rescue Virtual robots League held in Beijing, China. In 2005, she received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Aegean in 2004.

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  • How to Choose an AI Paragraph Rewriter

    How to Choose an AI Paragraph Rewriter

    Comparing the best AI paragraph rewriter? An AI paragraph rewriter is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI paragraph rewriter 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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  • Research software engineering

    Research software engineering

    Research software engineering is the application of software engineering practices, methods and techniques for research software, i.e. software that was made for and is mainly used within research projects. As usual for software engineering, this also includes knowledge of other (and in this case varying) research fields as well as open science that need to be incorporated into a software development process. The term was proposed in a research paper in 2010 in response to an empirical survey on tools used for software development in research projects. It started to be used in United Kingdom in 2012, when it was needed to define the type of software development needed in research. This focuses on reproducibility, reusability, and accuracy of data analysis and applications created for research. == Support == Various type of associations and organisations have been created around this role to support the creation of posts in universities and research institutes. In 2014 a Research Software Engineer Association was created in UK, which attracted 160 members in the first three months and which lead to the creation of the Society of Research Software Engineering in 2019. Other countries like the Netherlands, Germany, and the USA followed creating similar communities and there are similar efforts being pursued in Asia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and Belgium. In January 2021 the International Council of RSE Associations was introduced. UK counts over 40 universities and institutes with groups that provide access to software expertise to different areas of research. Additionally, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council created a Research Software Engineer fellowship to promote this role and help the creation of RSE groups across UK, with calls in 2015, 2017, and 2020. The world first RSE conference took place in UK in September 2016 and it has been repeated annually (except for a gap in 2020) since. In 2019 the first national RSE conferences in Germany and the Netherlands were held, next editions were planned for 2020 and then cancelled. US-RSE held its first national conference in 2023. The Research Software Alliance was formed in 2019 to advance the global research software ecosystem by collaborating with decision makers and key influencers. The SORSE (A Series of Online Research Software Events) community was established in late‑2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and ran its first online event in September 2020.

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  • Project Bergamot

    Project Bergamot

    Project Bergamot is a joint project between several European universities and Mozilla for the development of machine translation software based on artificial neural networks, which is intended for local execution on end-user devices. The software library that was created and the associated language models were made available to the general public as Free Software. Execution requires a x86 CPU with SSE4.1 instruction set extensions. In 2022, Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch judged the translation quality to be "more than adequate", but considered Firefox Translations to be not yet fully mature. == Usage == Mozilla used the Bergamot Translator to expand its web browser Firefox with a feature for translating web pages, which was previously considered an important gap in Firefox' feature set. It is often compared to the much older corresponding feature in Google Chrome, which utilizes a cloud-based background service. In contrast, Firefox Translations does not require any data to leave the user's computer, resulting in advantages in terms of data protection, availability and possibly response times. There is just the installation of a new language model that needs to take place the first time a new language is encountered. Greater independence from large technology companies and their interests is also mentioned as an important advantage. Mozilla thus strengthened its position as an alternative software vendor with a particular focus on data protection and security. Mozilla followed up with the similar feature of speech recognition for spoken user input, based on whisperfile. On the other hand, slow translation times have been observed, especially on older devices. Also, Firefox Translations initially supported far fewer language pairs than other major translation services and is only gradually adding new models. On that matter, the training pipeline is also made available to interested parties to enable the creation of missing language models. TranslateLocally is a Firefox-independent translation software based on the Bergamot Translator. It is also available as an (Electron-based) standalone application or as an extension for Chromium-based web browsers. == History == Mozilla had already tried to get a (cloud-based) web content translation feature into Firefox a few years before Project Bergamot, but had failed because of the financial challenge. Microsoft had already delivered offline capabilities for its translation software in 2018. Google soon followed suit, Apple two years later. The software is based on the free translation framework Marian, which the University of Edinburgh had previously developed in cooperation with Microsoft, and is itself based on the Nematus toolkit that was presented in 2017. Under the leadership of the University of Edinburgh, a development consortium was formed with the Mozilla Corporation and the additional European universities of Prague, Sheffield and Tartu. In 2018, it was able to get 3 million euros of funding from the EU's Horizon 2020 programme. Firefox Translations was initially provided as an add-on. A first functional demonstration prototype was presented in October 2019. Beta version 117 had the feature integrated directly into the browser, the official release was in version 118 from September 2023. Both the add-on module and as part of Firefox, the code and the models are subject to the version 2 of the Mozilla Public License. Since 2022, the EU-funded HPLT project creates new language models. It involves additional partners, including the universities of Helsinki, Turku, Oslo and other partners from Spain, Norway and the Czech Republic.

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  • AI Code-review Tools: Free vs Paid (2026)

    AI Code-review Tools: Free vs Paid (2026)

    Comparing the best AI code-review tool? An AI code-review tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI code-review tool 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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