Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancement is heavily dependent on access to large-scale, high-quality training data. However, in specialized domains such as healthcare, data acquisition faces significant constraints due to privacy regulations, ethical considerations, and limited availability. While synthetic data generation offers a promising solution, conventional approaches typically require substantial real data for training generative models. The emergence of large-scale prompt-based models presents new opportunities for synthetic data generation without direct access to protected data. However, crafting effective prompts for domain-specific data generation remains challenging, and manual prompt engineering proves insufficient for achieving output with sufficient precision and authenticity. We review recent developments in automatic prompt optimization, following PRISMA guidelines. We analyze six peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2024 that focus on automatic data-free prompt optimization methods. Our analysis reveals three approaches: feedback-driven, error-based, and control-theoretic. Although all approaches demonstrate promising capabilities in prompt refinement and adaptation, our findings suggest the need for an integrated framework that combines complementary optimization techniques to enhance synthetic data generation while minimizing manual intervention. We propose future research directions toward developing robust, iterative prompt optimization frameworks capable of improving the quality of synthetic data. This advancement can be particularly crucial for sensitive fields and in specialized domains where data access is restricted, potentially transforming how we approach synthetic data generation for AI development.

This study presents a novel framework for precise force control of fin-actuated underwater robots by integrating a deep neural network (DNN)-based surrogate model with reinforcement learning (RL). To address the complex interactions with the underwater environment and the high experimental costs, a DNN surrogate model acts as a simulator for enabling efficient training for the RL agent. Additionally, grid-switching control is applied to select optimized models for specific force reference ranges, improving control accuracy and stability. Experimental results show that the RL agent, trained in the surrogate simulation, generates complex thrust motions and achieves precise control of a real soft fin actuator. This approach provides an efficient control solution for fin-actuated robots in challenging underwater environments.

Asthma rates have risen globally, driven by environmental and lifestyle factors. Access to immediate medical care is limited, particularly in developing countries, necessitating automated support systems. Large Language Models like ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and Gemini have advanced natural language processing in general and question answering in particular, however, they are prone to producing factually incorrect responses (i.e. hallucinations). Retrieval-augmented generation systems, integrating curated documents, can improve large language models' performance and reduce the incidence of hallucination. We introduce AsthmaBot, a multi-lingual, multi-modal retrieval-augmented generation system for asthma support. Evaluation of an asthma-related frequently asked questions dataset shows AsthmaBot's efficacy. AsthmaBot has an added interactive and intuitive interface that integrates different data modalities (text, images, videos) to make it accessible to the larger public. AsthmaBot is available online via \url{asthmabot.datanets.org}.

In this article, we focus on the pre-training of visual autonomous driving agents in the context of imitation learning. Current methods often rely on a classification-based pre-training, which we hypothesise to be holding back from extending capabilities of implicit image understanding. We propose pre-training the visual encoder of a driving agent using the self-distillation with no labels (DINO) method, which relies on a self-supervised learning paradigm.% and is trained on an unrelated task. Our experiments in CARLA environment in accordance with the Leaderboard benchmark reveal that the proposed pre-training is more efficient than classification-based pre-training, and is on par with the recently proposed pre-training based on visual place recognition (VPRPre).

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) and their utilization in code generation tasks have significantly reshaped the field of software development. Despite the remarkable efficacy of code completion solutions in mainstream programming languages, their performance lags when applied to less ubiquitous formats such as OpenAPI definitions. This study evaluates the OpenAPI completion performance of GitHub Copilot, a prevalent commercial code completion tool, and proposes a set of task-specific optimizations leveraging Meta's open-source model Code Llama. A semantics-aware OpenAPI completion benchmark proposed in this research is used to perform a series of experiments through which the impact of various prompt-engineering and fine-tuning techniques on the Code Llama model's performance is analyzed. The fine-tuned Code Llama model reaches a peak correctness improvement of 55.2% over GitHub Copilot despite utilizing 25 times fewer parameters than the commercial solution's underlying Codex model. Additionally, this research proposes an enhancement to a widely used code infilling training technique, addressing the issue of underperformance when the model is prompted with context sizes smaller than those used during training. The dataset, the benchmark, and the model fine-tuning code are made publicly available.

Some 5,000 miles away in Lithuania, insect farm software provider Cogastro is also working on an AI-based system. It currently sells monitoring software that automatically collects data for users to analyse, but the AI upgrade will enable to system to learn, adapt and make changes inside an insect farm for itself.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. A top security official in Belarus claimed Thursday that the country has prevented attempted drone strikes from Lithuania targeting the Belarusian capital and surrounding areas. He did not present evidence for the claim or give any details. He also said that "radicals" in Lithuania and Poland are producing drones to attack Belarus.

Buildings energy efficiency is a widely researched topic, which is rapidly gaining popularity due to rising environmental concerns and the need for energy independence. In Northern Europe heating energy alone accounts for up to 70 percent of the total building energy consumption. Industry 4.0 technologies such as IoT, big data, cloud computing and machine learning, along with the creation of predictive and proactive digital twins, can help to reduce this number. However, buildings thermal dynamics is a very complex process that depends on many variables. As a result, commonly used physics-based white box models are time-consuming and require vast expertise. On the contrary, black box forecasting models, which rely primarily on building energy consumption data, lack fundamental insights and hinder re-use. In this study we propose an architecture to facilitate grey box modelling of building thermal dynamics while integrating real time IoT data with 3D representation of buildings. The architecture is validated in a case study creating a digital twin platform that enables users to define the thermal dynamics of buildings based on physical laws and real data, thus facilitating informed decision making for the best heating energy optimization strategy. Also, the created user interface enables stakeholders such as facility managers, energy providers or governing bodies to analyse, compare and evaluate buildings thermal dynamics without extensive expertise or time resources.

Deep or reinforcement learning (RL) approaches have been adapted as reactive agents to quickly learn and respond with new investment strategies for portfolio management under the highly turbulent financial market environments in recent years. In many cases, due to the very complex correlations among various financial sectors, and the fluctuating trends in different financial markets, a deep or reinforcement learning based agent can be biased in maximising the total returns of the newly formulated investment portfolio while neglecting its potential risks under the turmoil of various market conditions in the global or regional sectors. Accordingly, a multi-agent and self-adaptive framework namely the MASA is proposed in which a sophisticated multi-agent reinforcement learning (RL) approach is adopted through two cooperating and reactive agents to carefully and dynamically balance the trade-off between the overall portfolio returns and their potential risks. Besides, a very flexible and proactive agent as the market observer is integrated into the MASA framework to provide some additional information on the estimated market trends as valuable feedbacks for multi-agent RL approach to quickly adapt to the ever-changing market conditions. The obtained empirical results clearly reveal the potential strengths of our proposed MASA framework based on the multi-agent RL approach against many well-known RL-based approaches on the challenging data sets of the CSI 300, Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 indexes over the past 10 years. More importantly, our proposed MASA framework shed lights on many possible directions for future investigation.

Text Normalization is an integral part of any text-to-speech synthesis system. In a natural language text, there are elements such as numbers, dates, abbreviations, etc. that belong to other semiotic classes. They are called non-standard words (NSW) and need to be expanded into ordinary words. For this purpose, it is necessary to identify the semiotic class of each NSW. The taxonomy of semiotic classes adapted to the Lithuanian language is presented in the work. Sets of rules are created for detecting and expanding NSWs based on regular expressions. Experiments with three completely different data sets were performed and the accuracy was assessed. Causes of errors are explained and recommendations are given for the development of text normalization rules.