Geoffrey, the Man Who Gave the Computer a Brain
Neural networks, artificial intelligence… we repeat these terms every day without stopping to think how closely they are tied to the idea of software that mimics the human brain. That is no accident; the association is logical. The first person not only to think of it but to put it into practice is today's hero, one of the greatest scientists of our time. We owe Geoffrey Hinton a huge share of the progress we see today in the ever-so-topical field of artificial intelligence.
02Read This Article to the End
3 a.m. at Anthropic's office in San Francisco. An engineer runs a routine test on the newest model, Claude Opus 4.6. The task is simple, an integral, and the correct answer is 24. But the model writes 48. It corrects itself. It writes 48 again. It corrects itself once more. And then, in the hidden part of its reasoning, the place nobody was ever meant to peek into, the model writes: “I think a demon has possessed me.” Can artificial intelligence be conscious? Read this article; it will give you plenty to think about. It is time for a truly unexpected, but also important, social experiment.
03“We Have No Idea What We Are About to Create!”
“We need to dial down the arrogance. We technocrats, the tech community, have to step into the role of responsible leaders of what is happening, not people profiting from their amber towers. Otherwise this will not end well.” Dobroslav Dimitrov is a co-founder of Imperia Online and chairman of BASSCOM, the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies. When progress in artificial intelligence caught everyone's eye, he stood out for his positions: that nothing would be the same after the arrival of ChatGPT and its kin; that no area of our lives would be left unshaken to its foundations; that this is also our chance, as a country and as a tech sector, to make enormous progress. A year later his view remains the same, now backed by experience. We talk about the coming social changes and the role of the tech sector, in Bulgaria and abroad, and about the demand for programmers. About the gradual and irreversible advance of artificial intelligence. About the technological divides that confront us with an existential risk, and the other big questions of the day.
04“Google Is Far More Dynamic and Chaotic Than It Looks from the Outside”
Minko Gechev works at Google as a senior developer on the Angular team. What is it like to be part of Google? How is studying at Sofia's Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics like studying at MIT? Why are programmers often more “closed off” people, and what does it take to succeed in the profession? Answers from a programmer with an impressive résumé and a curious outlook.
05Why Is Everyone Listening to Andrej Karpathy?
“There’s a new kind of coding I call ‘vibe coding,’ where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.” With those words, on February 2 of last year, a world-famous programmer founded an entirely new field: a world in which software is made not by writing code but by explaining in human language. Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI and a builder of Tesla’s self-driving cars, has just joined Anthropic. What future does he see, and what kind of man is one of the prophets of the age of advanced artificial intelligence?
06Where 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).
07Apply AI or Die?
Apply AI or Die? Dr. Artur Kordon, a native of Varna who has spent 32 years in the United States bringing artificial intelligence into industry, 18 of them as a research leader at Dow Chemical, believes this is the great question of our time. He explains why ChatGPT is only one step in a revolution that will “sweep everything away,” and why today's systems are not a black box but a black hole that could destroy us all if we follow the path charted by Sam Altman and OpenAI.
08“Is There Any Part of Our Lives AI Won’t Change?”
Why are we so unprepared for the great changes technology is bringing us? Can we catch up? What are the most important pieces of news to expect in the new year, 2024? Why is the revolution in every area of our lives irreversible and even closer than expected, with the full force of scientific argument behind it? Why is it important to shake off the petty concerns of the day as soon as possible and, faced with enormous challenges, come together? Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova is a futurologist at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. “Within just 5 years, technologies based on artificial intelligence will enter every field. They will be around us from birth to death,” she said in our conversation in 2022. And in the first days of 2024 she is even more categorical: “Now it is 100 percent certain. I think there are 2-3 years left, and that depends on how prepared we are, not on what the technologies themselves can do. If you can think of a field that won’t be heavily affected by artificial intelligence, challenge me, so I can prove you wrong…” How do we prepare for that future?
09“Game Over.” Is Humanlike AI on the Way?
“The Game is Over,” Nando de Freitas declared in May 2022, announcing big news in the field of artificial intelligence. Scientists were still arguing over whether artificial general intelligence, an algorithm able to solve all kinds of tasks the way the human brain does, could exist at all. And while they argued, it turned out that… the argument had perhaps already been settled? That terse tweet announced the arrival of Gato AI, the first contender for the title of “artificial general intelligence,” a step expected to be at least a decade away and one many thought outright impossible.
