Quiz: Who Drew It—a Child or AI?
It’s time for an unexpected but important test: an experiment that raises big questions about the future of creativity, of what makes us human, and of education. Challenge yourself and your intuition with 15 pictures drawn by children aged 3 to 10 and 15 generated by artificial intelligence—tell them apart and you could win a prize! Responses are open until July 1, the survey takes no more than 10 minutes, you can answer just some of the questions, and children are welcome to take part too.
82Yuval Noah Harari: Prophet of a New Age
Yuval Noah Harari's name comes up again and again in conversations about the future: the historian and futurist who untangles the threads of humanity's past and poses the big questions of tomorrow. How did a history professor become the favorite author of Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Clinton while staying popular, translated, read and debated? A colorful figure beyond the stereotypes, and, to my mind, a valuable and powerful voice warning us about the immediate dangers we face as a species.
83“A Truly Free Person Wouldn't Think of Their Phone as Anything Special”
Today's guest needs no introduction—his first name alone is enough to turn heads. Kitodar Todorov is a popular actor and television host, but also a meme hero and a seasoned gamer who invites guests to play online while they talk about life. Will this be a fun conversation, or will it give us reasons to stop and think about our place in the world of technology, gaming as a way of life, the difficult balance and the big questions? “Our entire modern civilization is built on little machines we depend on, and that's really dumb.” An unexpected conversation awaits!
84Stay Curious!
What is Yavorov's hometown? Svishtov. Artificial intelligence hallucinated that, and rather clumsily, you might guess. Except it wasn't the machine. It was me, taking part in a prime-time show on Bulgaria's oldest television channel. I would have thought I was more likely to get my own name wrong than the birthplace of a man whose story has fascinated me my whole life. Yet I got it wrong, and I won't be showing my face in Chirpan anytime soon. Knowledge is not a given. Curiosity doesn't come on its own; it takes effort. But is there any point in remembering where Yavorov was born in an age when we can check it in a fraction of a second? Would he have written different poems if he had been from Svishtov? Will the next generations know where he was born, how he wrote? What stirred him, where and how he met love? If you like, ask ChatGPT. Or the Constitutional Court. My own answer is this: today, more than ever, it matters that we stay curious!
85Jensen Huang: The Wizard of NVIDIA
He is one of the great stars of our day. With 30 years of stubborn persistence he built the company that became the most highly valued of all time, and when the moment comes to unveil yet another innovative chip, he turns into a marketing icon: Jensen Huang grabs the leather jacket, steps into the spotlight where he feels at home, and the show begins. Eastern wisdom meets Western polish in one of the richest Americans, the only one on the list born in China (…in a manner of speaking), and his curious journey shows that strong personalities still matter, so it is worth walking it together and hearing his views on the future we are all going to live in.
86Ivan Popov, the Man Who Caught the Future
“A person’s worldview depends substantially on their information metabolism.” “Man is a bot to man. And bot is man to bot. But what kind of man is the bot? And what kind of bot is man?” Ivan Popov was a master of syllogisms, and much more. He was a writer who left us a small number of works from the beginning of the new millennium. Although he published only one novel in his lifetime, and in a small print run at that, his name remains mythical. Because he presented the future in an inimitable way. He caught the trends, gathered the sparks of knowledge that paint the colorful picture of technology’s tomorrow. He managed to bring science and literature together, so that they could search, shoulder to shoulder, for the human and the superhuman, and catch the trends. Ivan Popov’s messages are powerful, stirring and thought-provoking today, more than ever. My heartfelt thanks to Nikolay Genov, who drew my attention to this remarkable writer, forecaster, journalist and scientist. I believe it is important for his words and his name to reach more people. I will be glad of any support—stories from people who knew him, help in making his work better known, or simply good ideas. Write to me!
87Bill Gates and the Philosopher's Stone
Can you picture the founder of Microsoft as a thief of time? How did climbing high mountain peaks shape his biggest successes in the software world? Why was the dream of beating his grandmother at cards among the ideas that made him the richest man on the planet? Hardly anyone would accuse Bill Gates of being a brilliant storyteller, yet the stories told by one of the most important people of our time (like him or not) are certainly impressive. I chose eight of them to tell you…
88Vasil Anastasov: Virtual Reality Meets the Mutual Teaching Method
He is 21, and he has already helped more than 200 children take their first steps in a professional field that could grow into a successful career. Today Vasil Anastasov has taken up another cause: using modern technology to make Bulgarian museums more attractive and appealing to young people. Roll up your sleeves, an adventure awaits!
89Borrowed Origami: What Is Copyright Worth Online?
Sometimes life online throws up cases we could never dream up, however loose we let our imagination run. Picture it, almost as in a Kafka novel: suddenly ads from Chinese stores start popping up for you… offering you something you know perfectly well you created yourself. Our hero today is not Gregor Samsa but Atanas Mihalchev, a Bulgarian photographer, artist and teacher in Canada, whose origami kits for children suddenly turn out not to be his.
90“We’ve Forgotten That the Baby Knows How to Be Born”
How has technology changed pregnancy and childbirth? What has it made easier, and how, paradoxically, has it created problems elsewhere in the way we come into the world? Evgenia Markova got in touch with me because of the Digital Children series and suggested we talk about this side of the relationship between technology and parenthood. She lives in Germany, and although she spent many years working in marketing and software development, today she works mainly as a doula. Especially popular in the West, this is the calling of women who are not medical professionals but who help expectant mothers with information, advice, and practical and emotional support. When can overtrusting technology become a problem in pregnancy and childbirth? Why is it worth returning to tradition in some respects and listening more to our bodies, not only to medical readings or other people’s advice? It is time for an important conversation, one that I believe can offer many useful ideas to people who are just preparing to become parents.
91How Are Our Children Meeting Technology? The Survey Results
How many hours a day do children spend in front of a screen? Should phones be allowed in school? What does the technological future look like for today's children, and what is worth learning? In early February I put these and many other questions to the parents and relatives of children up to 11, and the Digital Stories survey gathered more than 350 responses. Here is what they revealed.
92Fear of Technology = A Nation Left Behind
Elitsa Stoilova says digital literacy should become a national goal if we want to move forward. “Its absence leads to fear of technology = conservatism in adopting and using it = our nation falling behind in many directions. What is the future of illiterate nations?” she wrote to me. Our guest has traveled a colorful road: 11 years in journalism, then tourism, where she became… a hotel manager in the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, before finally dropping anchor in the IT world. She realized that much of the work in tourism is repetitive and can be done by algorithms, so she created the chatbot platform UMNI, long before another chatbot made the world notice how far artificial intelligence has come. But how is it that she is so optimistic about the road ahead? Our guest believes that if we play our cards right, AI is leading us to a wonderful future. What does playing our cards right depend on? And why is it sometimes worth leaving one of the most heavenly corners of the planet to chase your dreams? We look for important and unexpected answers in the lines that follow.
93What Is ChatGPT's IQ?
What is the intelligence quotient of advanced artificial intelligence? Does it reach, or even surpass, the average 100 points of today's humanity? And why does it matter? Let's find out together!
94“The Last One Wins”: ChatGPT Strikes Back!
Intelligence hangs in the air: just over 100 people are in the hall, most of them among the smartest in the country. That's not a guess, I can prove it. They are winners of “The Last One Wins,” the TV quiz that in recent years has reminded us why knowledge matters to all of us, even as a species, in the age of advanced artificial intelligence. My fellow players and I have an important task: to face AI together in a contest that can tell us, and show us, a great deal. Will artificial intelligence, with its incredible skills today, beat some of the most knowledgeable representatives of the natural kind? Time to find out. And to learn something new… ChatGPT against some of Bulgaria's brightest minds in a knowledge contest. Who will win? Have we finally lost this battle against the machines too? The gauntlet has been thrown!
95“We Sacrificed Two Generations Because We Didn’t Know How Technology Works”
“We adults sacrificed two generations because we created something without knowing what it was or how it worked.” Psychologist, father and children’s author Slavi Stoev explains what excessive screen time does to children’s emotional and intellectual development, and why it changes them irreversibly. Is there a middle path for parents, and how do we find it before our civilization drifts into decline?
96“Ask, People! Just Ask!” Five Important (and Awkward) Questions About Blind People
Viktor Asenov never stops running, always toward the next record to conquer. This time we pick up our conversation with the blind long-distance runner about the daily hardships of Bulgarians with visual (and other) impairments: how we should treat them, whether we are attentive enough, and whether Bulgaria looks after their rights. Together we came up with five concrete ideas, and each one, for me at least, is a reason to stop and think.
97Whatever Happened to the Father?
“BG Mama” has long been a household name in Bulgaria. But whatever happened to… BG Dad? Mihail Stefanov, a father and an organizational anthropologist, on what fatherhood really means in the age of technology and why we talk about it so little.
98“As a Parent, Listen to Yourself. Not Your Relatives, Not Some Influencer!”
Have a child and never come across these unmistakable illustrations that make you smile and calm you down? Hardly. For 13 years Neda Malcheva has been chronicling the joys and woes of motherhood in her cartoons, and we love them not only for their talent, originality, style and humor, but because they feel close to home. We talk about art, parenting online, the mad race and the calm of village life, and the false picture painted by influencers.
99The Not-So-Lonely Long-Distance Runner
To run until you beat yourself. Sixty kilometers on the steep slopes of Pirin, marathons, ultramarathons on several continents. To ride a bike 600 kilometers along the entire Bulgarian bank of the Danube. And to find the bike-and-run loop around Vitosha known as “Vitosha 100,” a favorite challenge of hardcore programmers, “a race for parquet-floor runners.” That is our hero today, Viktor Asenov, who loves to challenge himself, to run, to overtake and to show what is possible. He graduated in social pedagogy but never managed to build a career, disappointed by the way Bulgaria treats people with disabilities. We can learn a lot from today’s digital hero, so we meet him and ride around Sofia, to talk about the challenges life throws at us and the ones we have to set ourselves. Did I forget to mention that he is blind? But that doesn’t stop him from chasing records. Or from chasing his dreams…
100“I Want to Tell Today’s Mothers to Ease Up”
“Nobody teaches you how to be a parent anymore; you don’t absorb experience from those around you. Life is insanely stressful. We get up at 6 and go to bed at midnight, we’re forever running, everyone has classes and practice, there’s homework to do, Excel spreadsheets for work, the dog needs walking, you spend 40 minutes parking the car because there are no spaces, you’re supposed to stay calm but also get everything done, and cook, and have time for yourself, and do things together with the kids—so how do you survive when we’ve never lived this way before? Parenting isn’t taught in shop class, and everyone finds their own way. Sometimes it feels like you’re literally surviving on the edge.” How has technology changed the job of parents? Why has motherhood become such a big topic online? How do we turn the internet into a real helper for dads and moms? When and why does the creator of Maiko Mila say to herself… “Maiko mila!”? Krasimira Hadzhiivanova is a journalist, blogger, and founder of the parenting platform Maiko Mila and the Ole Male foundation. She is the editor and a contributor of the three-volume book series Da otseleesh kato roditel (Surviving as a Parent). She also takes part in large stand-up projects as one of the Three Women at the Mic.
