How the Algorithm Learned to Recognize Our Faces
Facial recognition systems have become so refined that they are practically infallible. How did we arrive at this technological breakthrough, and why does hardly anyone talk about it? What ethical questions does it raise, and why should each of us learn more about it?
02Where To Now, ChatGPT?
To be or not to be? Left or right? Life is a string of decisions, and on them hangs everything, from whether we reach the peaks we dream of to the eternal riddle of what to have for lunch. So we bring Hamlet and ChatGPT together to find the labyrinths, literal and figurative, that the electronic Virgil is ready to lead us through: five cases where artificial intelligence is already here to guide us, and five where we will have to wait (or never live to see it).
03Virgil Dreamond, Who Now Dreams of Plugging Us Into the Computer
Elena Pavlova has been writing for as long as she can remember. Gamebook fans know her by the pen name Virgil Dreamond, the author of 25 of the masterful reads in this literary phenomenon. Why can’t she wait for the technology that will read our minds, where has science fiction disappeared to, and why did Bulgarian writers and translators end up without money even for bread?
04China's Social Credit System: Orwell's 1984 or the State of the Future?
You can hear terrifying things about China's social credit system. People start with 100 points, and if they drop below 35, life is practically over for them—they can't find a job, and their friends aren't supposed to talk to them… But is that really how it is? We set out in search of objective information in the rift between heavy-duty propaganda machines…
05Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: 10 Big Questions
The astonishing progress in artificial intelligence is a fact: technologies like ChatGPT have made it clear that scientists have taken giant strides, and these will go on producing big news. This has pushed the ethical side of such work to the forefront, and the answers may prove vital for each of us and for us as a species. While the European Union and the major powers prepare some form of regulation, the AI revolution is already unfolding before our eyes. What are 10 of the most important questions we should be asking more and more often?
06RoboGod: What Should Artificial Intelligence Believe In?
If one day we create a technology indistinguishable from a human, will it… believe in God? What will its God look like? Might it try to become God itself? Or… simply be God? Technology and religion have always had a complicated relationship. But will they find the road to the future and to the survival of the human species together?
07Five Technologies We Expect Big Things From in 2022
Here it comes, just days away! We expect so much from 2022! Not only for it to finally rid us of the pandemic, but also to bring back normal. And we also expect some purely technological solutions from it, each of which certainly has the power to change the life of every single one of us. Still: which are the technological fields where we hope the coming 2022 will be especially hot?
08Robots in Power
“There’s no one to vote for”—we say it and hear it so often. Clearly the Western model of democracy, and our own feeble variety of it, is in crisis… Could the moment have come for artificial intelligence to change things? Is it time to start a revolution with the new Bulgarian Robot Workers’ Party?
09Snap, Post, Forget: How the Camera Phone Is Eating Our Memories
Today photography is more accessible than we ever imagined it could be. We snap constantly, whatever and wherever we happen to be, post it on social media and… forget. All of this has changed not only our attitude toward photography, but also the way we perceive the places we visit. The world around us. And in the process, it has robbed us of many precious details.
