“Engineers Will Always Be in Demand. But Our Skills Have to Change”
Work in the software world has already changed fundamentally with the arrival of artificial intelligence. On November 29, at the conf.ai workshop, Djemal Ahmedov will harness AI agents and make them work as an entire software team. Before that, we talk about the chaotic present and uncertain future of software in the age of advanced AI, and about whether there will always be a human in the loop.
02“Truly Intelligent AI? Only If We Take the Next Big Step”
Viktor Botev and his team are building a successful product in one of the most high-tech fields of artificial intelligence, yet his enthusiasm for the near future in which AI will change us all is far from the sweeping expectations of the day. For eight years he has been chief technology officer of Iris.ai, a Norwegian-Bulgarian startup that applies AI to vast bodies of scientific data. A long, human conversation about technology for connoisseurs: hallucinations, the limits of large language models, and why the era of Bulgaria's outsourcing companies is over.
03The EdAItor Test: Can Artificial Intelligence Edit a Text?
While we debate whether artificial intelligence will ever write indistinguishably from a human (and it already can!), everything quietly changed. Whether we realize it or not, we now read algorithm-generated texts every day. The latest undeniable proof surfaced on social media a month ago: some of the most respected Bulgarian media outlets uncritically published texts riddled with the telltale sentences that unmistakably show they were written by ChatGPT or its kin, and that were not even read by their “author” before going online. So can't we invite AI to save us… as an editor? Not long ago we tested how some of the most advanced AI models perform as proofreaders, and now it is time to raise the bar. In our next major experiment, we put AI's skills as an editor to the test.
04Poet + AI = Apollo ex Machina: Meet the Winners
The time has come to announce the winners of Apollo ex Machina, Bulgaria's first (and one of the world's first) competition for poetry created with the help of artificial intelligence. The jury's picks were revealed at a ceremony in the Sofia City Library, where the anthology of selected entries, published by Scribens, was also presented. In a moment you can read the best poems and judge for yourself how good they are.
05Rakia-Flavored Chips: An Optimistic Theory of AI and Art
Have you ever seen chips that taste like tripe soup or rakia? Or a Lego set that builds the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral or an old Zhiguli? Can you picture Bulgarian celebrities in Mortal Kombat—Sancho the Sandman versus Danov, and Khan Kubrat versus Gala? Well, no need to stretch your imagination: all of these ideas come to life thanks to the impressive collaboration between today's guest and the algorithms. Rosen Dukov is a graphic designer with a remarkable track record. He has created the posters for some of the most popular Bulgarian films of recent years and designed covers for books that sit in every self-respecting library. He has won international Photoshop competitions several times, and it is no exaggeration to call him a world champion. In recent years he has been teaching these skills at SoftUni—design, photo editing and artificial intelligence. Why isn't a visual artist afraid of competing with artificial intelligence? Why does he think it is important to get to know the new possibilities algorithms give us as soon as possible? What are the next original ideas he will use to show us how far generative models have come?
