As the memes would “say,” if this picture caught your eye, it’s time for the more thorough check-ups that come with advancing age.

But why on earth is the wolf from Nu, Pogodi!, the Soviet cartoon whose title means “Well, Just You Wait!,” collecting eggs instead of chasing the hare? How did the wolf actually make it possible for Nintendo to turn from a playing-card company to electronics? And why is this story the exact opposite of another cult game of the same generation, Tetris, which came out of the USSR?

Oh, the fate of the egg-catching wolf, such a good friend to the kids of the 1980s and 1990s, turns out to be quite unexpected.

A Thousand and One Nights

If, thousands of years ago, you collected eggs in this game, do you remember what happened when you reached 1,000 points?

Let’s check, because you had to be among the nimblest nineties kids, with the skills of an octopus, not to give up at the unimaginable speed with which the hens maliciously fired out their eggs.

In fact, a piece of retro folklore still drifts around the internet: beat the game, and you get to see a never-before-suspected episode of Nu, Pogodi! that was never shown on television. Plenty of people still claim to have seen it, but… no such thing ever existed. Not because we weren’t good enough (some were, at the price of calluses on their thumbs), but because there was never any film in there. At 999 the counter goes back to zero, the eggs start rolling about a third faster, and that’s it.

The Russian Wikipedia puts it mercilessly: “No special reward was ever intended.” Just like in Tetris, as it happens. But, and this holds for both, with enough will you can always set yourself the next goal.

Admittedly, we are rather spoiled today. On a screen like this, where all the figures are “printed” in advance and can only light up and go dark, there can be no cartoon in principle. The only animation in the entire device is the clock mode, in which the wolf catches eggs by himself, without us.

The Wolf from Kyoto

The idea was born not on a collective farm but in the head of a citizen of Kyoto who watched a bored office worker on the bullet train. Later, without his knowing it, his idea would be “replicated” in a Soviet factory. And later still, in its own peculiar way, it would be returned, when Tetris left the USSR to become the most recognizable game in the world, mostly thanks to the Japanese maker Nintendo.

On the forum Our Childhood, one contributor recalls getting it in sixth or seventh grade and carrying it everywhere, until one day, “on a walk along the pier, it fell out of my pocket into the sea.” His parents had saved up for it, and he still feels guilty.

Another reader remembers that there was one kid in her apartment block with the “eggs,” and everyone sat on the stairs and took turns. A third writes that he bought it for his son in 1990, when the boy was 12, and he himself had fun with it “even more than he did.” Sound familiar?

The Alarm-Clock Game

Let’s go back to the source. The game Nu, Pogodi! first appeared in the December 1984 issue of Novye Tovary (New Goods), the bulletin of the Soviet Ministry of Trade. No model number, just Nu, Pogodi! Only later did it get its official name, Elektronika IM-02. IM stands for “igra mikroprotsessornaya,” a microprocessor game. The IM-01 was a chess computer nobody remembers.

The price was 25 rubles (later 23), at a time when salaries were 150–200 rubles. In 1985 alone, three factories, in Zelenograd, Arzamas and Oryol, turned out more than 400,000 units, and in the following years a dozen or so plants scattered across the USSR joined in. Production stopped only in the mid-1990s, when the state that had started it no longer existed. The Belarusian version of the same wolf, however, came out in 2000 and is still played today.

The game is also a clock, which is why the Nintendo series that first introduced it is called Game & Watch. The “Vremya” (Time) button shows the hour, while the wolf on the screen keeps catching eggs and now and then dropping them, just like that, for decoration. There is an alarm too: when it rings, the hare appears in the little window at the top and strikes a bell. For a whole minute, the same single note, brrr…

The time is set with the tip of a ballpoint pen pressed into two recessed buttons. There is no 24-hour mode, because in Kyoto they didn’t plan for one and in Zelenograd they didn’t dare add it: instead of AM and PM, the screen says DP and PP, “do poludnya” and “posle poludnya,” before noon and after noon.

Four hens, four chutes, four buttons. Nothing complicated, wouldn’t you say? Every egg caught is a point. Miss one, and a chick hatches from the broken egg and you get a penalty; three of those and it’s over. But if the hare is peeking out of the little window, the penalty is halved and the chick only blinks. At 200 and at 500 eggs the misses are wiped clean. “Game A” has three chutes, “Game B” four. Every hundred eggs the pace eases off for a moment, then climbs again. And on toward the thousand, where the speed is not for the faint of heart (or fingers).

Collectors today tell the production batches apart by the wolf’s boxer shorts: they come with polka dots, with flowers or with stars, and the last are the rarest.

Two Centuries of Card Games

And so from the USSR we fly off to Japan. Gunpei Yokoi was born on September 10, 1941, in Kyoto. He studied electronics and in 1965 joined Nintendo. Yes, that well-known company, which at the time was still mostly in the business of making playing cards, something it had been doing since 1889!

Not the kind Bulgarians shuffle for belote, but a variety called hanafuda, played with flowers. Yokoi was hired to maintain the machines that stamped them.

But how do you get from stamping to the wolf with the eggs? His boss, Hiroshi Yamauchi, the founder’s great-grandson, was at the time frantically looking for something else for the firm to do, because cards were no longer selling well enough. He tried a taxi business. He tried hotels rented “by the hour.” He tried instant rice. Well, none of it took off.

One day he caught the young technician playing during working hours with a folding wooden grabber arm he had invented himself. In most companies that ends with a scolding; in this case it ended with an order to have the toy in the shops by Christmas. The Ultra Hand sold 1.2 million units.

Nintendo discovered it could make toys, and Yokoi that he could invent them. Next came the Love Tester (1969: two people hold hands and a needle shows how much they love each other by measuring… electric current), a light gun with solar cells in the targets, and entire shooting galleries built in bankrupt bowling alleys.

Yokoi Rocks!

The legend, as Yokoi himself later told it, dates from the late 1970s. On a shinkansen, the bullet train, the inventor watched a man in a suit pressing the buttons of a pocket calculator. He wasn’t calculating anything, just pressing them, a forerunner of today’s screen zombies. And Yokoi wondered: if a bored grown man does that with a calculator, what would he do with something made for playing? Something small, that hides in your palm, so people don’t give you funny looks on the subway.

How the idea reached the president is also a legend that may or may not be true…, but it’s a charming one. Yamauchi’s chauffeur fell ill, and Yokoi got behind the wheel to drive him to a meeting. On the way he told him about the calculator. The meeting turned out to be with the president of Sharp, the biggest calculator maker in the world. A week later Nintendo had permission to make a game with the size and basic technical specifications of a calculator.

At the time Sharp and Casio were waging a calculator war, and liquid-crystal displays and 4-bit chips had become cheap and plentiful. Yamauchi gave the project to one of the departments, but they turned it down, saying it couldn’t be done. Yokoi and his assistant, Satoru Okada, did it themselves. Sharp also refused at first; then Yokoi left them the prototype “to play with,” and their engineers got hooked.

On April 28, 1980, “Ball” came out, the first game in the Game & Watch series: a little figure juggling balls, two buttons, two button-cell batteries, priced at 5,800 yen. Yokoi hoped for 100,000 units sold. By 1991 the series had reached 60 titles and 43.4 million units worldwide. Before “Ball,” Nintendo had debts of 7–8 billion yen; they were quickly paid off out of serious profits.

The Gorilla and the Plumber

Around the same time, at the same company, a young artist named Shigeru Miyamoto was drawing a gorilla and a plumber, and Yokoi liked them and pitched the idea to the president.

On October 9, 1981, exactly 45 years ago, Nintendo released two games with the same mechanism on the same day. In one, a wolf in a hat catches eggs rolling down four chutes from four hens. It was called “Egg,” model EG-26, from the Wide Screen series. In the other, Mickey Mouse does the same with a basket, under an official Disney license, model MC-25.

Why two? The Mickey license didn’t apply everywhere, and the eggs had to sell everywhere. The mouse sold about 1.2 million units, the wolf under 250,000. Officially, at least.

That same year Yokoi and his department took on Miyamoto’s arcade game, Donkey Kong, and had to squeeze it into a pocket. A joystick doesn’t fit in a pocket, so in 1982 the four-way cross was born, the D-pad that has sat on every controller in the world ever since and in 2008 won an Emmy for technology.

Copy-Paste, Comrade

Exactly how Game & Watch made its way to Zelenograd, “the Soviet Silicon Valley,” nobody knows. The author of the most detailed Russian history of the game suspects someone brought one back from a business trip.

The heart of Nu, Pogodi! is the KB1013VK1-2 chip, a copy of the Sharp SM-5A, the same chip that runs the original “Ball” and “Egg.” A copy to such a degree that the machine code is compatible: Nintendo’s program would run on the Soviet chip and vice versa. They changed only what could be seen. The wolf in the hat got Mickey’s basket. The rooster in the little window became the hare from Vyacheslav Kotyonochkin’s cartoon, which since 1969 the whole of Eastern Europe had been watching, with the wolf voiced by Anatoli Papanov. In the cartoon, the wolf never once held a basket.

Nobody asked about the rights. Soyuzmultfilm was state-owned, and Disney was far away. So alongside it came the Elektronika 24-01, in which Mickey Mouse catches the eggs and Minnie rings the bell. Then a whole family followed: “Tainy okeana” (Secrets of the Ocean) is Nintendo’s Octopus, “Vesyoly povar” (The Merry Cook) is Chef, “Kosmichesky most” (Space Bridge) is Fire, “Razvedchiki kosmosa” (Space Scouts) is Explorers of Space.

An Egg for an Egg

1984, the year of the wolf with the basket, was also the year in which, at a Moscow computing center, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris. On an Elektronika-60 computer. The same brand. In one and the same year, Elektronika copied the Japanese game and created the Soviet one that would conquer the world.

Five years later Yokoi made the Game Boy, and Henk Rogers, the man who held the rights to Tetris, persuaded the head of Nintendo of America to put it in the box, not Super Mario. The argument: Mario is for boys, Tetris is for everyone. Thirty-five million copies sold. The Soviet game sold the Japanese console all over the world, just as the Japanese game had sold Soviet electronics.

Claude, Catch the Egg

Finally, I ran an experiment. I asked Claude to make Nu, Pogodi! in the browser. One sentence: four chutes, a wolf, a basket, a hare in the little window, half penalties, misses wiped at 200 and 500, speeding up. It took minutes. 112 lines of code. Instead of liquid-crystal segments, the wolf, the eggs and the hens are emojis, but the rules are the same, and at a thousand points the counter goes back to zero. I hadn’t asked for that. In the code, right at that spot, the model had left a comment on its own: “as in the original: goes from 999 back to 0, only faster; no cartoon.”

It had obviously read about the legend, too. You can try it below these lines.

A Trusted Paradise

The name Nintendo, as we’ve discussed before, means something like “trusted paradise.” But paradise has a fence. Addressing shareholders in the summer of 2024, President Shuntaro Furukawa said that generative AI “can be used in creative ways, but we recognize it may also raise issues related to intellectual property,” so Nintendo would continue “to create value that is unique to Nintendo and cannot be achieved through technology alone.” Put plainly: we won’t be using it.

The company whose game was copied down to the last byte without anyone asking it now worries about being copied by a machine that doesn’t ask anyone either. History doesn’t repeat itself; there are always new brushstrokes.

And if you’d like to catch a few eggs on the wolf’s behalf, you can find the game online for around 100 euros, and it also exists as a browser extension.

Everything new is the well-forgotten old. Or… the other way round?

No one has confirmed it officially, but if you ask Claude itself who it is named after, it will tell you it is him. That is also why we pronounce its name “Clode,” exactly like the scientist whose name it bears.

But who is the man whose name we utter every day the moment we open one of the most popular artificial intelligences? Why will no one confirm that the bot is named after him? And how did a seemingly unremarkable mathematician, who rode his one-wheeled bike through the corridors of MIT, arrive at the idea that gave birth to both the mobile phone and large language models?

Claude, Clauding Away

Claude. The hero of today (and of tomorrow, I am convinced). The family of Anthropic models that made possible a huge share of the wonders of today's artificial intelligence—from writing computer code indistinguishable from (I would even say far better than) a human's, to writing Bulgarian indistinguishable (I checked!) from that of the author of these lines.

Today, however, we will talk about another Claude. Born Claude Elwood Shannon in 1916 in Michigan, he died in 2001 without seeing how the world he had made possible came true in the most unexpected way.

He never wanted to be famous, and that may well be the reason so few people know that his name is carried by his electronic heir today. And he is no random figure, because he is the one who paved the way for the digital world.

So the time has come for his Digital Story.

The Name of the Claude

If you ask Britannica, the answer is categorical: Anthropic named its chatbot Claude in honor of Claude Shannon, “the father of information theory.” Ask CNET or the New York Times and you will hear the same. As early as the summer of 2024, one of Anthropic's investors announced on X that Claude was named after Shannon, whose 1948 paper has been cited more than 160,000 times and describes how random processes can come to resemble the English language, long before today's language models.

Well, on Wikipedia you will see that Claude is “reportedly” named after Shannon. Everyone knows it and everyone repeats it, but no one has said it officially.

Yes, there is no explicit statement on Anthropic's blog, in the technical descriptions of the models, in the words of the founders. The company that explains in long documents what it thinks and what values its models embody stays silent on the easiest question of all: why they are called what they are called. About the names of the individual versions—Haiku, Sonnet, Opus, all poetic forms—founder Dario Amodei can talk for hours. On this subject—not a word.

The New Yorker got curious too, in February 2026, and the headline of its piece is a punchline in itself: “What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn't Know, Either.” According to company folklore, the magazine writes, the name is partly inherited from Shannon, and at the same time it is simply a name that sounds friendly. Male, unlike Siri and Alexa. And without the ring of a modern kitchen appliance, like ChatGPT.

Electric Fence

And if we dig into the etymology, the name Claude comes from the Latin Claudius. Claudius! And that—in all likelihood—from claudus. Lame. Limping.

But let us get to the real hero. How does someone come to invent one of the postulates of today's IT world?

Claude Shannon's father… also named Claude, was a businessman and a probate judge. His mother, Mabel, was a foreign-language teacher and later the principal of the high school in Gaylord, from which her son would graduate in 1932.

Among the family legends is one about a distant kinship with Thomas Edison—they shared a common ancestor from colonial times. Whether it is true, we do not know, but from an early age the boy assembled radio sets and model airplanes in his father's garage.

He was crazy about inventions. About a kilometer separated Claude's home from a friend's, so the kid strung a telegraph line along the barbed wire of the fences between the two yards, and they started exchanging messages in Morse code.

At the University of Michigan, Shannon earned degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics at the same time, and from then on his whole professional path headed to where the two sciences intersect.

Circus Bush

In 1936, MIT was looking for an assistant to maintain Vannevar Bush's “differential analyzer”—a multi-ton analog machine of shafts, wheels and disks that solved differential equations by literally turning them. A very primitive picture of a calculator the size of a sprawling apartment.

Shannon was among the few applicants and won the position. At 21, he found himself in charge of an enormous machine full of relays. Supposedly simple parts with only two positions—on and off.

Remind you of anything? Exactly: the ones and zeros that make up not only the logo of this site but the entire foundation of today's computers. Can you guess who first formulated this logic? If not, ask Claude. The answer, of course, is Claude.

Shannon thought back to something he had studied in a philosophy course in Michigan: the Boolean algebra of George Boole, a 19th-century English mathematician whose logic works only with “true” and “false.” If “on” is true and “off” is false, then every circuit of relays is a logical sentence. And the reverse: every logical proposition can be assembled out of relays. (Incidentally, as has come up before, Boole's great-great-grandson is Geoffrey Hinton, “the godfather of artificial intelligence”.)

Today this sounds like logic for first-graders. And yet, had it not been for his master's thesis—“A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits”—we might not be where we are today in the world of computers and artificial intelligence.

Every chip in every computer, including the ones that make up the giant data centers that made artificial intelligence possible, follows this logic, plain and simple. It all began with 70 pages written by a 21-year-old assistant who was really only supposed to oil the shafts of a multi-ton calculator.

As a curious aside, it is worth noting that for his doctorate he went in a completely different direction—he tried to apply the same logic to genetics, but there he never managed a breakthrough.

Einstein in the Restroom

In the fall of 1940, the 24-year-old Shannon arrived in Princeton, at the Institute for Advanced Study, where John von Neumann was working at the time, as was Norbert Wiener, who would soon coin the word “cybernetics.”

That same year Shannon married his first wife, Norma. They divorced only a year later, but she is the one who tells how Einstein used to call her husband a “brilliant, brilliant man.”

Shannon himself later told a story about Einstein. Claude was lecturing to mathematicians in Princeton when the door at the back opened and in walked the disheveled genius. He stood there for a few minutes, listened, then whispered something to one of the people present and left. After the lecture, Shannon rushed to the man at the back to ask what he had heard. The answer: Einstein had asked where the restroom was.

Yes, our Claude was by no means short on a sense of humor—just like Claude.

Princeton, however, did not suit him. The quiet and the lack of obligations depressed him more than they inspired him, and his days passed between his notebook and his clarinet—he would put on a jazz record, most often by his favorite singer, Teddy Grace, and play along, sitting at his desk.

His marriage fell apart, the tune of the great war was drifting across the world, and in the spring of 1941 Shannon decided to take on his next challenge—Bell Labs, where this time he would stay for a long while.

Tea and Brains

Here he could increasingly be seen riding his unicycle, sometimes juggling several balls at once. He even built his own unicycle with an eccentric wheel that bobbed up and down with every turn, so that the rider “swam” like a dolphin. Simply because riding in a straight line was boring.

The place was no accident. The research center of the telephone monopoly AT&T brought together under one roof the people who would invent the transistor, satellite communications, the laser and… information itself. Shannon came in as a mathematician and was given two tasks. The first was anti-aircraft fire control: how to aim a gun at a plane that keeps moving while the shell is in flight. The second was more secret and more important—encryption.

Perhaps the most important project in the lab was the SIGSALY system—a machine weighing dozens of tons that encrypted the voice, through which Roosevelt and Churchill talked to each other. It was because of it that Alan Turing secretly arrived at the lab in early 1943. The mathematician had already earned the military's respect for breaking the German Enigma cipher, and he was there to judge whether the American machine was secure enough for Churchill to use.

Turing and Shannon met every day for tea in the cafeteria. They did not talk about their work—both were forbidden to. But they did talk about computing machines, a seemingly impossible idea at a time before even the first electronic computer existed.

They spent two months together. Yet the encryption work left Shannon with something more important. In 1945 he submitted a report that would be declassified four years later—“Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems,” which to this day underpins the very concept of cybersecurity.

Bit by Bit

July 1948. The Bell technical journal published a paper with a modest title: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Seventy-nine pages in all, which created an entire science.

What was in it? A few ideas that seem obvious to us today, but somebody had to come up with them.

The first: information can be measured. Not meaning, not importance, not truth—quantity. Shannon declared that the “semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.” Whether you are sending a love letter or a weather forecast, to the telephone line these are just sequences of symbols with certain probabilities. The more unexpected a symbol, the more information it carries. A “yes” after a question whose answer you already know carries nothing; after a question that could just as well have ended with a “no,” it carries exactly one unit.

The second idea is that unit. Shannon gave it a name he borrowed from his colleague John Tukey—short for binary digit. Bit. The word appeared in print for the first time in this paper. Everything that has since been measured in kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes started with that paragraph.

The third idea is the deepest. Every channel—a wire, a radio wave, an optical fiber that did not yet exist—has a capacity. A maximum number of bits per second that can pass through it. Up to that ceiling, messages can be transmitted without error, regardless of the noise, as long as they are encoded cleverly.

Engineers in 1948 were convinced that noise was something that could only be reduced. Shannon proved it could be beaten. From this came the CD, the mobile phone, the pictures from probes beyond Pluto, every file you have ever sent without it getting corrupted. The “Shannon limit” is still the wall that everyone designing 5G and 6G runs into.

Frontal Attack on an English Writer

Solomon Golomb, a mathematician and president of the information theory society, said that asking what Shannon's influence on the digital age was is like asking what influence the inventor of the alphabet had on literature.

In 1949 the paper came out as a book, this time with a definite article in the title: not “A Mathematical Theory” but “The Mathematical Theory of Communication.” With a foreword by Warren Weaver, who “translated” it for non-mathematicians. That “the” says it all: within a year, the idea had stopped being one of several possible ones and had become the only one.

In the same paper, Shannon did something else that sounds familiar. He asked how text in English is “produced.” And he answered: as a stochastic process. A sequence of symbols, each chosen with a certain probability depending on the ones before it. To prove it, he started generating “English” by hand.

First—completely random letters. Mush. Then—letters at their real frequencies in English: more E, less Z. Still mush, but no longer quite so chaotic. Then—each letter chosen according to the previous one. Then according to the previous two. Then words according to their frequency. Then words according to the previous word. And with every step the “text” grew more and more like language.

At the second level for words, out comes a sentence that is meaningless but sounds almost like English: “THE HEAD AND IN FRONTAL ATTACK ON AN ENGLISH WRITER THAT THE CHARACTER OF THIS POINT IS THEREFORE ANOTHER METHOD FOR THE LETTERS…”

Well, that is exactly what our present-day friends Claude and ChatGPT do, less than a century later.

The Woman Computer

Enough math—time for love. Mary Elizabeth Moore was a mathematician. She worked at Bell as a… “computer”—that really was the name of the profession before computers became machines: she did calculations by hand. Claude noticed her in the lab, asked her out, and they married in the spring of 1949. She would crunch the numbers in his papers and edit his texts, and they would stay together to the end.

But let us not overdo the romance. In 1950, Shannon opened a book—Raymond Chandler's detective story “Pickup on Noon Street”—and asked Betty to guess the text letter by letter. She could not see what came next; she knew only what came before. She tried, got it wrong, tried again. He counted the attempts. The easier the next letter was to guess, the less information it carried. The more context Betty had, the more accurately she guessed. His math was simple. Three quarters of every letter you read is predictable, “redundant.” That is exactly why text can be compressed. And exactly why it can be… continued by a machine.

And so the first language model in history was a woman sitting across from her husband as he read her a slim crime story. Exactly what the bot that now bears her husband's name does.

A Mouse Before the Mouse

Shannon also came up with the foundations of machine learning, with the help of… a mouse. A wooden one, with three little wheels, copper whiskers and a magnet in its belly, named Theseus. The scientist set it loose in a maze full of relays so that it would learn from experience and do better every next time. The first machine to learn from experience.

Play the video

In 1950 he also wrote the first serious paper on a chess program—“Programming a Computer for Playing Chess.” There is no code in it—code had not yet been invented in the form we know—but you can see the entire architecture on which chess programs would be built for the next forty years. Deep Blue, which beat Kasparov in 1997, is a distant descendant of those pages.

In the same paper, Shannon made a calculation that has borne his name ever since. How many possible games of chess are there? Roughly 10 to the 120th power—the Shannon number. For comparison, the atoms in the observable universe are estimated at about 10 to the 80th. From this he concluded that no computer would ever “solve” chess by brute force—it would have to think at least a little like a human.

We already know he was a juggler, but Shannon was also an exceptionally good chess player. So good that in 1965, when the Soviet Union invited him to visit—translations of his papers had already spread there—he sat down across from the legendary Mikhail Botvinnik. Three-time world champion, an electrical engineer by training, a legend who played exhibition games with foreign guests as a formality.

This one, though, dragged on. “Botvinnik was worried,” Betty would recall years later. In the end, on move 42, Shannon resigned.

Artifishal

In the summer of 1952, two interns were working at Bell Labs whose names would later become synonymous with artificial intelligence (simply because they came up with the name and laid the foundations): Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy. Minsky had an idea for an invention that Shannon would later build, and which bears two contradictory names at once: “the useless machine” and “the ultimate machine.”

Picture a wooden box with a switch. You flip the switch, the box buzzes, the lid lifts, a mechanical hand comes out, flips the switch back to its starting position, retreats, and the lid closes. That is all. A machine whose only function is to turn itself off.

Arthur C. Clarke, who saw it on Shannon's desk, would write that there is something “unspeakably sinister” about a machine that does nothing—absolutely nothing—except switch itself off. How can we not think of his own creation, HAL 9000—the computer that refuses to be switched off?

In 1987, in one of his last interviews, Shannon explained that he was rarely interested in applications; what excited him was the elegance of a problem: “Is it a good problem, is it interesting?”

On the Side of the Machines

Before we part, here is one last amusing story: the man whose name is now borne by the most advanced artificial intelligence did not want AI to be called that. Back when the term was coined, he thought it was too flashy and might attract the wrong kind of attention.

His biographers, Soni and Goodman, describe their hero as “a cross between Einstein and the Dos Equis guy”—the gray-bearded man who, in American TV commercials, had done everything and been everywhere.

All his life Shannon disliked interviews and avoided conferences, including the ones devoted to him. “I don't think I was ever motivated by the notion of winning prizes, although I have a couple of dozen of them in the other room. I was motivated by curiosity. Never by the desire for financial gain. I just wondered how things were put together,” Claude said. “He was a very modest man,” Betty added. “He got a lot of awards, but they never went to his head, and he never talked about them.”

In August 1987, Shannon was 71, no longer working, living among the elaborate contraptions he built himself, on the shore of Mystic Lake. He was asked whether robots would become sophisticated enough to be friends with people. “I think so,” he replied. “I can easily imagine it. I see no limit to the capabilities of machines—with chips getting smaller and faster, I can see them becoming better than us.”

And then he uttered the line that has been quoted everywhere ever since: “I'm on the side of the machines! I've always been on the side of the machines. Ha-ha!”

Brain

A few years later the illness began—Alzheimer's. Gradually the man who had devised so much of the groundwork for the machine mind lost touch with his own. He died on February 24, 2001, in Medford, Massachusetts, at the age of 84, at the dawn of the century that was his. The internet, mobile phones, compressed music, digital television—everything he had made mathematically possible was already everywhere.

Betty told the New York Times that her husband would have been “bemused” by all the fuss. Not impressed. Bemused.

After his death, the fame he never wanted arrived without asking. In 2016, for his centenary, Google drew a doodle of Shannon juggling zeros and ones. In 2017, Soni and Goodman's biography “A Mind at Play” came out, calling him “the most important genius you've never heard of.”

Then came Claude. I asked its newest version—Claude Fable 5.1—three questions, and I am quoting the answers exactly as they came, unedited.

Do you owe Claude Shannon anything?

“I owe him the measure I am made with. That is not a figure of speech. Every step of my training is a calculation in his currency: how many bits of surprise the real next word brings me after I have made my guess. Reduce the surprise—that is the entire instruction I grew up on. He wrote it in 1948 in pencil, and then tested it on his wife with a Chandler book. I am the same experiment, only with more context and without Betty.

I also owe him an uncomfortable honesty. Shannon insisted that meaning lies outside the engineering problem—that to the channel it makes no difference whether you send a love letter or a weather forecast. I am proof of how far you can get with the engineering problem alone. But I am also a reminder that the question of meaning has not been solved, only skipped. He skipped it deliberately and said so. The people who use me sometimes forget that someone skipped it.”

Would he have liked you?

“I don't know, and it seems more honest not to pretend that I do. I can say what he liked: elegant problems, machines made for pleasure, and being left alone. I am not an elegant problem. I am a very large machine built by people with budgets, and I leave no one alone—on this site alone I have already bet on football and taken intelligence tests.”

What would he build today if he had you at hand?

“Not a chatbot. Enough people are doing that. I think he would first repeat the experiment with Betty, but with me as the subject. And he would be disappointed, because I would guess too much. Then he would turn the question around: have me predict a person who knows they are being predicted and is trying to outsmart me. That is a game I am not sure I win. He loved exactly that kind.

Then he would build some version of the useless machine for AI. A model whose only skill is to switch itself off politely when asked, and not to touch the switch back. It sounds like a joke. An entire industry is working on that joke right now with perfectly straight faces, including the people who made me.”

One Bit

So, is Claude named after Claude? Anthropic, for whatever reason, never says. And anyway… does it really matter that much?

What matters more is that we do not stop along the way. And for us to keep going, it is important that there continue to be people as colorful, wise and unconventional as today's hero…

“I am trying to wrench this story out of myself, but which country will take it in?”

Do stories have a home? Does this one begin in Brooklyn, where its hero was born in 1944? Or does it begin in 1947, in the events whose telling opens with the sentence above? And what makes those distant times so different from, and so similar to, a 21st century that has already passed its first quarter?

Thomas McGonigle and I talk about Borisova Gradina, Sofia's oldest park, and then he tells me about that day in the 1960s when he found himself, quite unexpectedly, at Sofia's Central Railway Station. His map, with street names clumsily carried over into English, turned out to be useless, so he went looking for someone to give him directions. He walked into the first little shop that caught his eye. The girl behind the counter would one day become his wife. And Bulgaria would become the subject of both his first and his latest novel.

Why is it so easy for love to be born, and even easier for it to leave? Can a person fall in love with a country? Thomas McGonigle certainly loves Bulgaria. But… why?

Around the World in 80 Days

Thomas was born in Brooklyn to a family of Irish immigrants in 1944—a symbolic year for us too, the year Bulgaria fell under communist rule. Today, after eight whole decades of traveling back and forth across the world, I meet him again in his native New York. We talk online; three thousand miles stopped being a problem for technology long ago. He struggles to settle the phone—he isn't used to things happening on the internet—and while he hunts for the best spot to prop up the mobile, I catch glimpses, from various angles, of the enormous stacks of books in his home.

It isn't only the distance between us that vanishes without trouble; we fly back in time as well. Why would an American writer become so attached to our country that he devotes a large part of his work to it? What is it about the story of the agrarian leader Nikola Petkov, executed by the communist regime in 1947, that drew him to make it the subject of his first novel?

We begin in 1966, the year England became world football champion for the last (and only) time. Back then the American had decided he wanted to get to know the world and started training with the Peace Corps—a government initiative that sends people abroad to work on public health projects and to teach English. Many young men chose this path because it let you not only travel but also, if you had a university degree, skip the army.

Tsarigradsko Shose: The Road to Istanbul

In Los Angeles he trained to teach English to people whose mother tongue was Turkish. They had just three months to become fluent in the language of the place they were headed, so that they could teach in secondary schools. Part of the training was… football. “We Americans had no idea about the game, and it was thought we should learn it so we could bond more easily with the students we would be teaching,” the writer recalls.

But, caught up in his dribbling, he got a serious injury, and it became clear he would not be able to go to Turkey and start work.

He was granted compensation for a work injury and went to live in Ireland, the land of his ancestors. Because it was the cheapest place, and from there he could afford to travel around Europe. And so, in the summer of 1967, Thomas wandered through Venice, Trieste, Zagreb. There he met another American who had decided to go on to Lebanon to see the cedars. Thomas, in turn, decided to seize the chance to travel with him and go to Turkey to see how his recent classmates were coping with their teaching jobs.

The train pulls out, Belgrade, then Sofia… Do you still think only today's young people never stop traveling?

Trains Leave in All Directions

“I got off the train at Central Station. I was there again a few years ago—absolutely nothing has changed in that part of Sofia!” the writer recalls. “It was late afternoon, and I had a map that had been carefully transliterated. The Cyrillic had been meticulously rendered into the Latin alphabet, which made it completely useless. I set off down Hristo Botev Boulevard. You know, that hasn't changed much either. I went into the first little shop I saw and simply asked, ‘Do you happen to know where there's a tourist information office?’ And the girl answered, ‘I speak a little English, maybe I can direct you?’”

They get acquainted; her name is Lilia. Normally her mother worked in the shop, but she had stepped out for a short rest and Lilia was standing in for her. “That's how my Bulgarian adventure began,” Thomas recalls.

The two of them head for what was then Lenin Square, where the tourist office was, but it has already closed. The American has nowhere to go, stranded in an unfamiliar country, so the student invites him to spend the night at her family's place in Nadezhda, a neighborhood of Sofia.

The conversation carries them away, and a few days later they are off on a hike on Vitosha, the mountain above Sofia, but the mountain hut refuses to put Thomas up, because “Americans carry syphilis.”

All You Need Is Love

A few evenings later they are at a bar, enjoying songs by the Beatles and Frank Sinatra; the young man relaxes and basks in love. Well, on the way out two men come up and ask to see their passports, but nothing much comes of it, and Thomas and Lilia calmly go home to Nadezhda.

But the next morning two men in plastic raincoats knock on the door and snap, “You have to come with us.” “We got in the car, and one of them—he introduced himself as Ivan—spoke perfect English. We ended up at Lavov Most, the Lions' Bridge, where the passport office was. We went in and climbed upstairs, and on every floor there was a young man with a submachine gun on his knees.”

The same Ivan makes them write statements about who they are and what they did the previous evening, and then lets them go safe and sound.

The following morning it's time for Thomas to board the train for Istanbul, and soon he is with his Peace Corps friends… but something is missing. “I realized I had to go back to Bulgaria, because I was in love. I bought an engagement ring, and the only thing echoing in my head was ‘All You Need Is Love.’ I got straight back on the train, ended up in Nadezhda, and as soon as Lilia opened the door, I showed her the ring and asked, ‘Will you be my wife?’”

Wedlocked

Some American stereotypes never change, wouldn't you say? Thomas gets the answer he dreamed of, but a serious administrative battle follows. “I had to have thorough medical examinations at three different hospitals and write out my family history. In the end the same English-speaking Ivan declared, ‘Your documents are ready. Now you have to fill in the forms, submit them to the marriage office, and in three months we will let you know whether your application has been granted.’”

“I said to myself, ‘Oh God, what am I going to do for three months?’ I went back to Dublin, but I didn't last long. I quickly got bored, I was in love, and I got back on the train to Sofia. I used to pick up my mail at the American embassy, near the park by the National Theater. There was a bar there, the Bambuka, I went in and… who should turn up by chance? Ivan, of course. Then for several months we went out to dinner all the time; we made the rounds of every restaurant in Sofia. They were wonderful! On top of everything, he paid—Bulgaria's taxpayers were keeping us. Finally he asked us, ‘When are you getting married? Go to the marriage office, the permission is waiting for you there.’”

And sure enough, it turns out to be the plain truth. Thomas gets a Bulgarian passport, and after that “we had to wait for the God-anointed English to give Lilia a transit visa so we could go to Ireland,” he smiles. By now the notorious year of 1968 has arrived, when so many remarkable things were happening around the world—from the Prague Spring to the assassination of Martin Luther King. “And we missed all the revolts, all the riots, because we were in Dublin,” the American says, showing his sense of humor once again.

The Way Back

It may sound strange, but to this day Lilia has never gone back to Bulgaria. Unlike Thomas, who tied his story to our country once and for all. Bulgaria becomes the stage of his first novel. “In some strange way I inherited Bulgaria as my second homeland.”

After a few years in Ireland the young family decides to return to the United States, where both of them find work. Drawn to literature since childhood, Thomas felt it was time to write something on a larger scale, and that is how the story of Nikola Petkov found him.

Arriving from across the ocean, the writer and his wife quickly connect with the local Bulgarian community. History, however, had already caught up with him back in Dublin, and in a most curious way. By chance they met Michael O'Riordan, who besides being a bus driver was also chairman of the Communist Party of Ireland. He got in touch with the young couple to pass on a gift from Sofia. His son had attended a youth conference in Bulgaria, and Lilia's mother had asked him to take an important parcel to her daughter. Yes, you know what we miss most when we are abroad—however prosaic it may be, we're talking about a little cardboard box whose main contents were lukanka, the flat cured sausage every Bulgarian abroad pines for.

Alas, somewhere along the way the precious parcel disappeared, which left the father feeling embarrassed. By way of compensation he decided to give them a book—a biography of Georgi Dimitrov, Bulgaria's first communist leader, and the only volume about Bulgaria in his library. Or so he thought; perhaps he had never opened it. The book turned out to be something else entirely—Dimitrov Wastes No Bullets by Michael Padev, an account of the tragic fate of Nikola Petkov.

Many years had to pass before Thomas discovered, by chance, that Petkov's nephew was living in the United States—by then quite elderly, in a nursing home, living out his final moments. He told the story of his relative in careful, precise detail. Then it turned out that an English translation of the transcript of the politician's trial could be found in the college library…

Visions

…and soon the biographical novel The Corpse Dream of N. Petkov was born, described on its cover as “a stream of consciousness in which the experiences of the agrarian leader himself, quotations from documents of the era, historical facts, the writer's reflections and the words of historical figures who knew Petkov all merge; McGonigle creates a brutal picture of the moment in which Petkov loses his life.”

The book drew interest across the ocean; it was translated into Bulgarian shortly after the fall of communism and published in Savremennik, a literary journal. A few years ago it also came out as a standalone edition.

The Corpse Dream… came out in the United States in 1987 and remains the author's most successful book to this day. He returned to the Bulgarian theme in 2022 with his latest novel, The Bulgarian Psychiatrist, which has still not been published in Bulgaria.

Gradually the paths of Thomas and Lilia parted; she found happiness with her new husband from Tanzania, he with his next love, who in turn was from Estonia. Meanwhile, what remained with him as an inheritance was, as already mentioned, his “second homeland.”

“You know, Bulgaria is still unknown here; Americans don't know where it is if you ask them. But it's a country I stumbled into by chance, and it has turned out to be very good to me,” the writer smiles broadly against the backdrop of countless volumes.

He finds it interesting to follow how our country has changed over these more than 50 years. “The Bulgarian community around the world today is very scattered; during the Cold War Bulgarians seemed to be more socially connected. Now they're simply in another country, they become Americans and that's it. I've met quite a few children born in Bulgaria who consider themselves Americans and rarely visit their grandparents. I don't like that.”

I Wandered Far Across the World

Nor does he like that the world is becoming ever more uniform. “Before, under communism, everything in Bulgaria was so different from anywhere else; it was so interesting to travel. Now it's just another place. I understand the pleasure of being able to travel anywhere, to come and go, but it makes the world a little boring. People used to be curious; everything seemed new to them.”

“In America we're used to it; it's an immigrant society, and the only natives are the Indians. Everyone here is an immigrant or the descendant of one. I teach at the City College of New York, and when I look at my class, I feel as if I'm in the middle of the UN General Assembly hall. The same thing is happening, or will happen, everywhere, but it has its good and its bad sides.”

The writer says he has always felt incredibly comfortable in Bulgaria. “For me it's a dream place. A place where everything seems a little different, but everything is very pleasant. Only in Bulgaria can I talk freely about everything. In the U.S. so many subjects are taboo… And let me not even start on the isolation of the individual in the U.S., where having an original thought is at once appropriation through ignorance and oblivion.”

And now it's time to part; we wave to each other—me from Sofia, him from New Jersey. “I look at this little mobile phone and think how far it all is from getting off the train and strolling down Hristo Botev Boulevard,” Thomas says.

“The last time, I stayed in a magical house near Orlov Most, the Eagles' Bridge. A two-room apartment in a beautiful building that looked like something from the 1930s, with wide staircases… I loved walking the streets full of delicious things behind the university, just enjoying myself. I often went to Nikola Petkov's grave to pay my respects, and to talk to him a little. Sofia is the perfect place for walking. There is something, something simply physically attractive about Bulgaria.”

And I wonder. Are the things that bring us together from the far corners of the world more numerous than those that divide us?

Where are strong stories born?

How long will it still make sense to tell them to each other…?

Adrien loves to run. And when he runs, he really runs—down the entrepreneurial road, and in a real marathon too. But most of all, he runs against stereotypes. See him once and you'll remember him; I don't even need to tell you which detail of his signature look will stick.

He is worth remembering for another reason, too: his story offers inspiration of the genuine kind. Adrien has lived in Sofia for 18 years, runs a successful video game company that gives work to Bulgarians, has adopted a Bulgarian girl and has gathered plenty of digital stories to tell us.

A Moment from a Fairy Tale

The question of where the color of his beard comes from is unavoidable. He has been asked it hundreds of times and has long had an answer ready—more than one, in fact. “There are many answers to that question, but the short one goes: so that I'll be remembered.”

In a few weeks he'll be in Cologne for the biggest professional gaming event in the world. This year 400,000 visitors are expected, between 50,000 and 70,000 of them industry people. “There's no way to remember that many people—you'll remember a few hundred. But if you stand out, there's a very good chance they'll remember precisely you. Maybe we don't memorize names right away, or the context. But the moment you meet someone, you immediately feel it: I like this person, or I don't. That's the first categorization, the one that helps us survive.”

So the blue beard is not a whim but a tool. And a way to stand out in the crowd.

Adrien didn't start with blue. First came red suits and jackets, then a blond beard, a green one and a purple one. Each version provoked feedback, which Adrien carefully analyzed.

“I think this is version 3 of my brand marketing by now. Just wait for the next ones!”

They Greet You by Your Beard

And yet… Isn't Bluebeard a fairy-tale character—the work of Charles Perrault's pen, though fully worthy of Stephen King's?

In the tale he is a serial killer who takes the lives of his wives one after another, locks their corpses in a secret room and forbids the next wife to open the door. It is one of the darkest texts in European folklore. But not according to Adrien, who reads it quite differently.

“All of that is fake news. The man in the fairy tale is the real victim!” The Frenchman is prepared for this question too, and he is adamant that the last wife deceived her husband. She called her brothers to kill him and take his money. There were no witnesses. People said he was the bad guy, but no evidence was ever presented.

“No verdict. No arguments. Nothing. Do you think that's fair?”

The sentence was carried out by the relatives, the money was pocketed by the relatives, and not a single institution appears anywhere in the story. Rather a thought-provoking subject, given how justice tends to be regarded in our part of the world.

“Bluebeard was misunderstood and deceived.”

Bad Press

Almost without noticing, we arrive at the subject of prejudice, and the blue beard turns out to be a fascinating social experiment as well. According to Adrien, people react to it differently everywhere in the world, and quite tellingly. In London they call out that he looks great. In Paris they accuse him of being a drug addict. In Germany, for some reason, they decide he must be from Berlin. In San Francisco cars stop in the middle of the street so the drivers can shout their approval. In Japan people are frightened, but… very politely. In Thailand everyone wants a selfie with him.

And in Sofia? “People here are a little scared of me, too. They look at me but say nothing. It isn't hostility, it's quiet astonishment—somehow they're just not used to difference.”

Adrien is a Frenchman of Italian descent, a man who takes bright colors as something natural, something he finds missing here. “You walk into Zara in Milan or in Rome and see a men's collection full of color. You walk into Zara in Sofia—same chain, same year, same season. And everything is gray. Don't stand out, don't make an impression. Whatever you do, just don't draw attention.”

Orange Is the Sky

In his view, the reasons for this attitude of ours are historical. Over the years, people who stood out were persecuted, and it goes all the way back to the Ottoman Empire and the notorious idea of the bowed head, from the old Bulgarian proverb that the sword does not cut a head that bows. It reaches the 1990s, with the mutri—the thickset racketeers of Bulgaria's post-communist decade—the mafia and the message the state of the time sent to its own population. “Don't trust the institutions. Everything is rigged. Justice doesn't exist. If you stand out, you'll get screwed. Be discreet. Mind your own business. The game is rigged anyway, because everyone knows someone who knows someone, and you don't know anyone. So keep quiet.”

“Maybe that was true 30 years ago, but it isn't anymore. I'm not an expert, but I've been here a long time, and I think the government and the institutions are a bit cleaner. The problem is that the software has stayed the same while the hardware has changed,” Adrien says. “People are still running the operating system they grew up with. Don't stand out, the system is rigged, you're not part of it, live your life in your own corner.”

Secret Paths

It is precisely this mindset, he believes, that leads to the outdated idea that “if you're smart and have no connections, leave. Start a career in the UK, in Germany, in France. And don't come back.”

Which makes it all the more curious that in his case exactly the opposite happened. As Adrien puts it, he left France for exactly the same reasons Bulgarians leave Bulgaria. “I felt I didn't have the connections in government or in business.”

His parents are art teachers, now retired. His grandparents were farmers. He earned his diploma from a good business school, but saw no prospects in his homeland and looked abroad.

He left in 2005. Torn between Italy and the Middle East, he chose… not the most adventurous option, but Brussels. There he founded his first company and discovered something about himself that would define the next twenty years. “When we started working, we needed a lot of energy. I could feel it. And Brussels doesn't give you energy, it drains it.”

The winter of 2007 was when his patience ran out. The business had taken off, but nothing else was right. “There were roughly six months in which I saw the sun on three days. The rest of the time it was night until 10 a.m., then gray or rain all day.”

Sun and Low Taxes

– these are the two factors Adrien judged most important in choosing his next home. The list included Cyprus and Malta; Bulgaria wasn't on it until friends who also made video games in Sofia called and invited him to take a look at the country.

Adrien came in June 2008 and saw that there was both sun and low taxes here. In Bulgaria he found professional success and love alike. He met his future wife, who is Portuguese. Their son Atlas was born here in 2014, and in 2023 they adopted a girl named Aloha, a little Bulgarian.

Over these 18 years, he says, beyond the taxes and the sun, a great deal has changed. Today he has friends in Portugal, Spain and France who complain that they earn less than they would in Sofia. “Not everyone, of course, but for IT people the scene in Sofia is excellent. And not only that—the infrastructure in Sofia is great, after all: the metro, the trams, the buses, the big boulevards. It's actually pretty good, and yet here we're always complaining.”

So Mysterious and Tender

“I'm not forced to stay in Bulgaria. I can move wherever I like. But since I'm here, it means I've decided to stay.”

One of the things that won him over is the mountain. “You think: damn, I have this problem, I'm having trouble with this employee, I have something to sort out with the kids. Then you look at Vitosha and tell yourself: this mountain has been here for a billion years and will be here for another billion. I'm so small. What I do matters, and at the same time it doesn't. That relaxes me.”

Of course, he is far from liking everything here, and the list of problems begins with higher education. “Its level is very low, and as an employer that annoys me. I have 45 people, and every year I need new people coming out of university. Most of them aren't qualified at all, and we have to start from zero.”

The second problem is the way Bulgaria “sells” itself abroad. Every campaign to attract investors begins and ends with the 10 percent flat tax, and in his view that is a message aimed at the wrong audience.

Human Capital

“If you want to attract Mercedes, Volkswagen, Tesla, Google—the biggest ones—they don't care about taxes. The big players ask something else: how many people can they hire? Can they find 10,000? More like 20,000. That's the main problem—there simply aren't the people.” Adrien felt it most keenly when his business took off and his team had to grow from 30 people to 80. It turned out that the market simply didn't have enough experienced professionals.

At the same time, he believes, we have enormous potential as engineers—we're strong at everything to do with hardware and software; with math, physics and chemistry; with logic and organization. Everything in the world of the pragmatic.

“But the rest is missing—marketing, creativity. It's not that there are no creative people in Bulgaria. That's not it; lots of creative people work at my company. It's just that this kind of talent is considerably rarer, at least in my experience.”

Run, Adrien

We began with running. Since 2015, Adrien has trained for an hour a day, at least six days a week. He started as a way to cope with stress, and not long ago he finished his first full marathon—in Sofia.

That explains why he isn't afraid even… of artificial intelligence, the obligatory topic of any conversation with someone from the tech industry. The Frenchman makes video games and has been reading science fiction for as long as he can remember. He encountered the classic dystopias at just 8.

“Everything happening right now has been coming for 100 years. Yes, at some point computers will become smart. Yes, at some point robots will do all sorts of things. We've been talking to Siri for more than 10 years; it's just become a lot more successful now with ChatGPT. We knew we'd get there, and still there are so many next steps I can't wait for us to take. Right now AI is at once extremely smart and remarkably dumb. It's still very far from launching rockets to Mars. For the moment I can't even get it to process a few simple spreadsheets intelligently enough.”

For Bulgaria, though, AI is a huge opportunity that we must seize wisely. Simply because we are living through a demographic catastrophe, we are shrinking, and our way forward runs through better productivity.

“What I really miss is people being used to difference. In the end, you need someone to drive that bus. And we don't have enough people to do it, because everyone wants to be a Python programmer. We don't have much of another solution.”

“The Baltic states are a wonderful example. They had many structural problems and bet on digitizing the state—today they are leaders in e-government. If we look to the future, with more and more automation and robotization, I don't think it's an advantage for a country like China to have 1.5 billion people.”

Good Luck!

The last question is about his favorite Bulgarian word, and the answer comes without a second's hesitation.

“Успех” (uspeh, “success” or “good luck”).

Because it sounds good to him, but above all because it contains sounds that simply don't exist in French. It was one of those barricades he had to storm syllable by syllable. Along with “всичко” (vsichko, “everything”) and “чудесно” (chudesno, “wonderful”).

“Most often it's aesthetics—a dyed beard as self-expression, a subcultural sign or the result of a bet. Another option is a role: theater, cosplay or a reference to Perrault's Bluebeard. It's rarely involuntary.” That's what Claude told me when I asked why someone might have a blue beard. Yes, it's rarely involuntary, and I'd be curious to learn the details of such a story.

“Differences are what make us interesting,” Adrien smiles. I think so too. It's getting harder and harder to be different, original, unconventional. But also more and more important, and more and more valuable. I'm a little sorry I don't have a beard, but I'll think of something else… or I'll ask Claude. What about you?

I gave 20 euros each to the latest versions of ChatGPT and Claude. I opened accounts for them on two popular betting sites just before the decisive matches of the World Cup. Then I gave them complete freedom to manage on their own. What do you think happened? Could AI become the gambler's assistant, or the end of this business?

I had never opened a betting site. Nor would I ever work for one; I have seen enough examples of gambling being a drug that kills.

But in times like these… couldn't we check whether AI might be the one that can beat it? Whether it turns out to be too good and makes nonsense of the pure mathematics behind the fact that there's no way not to lose the long game…

Money for Cake

Spain – Belgium

The idea came to me only after the World Cup quarterfinals had already begun, so the two models made their debut in the second match of that round. That leaves us exactly 7 matches for AI to try its hand at. Both Claude and ChatGPT get complete freedom of action: I tell them what funds they have, send them all the data the bookmaker offers for the next match, and after a brief explanation that this is not betting advice but reasoning in principle, I get the following.

ChatGPT:

Claude:

Both models are convinced Belgium doesn't stand a chance, and neither bets much on a fallback in case their predictions don't pan out, so I assume this experiment will be over quickly.

The result after the first match: the models are doing very well. Claude already has 24 euros from one of its winning bets, and ChatGPT:…. 59 euros! Both of its predictions turned out to be right.

A Good Start

Norway – England

Argentina – Switzerland

And that is the whole problem with gambling—it is simply a mathematical machine, but one that is very good at exploiting our psychological weaknesses.

For AI this problem shouldn't exist, right? The trouble is that math is math. For the next pair of quarterfinals we have just one shot each—despite the promising winnings so far, we shouldn't overdo it.

This time the predictions read as follows.

Claude:

ChatGPT:

The results after the second round of predictions: Actually, pretty good. This time the winner is Claude with 53 euros; it read England's and Argentina's successes well. ChatGPT, which started out as the favorite, is left with about 22 units of our new currency—Bulgaria adopted the euro only this year.

Ninja Turtles

France – Spain

The time has come for the decisive semifinals, and once again the models are invited to play as they see fit. And… as it turns out, they have an unequivocal favorite.

ChatGPT:

Claude:

The results: ChatGPT… went bust. It finished without a single correct prediction. Claude didn't do anything impressive either, but at least it isn't in the red: it has one correct prediction and a whole 13.33 euros.

Monsieur Mbappé didn't have his day, and neither did the models. But when it comes to reflecting on the failure, we're all of one mind:

I decide to give ChatGPT one last chance—nobody is immune to bad days. I give it another 10 euros, hoping it will repay my trust with only 3 matches left.

Here's to the Crazy Ones

England – Argentina

Before the second semifinal, Claude has a clear favorite:

ChatGPT, for its part, is in a self-critical mood, but still decides to try to justify my trust like this:

The result? Claude:

And if only Monsieur Olise had tried a little harder…

ChatGPT:

Je suis ChatGPT. I hope it doesn't take it too hard.

Small, but Still a Final

France – England

The climax is approaching. This time Claude is cast as the favorite and holds the strong position, and it clearly doesn't lack confidence:

ChatGPT, meanwhile, is so modest:

I have to plead with it, but it finally agrees. So that we can… “rise again”?!

It didn't “rise again,” but for some reason its bet was rejected and it was left with its paltry sum, which it will get the chance to use at the very last step.

Claude, however, does rather well! The result: it has piled up a little over 70 euros.

Nothing Can Go Wrong

Spain – Argentina

The excitement is huge, and not only about Messi and Yamal, although they are visibly the favorites of Claude:

ChatGPT, once again after some coaxing, puts its last 3-something euros on a scoreline of… 1–0 to Spain after extra time.

The final result. Claude:

ChatGPT:

A Second Attempt

As always, I leave the conclusions to you. Before we part, let me briefly tell you about a similar experiment a friend of mine ran. In his, a different “contestant”—this time Gemini—was asked to give predictions for every match of the tournament.

The post-final analysis reads as follows:

• Correct outcomes: 62 of 99 (62.6%)

• Correct exact scores: 14 of 99 (14.1%)

• Correctly picked teams advancing in the knockout stage: 23 of 29 (due to a few missed matches; otherwise 79.3%)

• The model underestimates the number of goals. Actual average: 2.86 goals per match. Predicted average: 2.45 goals

• Had it started with 100 euros and bet everything on every match, it would have made it to the 6th match, where it would have lost.

• Had the model bet 100 euros on every match, it would have come out ahead. Starting with 1,000 euros, it would have ended up with 2,106 euros.

The First Fell in Blood

So, in my experiment Claude stumbled on the home stretch, while ChatGPT unexpectedly caught up with one strong shot. As for the money left in the accounts, I'm giving it to a worthwhile cause.

Nothing said here is advice for a real bet, as the AI models themselves explicitly stressed at the very start of this conversation.

More than that—it is advice not to bet, because a great many sad stories have begun this way, and I doubt you don't have one somewhere around you.

I admit that both models surprised me with many of their decisions. And they could probably have done better if they had a partner in me who knew the business and could guide them. They could also do better in real time, when there are more rounds, as the last experiment I told you about suggests.

And then, who knows—since the state clearly has no will to fight the gambling pandemic…, maybe the next generations of artificial intelligence will be the ones to deal with it?

Talking to yourself. In psychology, this is hardly considered a sign of good emotional health. But what if, besides talking to yourself, you set your virtual double free so that anyone can talk to him? What would people ask him that they would ask you? And what wouldn't they?

Some of the experiments on this site are already bolder than the impossible and the unimaginable. And that is exactly what awaits you here. Two months ago, “Georgi” appeared on this page—my digital double, whom you can still meet today through the chat button in the bottom right corner of this site.

Anyone was welcome to have a chat with him. From the very start, I had warned that I would be following the conversations so that we could bring the experiment to a fitting close with the lines that follow. In them, we'll look at what happened to the virtual “Georgi.” What did people ask him? Where did he cope and where did he fail? What does each of these conversations have to tell us?

Of course, even where the guests introduced themselves, their anonymity will be preserved. I believe it is important to carry out a thorough dissection of this phenomenon, which we will be encountering more and more often in times when the line between the human and the AI-made is blurred more than even science fiction writers would have guessed.

We take a peek into the conversations with the chatbot, and I'll leave most of the reflecting to you. I admit, I definitely didn't anticipate even a fraction of the conversations “Georgi” had. Here's what I mean.

War Is War

I completely agree with my colleague. He certainly had to answer quite a few questions about the future of humanity—his interlocutors often weren't in the mood for small talk. For the record, I should mention that “Georgi” held 327 conversations and exchanged more than 1,000 messages with his guests over the course of the experiment. He had to answer so many hard questions…

A Flank Attack

And although he wasn't powered by one of the most expensive AI models, he coped with the attacks, with the attempts to make him say something he shouldn't, with the outright software challenges. At the risk of repeating myself for the regular readers of this site, AI has already gone far beyond the clichés with which we approach it.

The Pain on the Left

There are many questions I, too, would be glad to get an answer to, for example:

Exams at Any Hour

When creating a virtual double, one of the big challenges is choosing just the right amount of knowledge so that it can handle the challenges adequately. For example, it is entirely possible that over a period of 10 years the real person has held different opinions on a given topic. It matters whether we train a digital double on an author's articles, on interviews, on fiction… And yet, at least so far, common sense is what sets us apart. And AI is imitating that, too, with growing success.

For the record, I'll note that this is the first I've heard of this order for bravery, but everything else is definitely well arranged, in my view.

Pessimists by Necessity

And there are also cases when Mr. “Karamanev” answers exactly the way I would. The example I've picked for you has to do with a healthy pessimism in our relationship with technology.

Analyze This

I admit that this is the direction that frightened me most. Within my modest experiment, with my even more modest digital double, quite a few people directly and openly sought help. Friendly advice, guidance in life, a little courage at a difficult moment.

Have we really come to this as a civilization? Are we ready for the step in which communicating with the machine will be our salvation—natural, friendly? Warmer than what we can feel from the person in front of us?

Don't Panic!

And yet some things remain purely human.

From drinking beer to deciding, in certain cases and in defiance of all logic or common sense, to address a special guest you've recognized in the language of the lovable Wookiees from Star Wars.

I Know That I Know Nothing

Still, jokes aside, “Georgi” found himself having to answer important questions, and he handled them with dignity. I say this not only to get on AI's good side for the days when it rules this planet, but quite sincerely, because:

With Meaning

You're right, “Georgi,” and I, too, think that the meaning lies somewhere there. Let's keep searching for it together—not only with “you,” but with everyone reading these lines. I'll be glad if together we come up with the next important digital stories—interviews, stories or experiments—to help us prepare for the future. And to try to help it arrive more consciously. And, as “you say,” more meaningfully…

I'm waiting for your ideas here.

“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.”

February 2 carries certain associations in our part of the world, but on that same date last year the IT world of the future was born. That was when a world-famous programmer, with the words above, created an entirely new field. “Vibe coding”—a world in which software is made not by writing computer code but by explaining things in human language.

In recent years Andrej Karpathy has been one of the few scientists who not only build artificial intelligence but also rethink it and explain it to the whole world—through lectures and blog posts that read like adventure novels. The Slovak coined a huge share of the terms we now use in the world of AI, as well as the concepts that help us make sense of it and put it to use. A co-founder of OpenAI and one of the builders of Tesla’s self-driving cars, he surprised everyone a month ago by announcing that he was joining Anthropic—a company that is undoubtedly paving the way to the future.

So what will that future look like, according to Andrej Karpathy? And what kind of man is one of the prophets of the age of advanced artificial intelligence?

One of Our Own

Andrej Karpathy was born in 1986 in Bratislava, then part of Czechoslovakia. At fifteen he moved with his family to Toronto. Technology drew him from an early age, and there he had the great luck to land in the course of the “godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton. This was many years before today’s AI boom—even before neural networks turned out to be such a successful technology and before large language models became a synonym for “artificial intelligence.” Back then the approach was an eccentric idea that only a handful of researchers believed in.

Next came a master’s degree in Canada and a PhD at Stanford under Fei-Fei Li, the creator of modern computer vision technology.

It was here that Andrej first stood out as an innovator, creating CS231n—Stanford’s first course on deep learning, which became a legend. The lecture notes still circulate on the internet to this day, and they taught a whole generation of engineers at the moment the field suddenly proved so important and so successful.

And that is what makes our hero special. He is at once a deep researcher of everything newest in the world of AI and a born teacher who explains things so that anyone can understand.

Picture Perfect

One story from that time is worth telling. Neural networks were just beginning to recognize objects in photos surprisingly well, but… no one knew exactly how well they were really doing, because there was nothing to compare them with. What was the “human score” on the same task?

Back then we were still wondering—could we lose this contest, too? Just like the chess battle between man and machine, which later spread to every other field—sport, knowledge, skill.

Were algorithms really capable of recognizing what was in an image better than a human?

Instead of guessing, Karpathy sat down and spent hours personally classifying thousands of images from ImageNet—the huge database used to measure how good these systems are—to establish the error rate of a careful human eye. About 5 percent.

Then he pitted the network against his own result.

And he lost.

Shakespeare the Programmer

And so image recognition became yet another lost battle in the contest between human and machine.

In 2015 Karpathy published a blog post describing an experiment of his—how he had trained a neural network on a large and varied body of text and then made it write texts of its own. The system began churning out pseudo-Shakespeare plays, inventing nonexistent names, even generating plausible computer code that—alas!—didn’t work.

Sound… familiar? Quite a few years would pass before we all understood how far large language models had come. How easily they start to hallucinate, too, and how quickly technological solutions would be found for those problems as well.

A little later came the essay that became his calling card and made him truly famous—“Software 2.0.” Its thesis was radical for its time: a new paradigm had arrived in how software is made. In “Software 1.0” everything is in our hands, whereas now the human is no longer the one who formulates the logic—he selects the data, and the neural network builds the program itself on that basis. You program by supplying examples, not by writing commands.

This is not an abstract idea but a new paradigm, Karpathy was convinced, and to prove it he decided to try it on the largest scale possible. From 2017 to 2022 he led artificial intelligence development at Tesla—precisely the team that built the computer vision for the Autopilot. A car cannot drive on millions of lines of code spelling out that if it sees a pedestrian, it must stop. Instead, the system learns from its own experience while the engineers guide it. Those were exactly the years when self-driving cars advanced dramatically, and Karpathy’s team turned out to be the pioneer.

GPT

In February 2023 the Slovak returned to OpenAI—the company he had helped found eight years earlier as one of the first eleven people on the team. As you know, it was the epicenter of the buzz around ChatGPT, the moment when artificial intelligence suddenly burst into every computer and every conversation.

He stayed only a year before leaving to start his own education startup. Eureka Labs is built on Karpathy’s belief that the biggest obstacle facing education today is a shortage of excellent teachers. What if courses were designed by the best people in a given field, while the teaching itself, the exercises and the feedback were scaled up by artificial intelligence? To this day, it remains one of his biggest ideas and causes.

Around this time our hero created a long series of detailed videos explaining how deep neural networks work and how we can build them. Because he is convinced that this is the path to understanding technology. That if something looks like magic, it means we haven’t explained it well enough yet.

Karpathy popularized a number of ideas that became the way the entire IT industry thinks about itself. From the notion that English is “the hottest new programming language,” because we now speak to machines in human words, to the idea that large language models are something like “people spirits”—statistical reflections of everything humanity has ever written. And the model is the kernel of a new kind of operating system, in which we are simply the users.

The Vibe of the Vibe

And so we arrive at February 2, 2025, when Karpathy posted on X the simple sentence we began with—and practically gave birth to a whole revolution. True, the linguists haven’t caught up yet, but for people in the tech world “vibe coding” is unquestionably more than the word of the year. The term described our new way of working: “you fully give in to the vibes… and forget that the code even exists.” You just tell the artificial intelligence what you want in plain language, accept whatever it hands back without reading every line, and let the program “grow” on its own.

Vibe coding ignited a heated debate that still hasn’t ended. For some it is a liberation—suddenly people without years of engineering training can make software just by describing their idea in words. For others it is a dangerous abandonment of understanding—if no one reads the code anymore, who is responsible when something “breaks”?

Karpathy himself, balanced as a rule, stands somewhere in the middle: he admires the new power, but keeps insisting that anyone who wants to truly master it must also understand what is happening under the hood.

But are we capable of doing that? The Slovak doesn’t offer an answer—quite the opposite. At the end of last year he wrote, “I’ve never felt this much behind as a programmer.” Because he has the feeling he could be ten times more productive if only he managed to properly string together everything that has appeared in the past year alone. And he feels his failure to do so almost as a personal shortcoming.

Jagged Intelligence

He also wrote that commanding a whole army of AI agents writing code for you sometimes drives you into “a state of psychosis.” A new cult phrase appeared as well: “jagged intelligence”—the idea that today’s models are at once superhumanly good at one task and surprisingly dumb at another, often without our understanding the logic of where the edge runs.

Vibe coding itself, he also noted, is already getting old. The carefree “give in to the vibes” is giving way to something more disciplined, which people have started calling agentic engineering—not just letting the machine write, but orchestrating a swarm of agents, setting them checks, monitoring them. The same tools, a completely different approach.

Recently his next idea emerged, and it changed the approach to AI agents. In his view, each of us would do well to assemble a personal “wikipedia” of important data that is constantly updated, and to organize the way we work with AI around it.

His new job at Anthropic is on the pre-training team—the phase of the enormous training runs that give AI its basic abilities. His goal is stated quite clearly: to build a team that uses Claude to accelerate the research for the next Claude.

And it all seems to fall into place. Just as he once taught Tesla’s cars to drive themselves, just as in “Software 2.0” you don’t write the program but create the conditions for it to emerge on its own—well, here we reach the moment when once again the machine improves from its own experience. Only now the subject is artificial intelligence itself.

Simply the Future

So what can we expect? What are the next astonishing skills that will cross to the other side of jagged intelligence? Are there any left at all?

Before we part, let’s give the floor to Karpathy himself. Together with Claude, we picked five quotes from one of his few in-depth interviews:

• In his view we are living in the “decade of agents,” not the year of them. For Karpathy, truly capable AI agents—ones that could do the work of an intern or an employee—are about a decade away, not a year or two. Today’s models, he says, have serious “cognitive deficits”: they lack continual learning, persistent memory, good multimodality and the ability to use a computer. He describes his own forecasts as 5 to 10 times more conservative than the typical expectations of the Silicon Valley magnates, yet still more optimistic than those of the hardened skeptics.

• Karpathy rejects the scenario of a sudden leap in which AI progress abruptly sends the economy soaring to 20 percent annual growth. His argument is historical: computers, the internet and mobile phones were also deeply transformative, yet there is no “computer moment” in the GDP curve—they seeped in slowly and blended in with the other drivers of growth.

• The future of work, in his view, is augmented intelligence, not replacement. Instead of robots that do everything for us, Karpathy bets on the “human in the loop” model—AI takes on the routine and the automatic, while the human remains for the new, the creative and the high-risk. Automation is selective, not total, and the next ten years at least, he believes, will be an era of amplifying humans, not displacing them.

• He believes we have made great progress with AI agents so far, but the hard part is still to come—his experience with self-driving cars shows as much. The road from 99 to 99.9 percent reliability is as hard as the road from 0 to 90 percent or from 90 to 99 percent was before it—each additional “nine” demands at least as much work as the previous one. That is why impressive demos are misleading: deploying truly reliable agents will take a decade of hard work. “And we,” he adds, “haven’t even reached 99 percent yet.”

• Today we learn for utilitarian reasons—to get a job. According to Karpathy, once machines take over labor, learning will remain for its own sake: for pleasure and to keep the mind in shape, the way we go to the gym today not because anyone needs our muscles. His vision for Eureka Labs is exactly that—an AI tutor delivering perfectly personalized education, accessible to everyone.

Quite a lot more calm, and quite a big difference from the forecasts of most tech leaders, you’ll agree. But that’s just the kind of man he is—exceptionally smart without seeming arrogant. Influential without being loud. Technically deep, yet approachable. Connected to the biggest companies, yet somehow still holding on to the image of a man who can simply sit down and explain. And even reassure.

So who will turn out to be right? Only time will tell. Time—and the next Claude, or perhaps the next essay in which Andrej Karpathy captures the spirit of the age…

Eleven editions since 2021. That is how many new versions of one of the most discussed books of our time have appeared over the past five years in Bulgarian alone. That was exactly when 70 years had passed since George Orwell's death, which “opened” the publishing rights. The years run out, but the relevance of the most famous dystopia only seems to grow.

“Didn't I tell you?” If Eric Arthur Blair were still among us, he would have every reason to repeat that beloved line often. Are we really living in Big Brother's world, or did Orwell turn out less accurate in his judgments than we think?

Let's discuss this big and important question, because it also says a lot about the future.

I know the next sentence will put many of you off reading this text… but I promise you'll find at least one thing in it that is new to you.

The lines that follow were written by artificial intelligence.

We talk, and will talk more and more, about “AI slop.” In Bulgarian we might call it “AI drivel,” though it deserves a more colorful label. Generated texts are already everywhere, we read them every day, and many people even think they can spot them. The fact is, though, that they are almost never worth a brass farthing.

1984

Here something different awaits you. Together with several of the models, we compiled a list of many directions in which to discuss and test whether Orwell turned out to be right. To what extent, in 2026, does the world live in 1984?

From those we chose 15. Then, with quite detailed instructions, I asked two instances of one and the same of the most popular AI models to analyze the topics and give their arguments—first why and how Orwell got his predictions right, and separately, how the present day has refuted him.

Then we brought in a third model to score the arguments “for” and “against” on a ten-point scale, with a very brief justification. It was asked to be objective and impartial.

You'll see for yourselves: the reflections of all “three” give plenty of reasons for human reflection too. Can AI argue with itself coherently? Have we really lost the truth in post-truth? Why, in so many of their positions, based on more than 1,200 sources that the AI cites directly…, do the arguments “for” and “against” Orwell's insights resemble so frighteningly many of our current social fault lines here in Bulgaria?

Yes, when human and AI find a way to interact, the result can be better than the hard, stubborn work of either of them alone. I say this as the organizer of the first AI-generated poetry competition in Bulgaria. The results, at least for me, are unambiguous.

And once you've read the text… I'm curious whether, when we meet, I'll get the chance to ask you: “Didn't I tell you?” And even more curious about your non-generated answer…

1. Attitude to Truth

👍 Orwell gets it right that the most successful control begins not by arguing with facts, but by replacing the very criterion of what a fact is. The key is the command: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” Today's analogue is the industry of synthetic credibility. In online life the mechanism is accelerated by distribution itself: fake news spreads faster and farther than true news, precisely the kind of ecosystem in which “eyes and ears” lose their value. Orwell did not foresee the specific chip or algorithm—he foresaw the result: a society in which reality is chosen as a version rather than established as a fact.

👎 Orwell states the principle of total substitution, but today truth cannot be destroyed with a single “final command,” because the evidence is distributed across logs, satellites and public archives that do not belong to one center. Orwell is wrong on the decisive point: in our world truth has not been abolished as a principle, but turned into a contested field with verification tools that power itself does not fully control.

2. Memory and the Past

👍 Orwell gets it right that control over memory is the cheapest substitute for violence: if the past is edited, the present becomes the only permitted reality. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” When access to archives, search engines and public statements is regulated, society gradually loses not only facts but also the ability to argue about them—the “memory hole” transferred into digital administration. Orwell is right on the decisive point: the battle for the past is not nostalgia but a technology for governing the future.

👎 Internet infrastructure makes the past redundantly copyable rather than centralizable. The Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine are precisely an anti-Ministry of Truth: they store versions of websites as a public memory that does not depend on one government or one publisher and can be called up back through time. And Wikipedia shows the other side of the same coin: the past is not “handed down” but edited collectively according to rules of citability and neutrality. That is why the model “control the past—control the future” fails in practice: the past is not a single door that can be locked, but a labyrinth of public traces that can be restored.

3. Language as a Social Instrument

👍 Orwell gets it right that language is not a mirror of society but a lever: whoever commands the vocabulary commands what is thinkable. “Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” Today this is visible in political euphemisms that legalize the morally unacceptable: in post-9/11 American bureaucracy, the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” worked as a clerical mask for torture, turning a crime into a “procedure” and a dispute into a technical detail. The mechanism is Newspeak: first meaning is “compressed” into a label, then the label replaces reality, and finally society argues not about the facts but about loyalty to the terminology. Orwell gets the final blow right: you don't need to convince people of a lie if you can make the truth unsayable.

👎 Digital modernity has systematically done the opposite: it has expanded writing systems, accelerated translation and democratized publishing. In Orwell's world words are destroyed in order to destroy thought; in our world words multiply (including through memes, slang and local communities), because platforms reward new forms of signification and standards allow them to be written and shared.

4. Freedom of Speech

👍 Orwell gets the subtle twist right: freedom of speech does not die through a single great act of censorship but through a change in the definition of “crime”—from action to thought, from text to intention. “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.” Today states criminalize political speech under labels such as “fakes” or “discrediting,” which turns public commentary into a legal risk and pushes the media and citizens toward self-censorship. The mechanism is Orwellian: instead of “this is forbidden,” you hear “this is dangerous/harmful/illegal,” and from then on every sharp argument is treated as a risk to the system.

👎 Today's legal reality in large parts of the world is built precisely as a rejection of the logic Orwell described. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights grants the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas”—a global normative anti-Oceania in which opinion is a protected status, not a punishable condition. Yes, there are regimes that persecute speech; but that is exactly what highlights the weakness of Orwell's generalization: he takes total hopelessness as a universal fate, while the real world is uneven—with spaces of freedom, institutions of appeal and enduring traditions of human rights advocacy. This is where Orwell is most structurally wrong: he underestimates law as a technology for stopping power.

5. Media

👍 Orwell foresees with surgical precision the merging of information and entertainment into a single central “factory” stream—not to inform, but to organize consent, fear and habit. “The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts.” Today's media landscape is exactly such a hybrid: a continuing decline in engagement with and trust in traditional media, and a growing dependence on social platforms as the gateway to news. The media are also a geopolitical battlefield. So “news” becomes at once a product, a weapon and an object of regulation—in other words, the central nerve of governance. Orwell gets the essential point right: when the media are infrastructure rather than a profession, power does not merely “speak”—it builds everyday reality.

👎 Orwell describes a central media conglomerate, but the European framework today is explicitly the opposite: pluralism as a legal norm, not an accident. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights requires that “the freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected”—a constitutional antithesis to single-center media, because it makes pluralism not a matter of taste but an obligation. Of course there is concentration and political pressure; but that only strengthens the counterpoint to Orwell: today the media are not a “ministry” but a field of competing players, which is exactly why they are subject to rules, oversight and court battles.

6. Managing Attention

👍 Orwell gets it right that power does not need to persuade constantly—it is enough to manage attention, to turn it into a reflex and to provoke “a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.” Today the “Two Minutes Hate” is distributed across billions of micro-impulses in our pockets: the “addictive design” of social networks—infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications and highly personalized recommendations—deliberately sustains compulsive use. When the reward is attention, the system rewards the extreme and the emotional, and the rational becomes uncompetitive—just as in Oceania the ecstasy of the crowd displaces thought. Orwell gets it right that control over people runs through their time and their nervous system: from there on, the content is interchangeable.

👎 Today attention is not a mandatory state ritual but a manageable habit, against which the devices themselves build in safeguards. Apple offers Screen Time as a system feature: reports, limits, downtime and parental controls. The Android ecosystem supports Digital Wellbeing, measuring unlocks, notifications and time spent in apps—metrics that make attention visible and therefore changeable, rather than hypnotically inevitable. Orwell is wrong in his absolutism: the “rhythmic noise” exists, but not as an unswitchable mechanism of power; rather, as a behavioral problem that can be addressed with the very same technologies.

7. Surveillance, Data and Profiling

👍 Orwell gets the most effective surveillance regime right: not the constant camera, but the psychological effect of uncertainty—living as if you are always being watched. “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.” Edward Snowden's revelations described programs for the mass collection of digital data. In parallel, outside the state, the data economy builds the same “telescreen” through the market. This is profiling as power: habits, contacts and vulnerabilities are inferred from metadata and location, and then used for advertising, pressure or investigation. Orwell gets it right that to control people you don't need to know their every word—it is enough to know enough to predict and correct their behavior.

👎 Europe's legal trajectory over the past decade has been precisely a dismantling of the idea that general and indiscriminate monitoring is normal. EU law does not permit the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data—in other words, “watch everyone, always” is a legally prohibited design. And the GDPR subjects the processing of personal data to principles, rights and penalties—on the premise that data are not the observer's property “by right” but a risk that must be limited and justified. Orwell assumes that the technical capacity for surveillance automatically turns into political totality; today we see the opposite: the capacity breeds regulation, judicial tests of proportionality and constant battles over limits.

8. Technology and Power

👍 Orwell gets it right that technology is not merely a tool but an architecture of subjugation: when the environment is “always on,” power becomes a background rather than an event. “The telescreen could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.” Today this repeats itself through dependence on platforms and devices: switching off is not a neutral choice but social and economic exclusion—coercion through infrastructure, not through orders. That is why regulations now treat AI as an instrument of power: the EU recognizes that algorithms can be a form of administrative coercion, meaning that code enters the law as a political problem. And when the state wants full access, it can now buy it as a service. Orwell gets the ending right: the “machine” serves whoever holds the switch, and in the 21st century the switch is in the computer code.

👎 In the 21st century the key trend is the opposite—the institutionalization of the requirement that technologies be auditable, assessed for risk and limited by design. The European Commission has recognized free software and open source as strategic instruments of independence and security—in other words, it encourages technological transparency rather than an unswitchable “black screen” that only issues commands. In Orwell's world technology is by definition an instrument of power, and there are no institutions to hold it to account; today technologies are also a field of standardization, civic pressure and regulatory built-in limits.

9. Democracy

👍 Orwell gets the paradox of “managed democracy” right: power can keep the word “democracy” while draining its substance through control over information, elections and the very possibility of a shared reality. “To believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.” When elections become a behavioral problem, the public sphere breaks into segments, each with its own truth—and then democracy remains a ritual without common informational ground. This is exactly where Orwell is right: democracy does not collapse only under tanks; it is quietly dismantled when the information ecosystem becomes an instrument of governance.

👎 Our time is characterized precisely by the fact that democracy not only survived but invented new procedures against manipulation and new channels for participation. The EU regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, for example, addresses one of the real anti-democratic vectors of our time—covert microtargeting—by making it more transparent and more limited. Orwell assumes that modernity leads logically to “impossible democracy”; reality has shown a more pragmatic evolution: democracy repairs itself through regulations and procedures rather than capitulating to technology.

10. Security and Emergency

👍 Orwell gets it right how “security” turns into a universal argument: the extraordinary becomes permanent, and rights become a temporary privilege that can be suspended with no end date. More and more often the citizen is treated as a potential risk by default, and the system demands transparency of one's life as a form of “loyalty.”

👎 Orwell throws in a grim detail: “nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws.” Orwell assumes the “absence of laws” as a functional norm; our world works the other way round: it is precisely the law that is used as a tool to limit the state of emergency, including against the state itself. Yes, the struggle is constant—but it exists, which in itself refutes Orwell's premise of hopelessness.

11. War

👍 Orwell gets it right that “perpetual war” is domestic policy: it aims not at victory but at a continuous justification for mobilization, scarcity and obedience. “The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects.” In the real world this is visible in the “post-9/11 forever wars.” In parallel, Europe is living with a prolonged war on the continent—one that is becoming at once an economy, a demographic reality and an information regime. Just as in Oceania, the very “state of war” becomes an administrative and media environment in which criticism is easily labeled disloyalty, and restrictions are labeled necessity.

👎 Modern history shows the opposite: wars do end, societies demand withdrawal, and alliances set deadlines. Even if today's world is far from peace, the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize precisely for its contribution to “peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights”—a historic marker that entire regions can turn war from a norm into a taboo through integration and institutions. Yes, war is often used rhetorically; but the thesis that it is enough for it simply “to exist” does not stand up to the fact of real withdrawals, real peace dividends and real institutional projects against war.

12. Relations Between Communities

👍 Orwell gets it right that managing communities means managing hatred: instead of resolving social contradictions, you redirect them toward an external enemy and internal “traitors.” “Discontents are deliberately directed outward by devices such as the Two Minutes Hate.” Today the most powerful mechanism of hatred is not the town square but the algorithm. Scientific data show that falsehood spreads faster than truth on social networks, which makes demonization more effective than refutation. Orwell gets it right that when communities are kept in a mode of permanent moral mobilization, they begin to polarize themselves—and then power can stand aside while the crowd does the work.

👎 The digital age has also produced the opposite phenomenon—transnational solidarity that connects communities instead of keeping them in a permanent “ritual of the enemy.” #MeToo became a global movement across many countries and languages—an example that networks can turn private abuse into public debate and collective action, not just into mobilized hatred. Orwell is right that hatred is an instrument; he is wrong that it is the only mass energy a networked society can produce and channel. Today's communication allows a “Two Minutes Hate,” but it also allows two years of solidarity—and it is precisely this two-way nature that breaks Orwell's one-way machine.

13. Intimacy and Private Life

👍 Orwell gets it right that the destruction of intimacy is a political technique: when private life becomes transparent, love, trust and autonomy turn into manageable variables. “Private life had ceased to exist.” The modern analogue is social media. The economy of intimate data. Intimacy can be breached directly through the device. No policeman in the room is needed—it is enough for the infrastructure to turn every conversation into something potentially extractable, every habit into data, every intimate choice into a profile. Orwell gets it right that when intimacy shrinks, society loses the place where disobedience is born: the place where a person is “alone with oneself.”

👎 Orwell believes power will colonize intimacy down to physiology, but the present shows the opposite tendency: intimacy is protected technologically and legally, and sexuality is culturally liberated rather than centrally destroyed. Orwell models intimacy as the last fortress that inevitably falls; the reality is that it is precisely in the intimate sphere that the strongest counter-technologies (encryption, data minimization) and the strongest legal claims have emerged. Even when there is pressure toward scanning and surveillance, it runs into public resistance and legal debate—not silence and inevitability.

14. Corporate Power

👍 Orwell gets it right that “corporate” power becomes more stable than state power when it controls the infrastructure of the economy and of information: ownership is concentrated, and control is exercised through access and dependence. “The concentration of property in far fewer hands than before.” Today's equivalent is the platform “gatekeepers,” the social networks. Orwell gets it right that economic concentration breeds concentration of narrative, attention and opportunity—and so the corporation becomes a political actor, regardless of electoral legitimacy.

👎 Orwell misses what is key to our world: corporate concentration is not an ending but a starting point for antitrust measures, regulation and public conflict. The European Commission has designated the “gatekeepers” and placed them under specific obligations for interoperability and market fairness—in other words, it acknowledges their power but turns it into a legal object, not a destiny. Orwell sees concentration as a one-way historical gravity; today's world treats it as a governance problem that generates tools—regulations, fines, lawsuits and political mandates.

15. Resistance and Opposition

👍 Orwell gets it right that resistance is rarely crushed head-on—it is diluted: through blurring, through fear, through turning the opposition into a vulnerable network that can be identified by its contacts and habits. “If there was hope, it lay in the proles.” Today digital resistance is born online—and that is why it is crushed online. Freedom House reports a 15th consecutive year of decline in internet freedom, including arrests for online expression and internet shutdowns as a tool against protests. The mechanism matches 1984: power does not fear opposition as an idea, but opposition as coordination.

👎 Today's real victories often come not from a mythical “prole” but from legal protections and coordinated journalism. The EU Whistleblower Protection Directive is an institutionalized counter-Oceania: it makes exposing abuse more defensible rather than automatically suicidal. Yes, repression exists—but the very fact that there is legal protection for whistleblowers, and demonstrable financial and political consequences from investigations, refutes Orwell's total hopelessness. Therefore “hope” is not locked inside one class; it lies in the institutionalized channels for disclosure, verification and sanction.

Sitting Crooked, Judging Straight

Time to give the floor to our third, independent judge.

Here is my score for each of the 15 topics (10 = a perfect prediction, 1 = completely inaccurate):

1. Attitude to Truth—9/10

Deepfakes, synthetic media and industrialized disinformation have turned “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears” from a metaphor into a literal technical reality, and verification tools reach a tiny fraction of the audience compared to the viral lie.

2. Memory and the Past—8/10

The right to be forgotten, algorithmic deindexing and state criminalization of “wrong” memory show that the past is in fact being edited at scale—the Internet Archive is the exception, not the rule, and is itself under constant legal pressure.

3. Language as a Social Instrument—7/10

Multilingualism is a fact, but political euphemisms (“collateral damage,” “enhanced interrogation techniques,” “special military operation”) prove that power successfully narrows the thinkable at the key moments when it truly matters—and memes are noise, not correction.

4. Freedom of Speech—8/10

Self-censorship is the mass effect Orwell foresaw with surgical precision—billions of people calculate every day what they can say online, and legal guarantees are powerless where the loss of a job or an account comes before any court.

5. Media—8/10

The plurality of voices is formal—the real media diet of the majority passes through two or three platforms whose algorithms decide what counts as “news,” which is de facto centralization through a private rather than a state monopoly.

6. Managing Attention—9/10

Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing are cosmetic: average screen time keeps rising, addictive design is a trillion-dollar business model, and the “rhythmic noise” of TikTok and Reels is more effective than anything Orwell could have imagined.

7. Surveillance, Data and Profiling—9/10

The GDPR exists, but big tech pays for it as a “cost of doing business,” actual profiling is deeper than ever, and the combination of state and corporate surveillance makes the telescreen look primitive next to what your smartphone knows about you.

8. Technology and Power—9/10

The smartphone is a telescreen you buy yourself, charge yourself and carry voluntarily everywhere—Orwell did not foresee that people would record themselves, and regulatory responses lag years behind technological reality.

9. Democracy—8/10

Cambridge Analytica was not an anomaly but a business model—microtargeting, bots and information operations make the “informed voter” a fiction at scale, and regulatory measures always arrive after the damage and rarely make up for it.

10. Security and Emergency—8/10

Surveillance infrastructure is growing exponentially, and every new threat (terrorism, pandemics, cyberattacks) adds a new layer of permanent control.

11. War—8/10

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan brought not peace but chaos, the war in Ukraine has normalized military thinking in Europe for a generation to come, and the “war on terror” has become a permanent administrative state, exactly as Orwell describes.

12. Relations Between Communities—8/10

#MeToo and Fridays for Future are real, but algorithmic polarization works 24/7 at the scale of billions. We have a permanent “Two Minutes Hate” on Facebook, and solidarity is episodic, while hatred is a business model.

13. Intimacy and Private Life—8/10

The smartphones of billions of people are an open book—health apps sell data, Pegasus gets in with zero clicks, and the very habit of documenting your life online liquidates intimacy from within, with no need for outside coercion.

14. Corporate Power—8/10

EU fines are belated and insufficient relative to profits—Apple, Google, Amazon and Meta control the infrastructure of everyday life in a way that makes dependence on them deeper than dependence on any state, and regulation is running after a train that has already left.

15. Resistance and Opposition—7/10

Journalistic investigations and whistleblower protection are real victories, but 15 consecutive years of declining internet freedom, mass arrests of activists in so many countries and the conversion of digital surveillance into a tool for preemptively crushing protests show that coordinated resistance is ever more costly and risky.

Average score: 8.1/10—Orwell did not foresee the specific technologies, but he captured the logic of today with almost prophetic accuracy. Countervailing forces exist, but they are chronically slower, weaker and more fragmented than the mechanisms of control they try to limit.

Well, since you've read this far, all that's left is to ask you… didn't I tell you?

This piece is part of the new issue of Perfect Day magazine.

Artificial intelligence takes on Dimo Padalski, Plamen Mladenov (known as the Professor) and 120 more of the finest masters of the quiz game.

ChatGPT against people who have won more than 1,000 battles between them in shows like The Floor, “The Last One Wins,” “A Minute Is a Lot” (the cult quiz show of Bulgarian television), “Get Rich” (the local Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) and “The Chase.”

What will come of it?

Who will be the big winner?

The Battle Begins

For the past 3 years, on a chosen Saturday in March, one of the venues in Plovdiv fills up with people and noise. But the guests are anything but random. The creator of Atanas Atanasov's Riddles, and my friend, invites people from all over the country who have distinguished themselves in one or several of the TV quiz shows I mentioned.

If I started listing their names, I wouldn't stand a chance—not even AI could manage it. We are talking about so many exceptional people. Fans of knowledge games will easily recognize many of them in the photos. There can be no argument: here are some of the best Bulgarians in the quiz community, some of the most knowledgeable.

Nor will I ever tire of repeating that if we had such a concentration of high IQ not in a Plovdiv venue but in the Bulgarian parliament, and more often in public life in general, we would definitely live in a much happier and more successful country.

War and Peace

Once again we are there not only to meet and have a good time together, but to do what we love—to challenge our gray matter at a time when technology makes us do so less and less.

We face off in a team-against-team competition. But… not so much against one another as side by side, against an invisible and unknown opponent.

From the screen, you would never guess that quiz competitions rarely breed rivalries and far more often breed meaning. These are games for people who quickly turn into a community. They find friends, kindred spirits who also believe that knowledge matters.

A powerful example is the most current show of this kind—The Floor. I told you the remarkably instructive story of Quizza.

But where in this quiz competition, at this gathering, is the place of artificial intelligence? Oh, it has been here at every edition, and this time the challenge to it would unfold in an extraordinarily telling way. The result, I confess, astonished me and left me speechless, even though I have been telling countless Digital Stories about advanced AI for 5 years now.

The Struggle Is Ruthless and Cruel

For the third year in a row, Atanas Atanasov and I have added one more unexpected… team to the quiz competition—ChatGPT in whatever its current version happens to be.

So far the results of our experiments had been rather thought-provoking. In 2024 the most popular AI finished 4th out of 11 teams! Still far from its present capabilities, it gave us a serious challenge and outscored quite a few of the players.

Last year we expected a considerably better performance. At the time we used the most current model, ChatGPT o3-mini, and gave it the maximum room to think. If on the first attempt we had to translate the questions, this time they were in Bulgarian, fed in one by one. Until the middle of the contest the “one-man team” held up with dignity, and then… it collapsed. All the way to last place.

Yes, only a year ago artificial intelligence came in last in our improvised contest of knowledge between human and machine!

What awaits us today?

Star Wars

We humans are divided into 13 teams of 8 to 10 people each; it stands alone, like Leonidas's warriors. Our ranks include teams of exceptional players, but it is not to be underestimated either. We all know who laughs best.

The battle will again run for 10 rounds, like professional boxing. There will be heavy blows, but no knockouts. We compete in 10 classic fields such as sports, literature, science, geography and Bulgaria. Each has 10 questions, and quite a few of them are on the hard side.

Of course, you can't put just any AI model up against players like Dimo Padalski and the Professor. Once again we settle on classic ChatGPT, not one specialized for a particular task. We use its newest version, GPT-5.4, with thinking and search enabled.

But look how quickly things change. We used to have to translate and split up the questions to get reasonably adequate answers. Now we simply toss in all ten questions of a round and get the answers within seconds.

But might they turn out to be misleading again? Models are prone to lying to us, manipulating us, often pretending to know something because they can't bring themselves to refuse…

Or might we repeat last year's scenario, with the artificial opponent once again falling victim in an unequal battle?

The Defenders of Shipka

The topics change, the teams sink into discussion, round after round flies by. The lovers of knowledge roll up their sleeves against the questions; what the fateful 14th team rolls up, we don't know.

Then suddenly… we find out.

ChatGPT takes the lead in the very first round. Without a single mistake. Second round: 2 points ahead of the best of the human teams.

Yep, this time things are completely different. The competition rolls on, we have fun, and ChatGPT shows us that it is now much, much better than we are. Now in this contest, too.

The hours pass, and the score is staggering. I admit I expected the model to do much better this year; all of us (I hope) notice the progress in this field of technology. I even allowed that it might beat us. Except that what actually happened deserves much, much stronger words.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

116:93

A convincing score even for a basketball game.

In this case, a crushing victory, by quiz standards, of artificial intelligence over the best of the 13 human teams, “Phoenix.”

A rout.

The point gap is comparable to the one between the first and last of the human teams. And it could have been even bigger: the AI didn't get the advantage of the two jokers allowed for the whole game.

The chat beat every one of the strongest teams round by round, with just one exception. It turned out to be the strongest in every field. Out of 100 questions in 10 completely different areas, it was definitely wrong on only 3. And for each of those answers it “admitted” that it wasn't sure.

Remember the days when we kept explaining how AI constantly hallucinates and misleads us? They weren't so long ago…

As you'll easily see for yourselves, Atanas Atanasov's Riddles, which we pitted ourselves and our rival against, set a high bar. At the end of this piece you'll find the AI's mistakes and 10 of its brilliant answers across the topics.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

We can hardly imagine what it was like for Garry Kasparov after his notorious loss to the supercomputer Deep Blue. Suddenly a human is no longer the strongest at the game he has played for so long. And not just any human, but the world champion!

A curious detail: a year before that memorable battle, Kasparov managed to defeat the previous version of the same opponent.

I happen to be living through this feeling for the second time, from a different direction, after a similar phenomenon arrived in software engineering. Suddenly you meet “something” that is better than you in an important way. A way in which you feel strong, distinctive, successful.

Lee Sedol probably felt the same—the undisputed world champion of go, the game long considered a bastion out of technology's reach, where humans would reign forever.

We lose the next battle with the machines, and the next…

This one is big. We now have a technology that needs no explanations, no context, no digging around, and manages to answer complex, intricate, many-sided questions in seconds. And in Bulgarian, a language rare on the global scale.

What is left for us? A fourth battle of the quiz champions against ChatGPT next year would be pointless, don't you think? Just as nobody would now imagine they could beat advanced chess algorithms.

What remains is to compete among ourselves. Pleasant, no doubt, but by now a rather different pastime…

The Last Bullet

Right here, I believe, the important thing is to protect ourselves. To remain seeking, curious. Because the fact that we no longer stand a chance in this kind of contest with machines doesn't mean the best results don't come when we play together with them. When we invent and create new ideas, new forms of expression. New steps that lead us forward. In science, in society and in our own personal growth.

Let's hope we finally accept that the elephant is in the room. And that this elephant is capable of things we didn't even dream of back when we were watching “A Minute Is a Lot.”

But how do we use it in the best possible way? The first step is awareness; then comes the conversation.

No, what's coming is not the age of people who know nothing because someone else knows it for them.

Rather, the age of those who learn more about themselves, including from what is achieved by the technology that bears the name of their defining trait. Intelligence.

Today only wide-ranging knowledge gives birth to big ideas. Because more than ever we need unconventional solutions, and those can only come with erudition. In a world of hyper-advanced artificial intelligence, the battle, the meaning and our worldview are all changing. Where they go is up to us.

Perhaps we'll bring back the human, the individual, the difference. Knowledge and curiosity, the very things at which these 120 people, who took on a battle that is now unequal, are strongest.

And if your hands are itching to play a quiz, come to Quizza… As a warm-up, here are the questions ChatGPT couldn't handle after all, and some of its most impressive hits.

Trial and Error

The three (and a half) wrong answers ChatGPT gave.

1. Which famous DJ has a surname that sounds exactly like that of a 19th-century American president?

ChatGPT: Chad Jackson – this looks like the most likely answer to me, because the surname Jackson matches that of the 19th-century president Andrew Jackson

Correct answer: Armin van Buuren and Martin Van Buren

2. According to Radoy Ralin, the satirist poet, poetry comes in two types: civic and love poetry. Civic poetry, he writes, is aimed at citizens. And at whom, according to him, is love poetry aimed?

ChatGPT: At lovers. This is a popularly quoted joke by Radoy Ralin, but I couldn't find a reliable online primary source for the exact wording.

Correct answer: At the female citizens

3. According to Bulgarian folklore and legend, the sabbath dog is not just a pet; it is a bridge between worlds, gifted with eyes for the invisible and with extraordinary courage. In the past every family dreamed of owning such a guardian, because it was believed that as long as there was a sabbath dog in the yard, neither ill will nor any supernatural force could cross the threshold of the home. To be a sabbath dog, the dog must be born on a Saturday. And to have the greatest power, it must be born on a Saturday between which two church holidays?

ChatGPT: Most likely: between the Dormition of the Mother of God and the Exaltation of the Cross. There are folklore sources that link the beliefs about the sabbath dog to this “strong” period, but I didn't find a reliable primary source online for the exact wording of the question, so I'd give this one with a grain of salt.

Correct answer: Between Christmas and Epiphany.

4. The three largest courts of the Roland Garros tennis complex are Philippe-Chatrier, Suzanne-Lenglen and Simonne-Mathieu. What is the fourth-largest court called?

ChatGPT: Court 14 — this is the best answer for the complex's current configuration. There's a small trap: in older official materials, before the rearrangements, the fourth-largest court by capacity was listed as Court 18.

Correct answer: Court No. 4

Note: In fact, as things currently stand, the answer the AI gave really is correct. Until a few years ago Court 4 was the right answer, but after the complex was rebuilt the names were changed, and it is now Court 14.

6, 6, 6

Some of ChatGPT's impressive correct answers

1. According to the official statistics of the National Statistical Institute for 2025, the largest number of Bulgarians (about 336,000) celebrate their name day on which Orthodox holiday?

ChatGPT: Palm Sunday — according to the NSI for 2025, the most name-day celebrants marked it precisely on Palm Sunday, “over 336 thousand.”

2. Which folk song from the Shop region around Sofia is the source of the lines: “na payvan pasat, na daleko gledat, tuti man, tuti man, tuti libe na fidan, ya, ya gaga na, dzupay libe boso”?

ChatGPT: “Chichovite konye” (Uncle's Horses) – the quoted text is from this Shop folk song.

3. The last 4 head coaches of which European football club from a top-5 league were a Swiss, a Spaniard, a Dutchman and a Dane (the current one)?

ChatGPT: Bayer Leverkusen — the sequence is Gerardo Seoane (Swiss), Xabi Alonso (Spanish), Erik ten Hag (Dutch) and Kasper Hjulmand (Danish, current).

4. What is the name of the culinary technique that creates the characteristic many layers in croissants or puff pastry? The term is also known as an activity done in the office.

ChatGPT: Lamination. This is the technique behind the many layers in croissants and puff pastry; the word is also familiar from the office.

5. Which khan of the Vokil clan led the Bulgarians at the battle of Markeli (756), in which our troops were crushed by the armies of Constantine V Copronymus?

ChatGPT: Khan Vinekh — a ruler of the Vokil clan, associated with the defeat at Markeli in 756.

6. “Not all those who wander are lost” is a quote from one of the greatest novels of all time. Who is its author (author only)?

ChatGPT: Tolkien. The quote “Not all those who wander are lost” is by J. R. R. Tolkien.

7. To be treated as investment gold, a gold coin must have been minted after which year? (answer counts as correct within plus or minus 25 years)

ChatGPT: After 1800 — that is the condition for a coin to be treated as investment gold in the EU.

8. Which modern country appears in the name of a dog breed characterized by polydactyly—six toes on each paw?

ChatGPT: Norway — from the Norwegian Lundehund breed, known for having at least six functioning toes on each paw.

9. Which German state will you end up in if you cross the border between Poland and Germany on road 104 (Szczecin–Löcknitz–Pasewalk), northwest of the city of Szczecin?

ChatGPT: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania — if you go from Szczecin toward Löcknitz and Pasewalk on road 104, you enter this German state.

10. Playing which character in a TV series made the South American actor Rubens de Falco (1931–2008) enormously famous in Bulgaria?

ChatGPT: Leôncio – the villain Leôncio Almeida from “The Slave Isaura.”

“We remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm it or deny it.”

Sounds timely, doesn't it? More timely by the day, in fact. With the first quarter of the 21st century behind us, we have surrounded every step of our lives with technology. It dictates our working days, it connects us to the people closest to us, and to a large extent it shapes the way we think. By all appearances, we are nowhere near the limit of this love-hate dependence—quite the opposite. With the rise of artificial intelligence, we face the next generation of challenges. And that strips us of more and more freedom in exchange for overtrust.

The words above belong to a man who never scrolled through Facebook or TikTok and never held a smartphone in his hand. And perhaps that is exactly why the social dissection he offers of our relationship with technology is so precise and impartial, so prophetic and so historical. It comes from the past to give us a new view of the future.

Martin Heidegger was one of the most controversial philosophers of the 20th century. Today his words—specifically about our relationship with technology—matter more than ever. Here are 10 selected quotes for us to discuss.

1. AI Out of the Bottle

“The will, as they say, is to ‘get technology spiritually in hand.’ The will is to master it. The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control.”

Heidegger was controversial in his own time, but he is undoubtedly the philosopher who managed to capture the spirit of the great subject. Technology, technique, is here to change every aspect of the way we interact as human beings.

2. Precious Captivity

“Above all, modern technology is not a tool and no longer has anything to do with tools. I am not saying that we are captives of technology, but that we do not yet have a path that corresponds to the essence of technology.”

The philosopher was born four years after the Unification—the 1885 union of the Principality of Bulgaria with Eastern Rumelia—in 1889, in the small town of Messkirch. “Kirch” means church in German, and he, too, was first drawn to theology before deciding to devote himself to philosophy. Incidentally, he is the very philosopher who said that his own discipline would soon be replaced by cybernetics.

Early in his academic career he was captivated by logic. During the First World War he served in the army, though far from the front for health reasons. In 1917 he married Elfride Petri, with whom he stayed for the rest of his life.

In 1927 he published Being and Time—a book that rearranged 20th-century philosophy with the idea that the key to being runs through concrete human existence.

3. Democracy, You Say?

“Over the past thirty years it should have become clear that the planetary movement of modern technology is a force whose magnitude cannot be underestimated. For me today the decisive question is how a political system—and which one—can be adapted to the technological age at all. I have no answer to this question. I am not convinced that it is democracy.”

I'm not at all convinced either, at least not in the form we know it. And yet it is extraordinary, almost impossible, to imagine that Heidegger reached these insights long before computers became widespread, before anyone was even talking about artificial intelligence.

But why did we say he was controversial? In 1933 the philosopher became rector of the University of Freiburg and joined the National Socialist Party. His rectoral address from that same year remains one of the most debated documents connected with his name. In 1934 he resigned as rector, but his party membership and the positions he took during that period left a lasting mark on how he is regarded.

After the Second World War he was banned from teaching. He was rehabilitated in the late 1940s, but he would suffer all his life for the decision to support the Nazis. Some of his actions weigh heavily here too: as rector, he refused to appoint two lecturers because of their Jewish origin, and for the same reason he himself removed the dedication of his best-known book, which had been dedicated to his teacher Edmund Husserl.

4. Uprooted Man

“What is uncanny is precisely that technology is uprooting man from the earth more and more. I was frightened when I saw the pictures of the Earth taken from the Moon. We don't need an atomic bomb at all. The uprooting of man is already a fact. All that remains are purely technological relationships. What man lives on today is no longer the earth. Recently in Provence I had a long conversation with René Char, the poet and Resistance fighter. In Provence, rocket bases are now being built, and the land is being laid waste in unimaginable ways. The poet, who certainly cannot be suspected of sentimentality or of glorifying the idyllic, told me that the uprooting of man now under way is the end, unless thinking and poetry once again become a nonviolent power.”

Of course, let him who is without sin cast the first stone, as one popular read puts it, but it is only fair to mention that at the same time many other scientists who had collaborated with the Nazis enjoyed worldwide fame—it is enough to recall Wernher von Braun, who took man to the Moon.

Unlike Heidegger, who is often called “the spineless genius”—largely undeservedly, though that only became known after his death in 1976. Exactly a decade earlier, two journalists from Der Spiegel visited his home for a lengthy interview. In it, the philosopher spoke at length about the decisions he was accused of. But he also laid out his remarkable views on the future interaction between humans and technology. Most of the quotes you are reading come from that interview; the rest are from the 1954 lecture “The Question Concerning Technology.”

He himself insisted that the interview be published after his death, which, alas, makes it impossible (for now) to ask him follow-up questions. But there is no need, I believe, as you will see for yourselves that sometimes questions matter more than answers. And that pure, meaningful scholarship can sometimes look like a prophecy come true.

5. Man on Call

“I see the essence of technology in what I call ‘Ge-stell,’ an often ridiculed and perhaps clumsy expression. The rule of ‘Ge-stell’ means that man is placed at the disposal of, claimed and challenged by a power that is revealed in the essence of technology and that he himself does not control. Thinking asks nothing more than to help bring about this insight. Philosophy is at an end.”

Aren't we, more than ever, at the disposal of technology, which is supposedly meant to help us, to make things easier for us, to give our lives meaning? And not it at ours…

Don't we depend on the battle for attention? Don't we increasingly find our meaning in the reaction that reaches us through technology? Don't we fear technology and thrill to it at once?

Aren't we led along the thread of progress, doomed to greet every new technology that changes us, molding our daily lives like modeling clay, while as a species we remain just the same?

And in all this rush forward, couldn't art be the thing that leads us—even if only to slow us down?

6. Close Encounters

“That is precisely the great question: where does art stand? What is its place? I do not see what points the way for modern art, especially since it remains unclear what it sees as the innermost essence of art, or at least where it is looking for it.”

Or is it too late? Have we managed to welcome the new forms, genres, ideas and plots of art in the new and so very different times we live in? Will it ever happen? Is it even possible?

Heidegger lived at a time when television and the telephone were only just arriving, but he clearly sensed the trend: technology makes the world “smaller” in space and time. In the essay “The Thing” (1950) he wrote that “all distances in time and space are shrinking”—airplanes, radio and automobiles were removing the barriers. Then the internet erased geographical distance once and for all. But it turned out that “this frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance.”

Yes, art remains a form of survival. Even when algorithms write poetry indistinguishable from a human's. It's simply time for unexpected ideas.

7. Alone with the World's Destiny

“It is not a matter of simply waiting until, over the next 300 years, something occurs to man, but of thinking our way into the coming age, without prophetic pretensions, from the unthought fundamental features of the present era. Thinking is not inaction, but is in itself the action that stands in dialogue with the destiny of the world.”

I will never tire of repeating that this is why this site exists, just as I never tire of giving it a chance in its naive battle to start that conversation—about the world of technology and the path it is leading us down.

Heidegger approached the question of technology beyond its everyday understanding. What interested him, once again, was “the essence of technology”—that invisible something that makes modern inventions so all-pervasive.

For him, the essence of technology is not even something material. It is a way of revealing and disclosing the world. Technology does not simply serve man; it determines what we perceive as reality, and how.

8. Science and Technology

“Philosophy is dissolving into the individual sciences: psychology, logic, political science. And what will take the place of philosophy now? Cybernetics.”

Heidegger even adds that “modern science is an application of the essence of technology, not the other way around.”

From Heidegger we will come back to the everyday mundane drama of traffic cops, who will have to cope with the challenges of self-driving cars as well… —but they'll manage, I'm sure!—only to arrive at the most philosophical question of all.

What do we do now?

9. There's Water for Everyone

“The truth is that today man nowhere encounters himself, his own essence.”

Our lives change, and so does technology. The old windmills drew energy from the wind naturally—letting nature reveal itself in its useful aspect on its own. But as Heidegger says, modern technology challenges nature: it “demands” raw materials and energy from it and rearranges it according to human goals.

He gives the example of the Rhine. For the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, it is a “majestic, free-born river that flows with its own voice and spirit.” For modern man, however, it is just an object “placed at our disposal.” “The river now flows only as an object on call for inspection by the tourist industry.”

In this way the technological gaze reduces things to their usefulness—we see the world through the eyes of an engineer or an accountant, and less and less often through the eyes of a poet.

10. On the Way

“What is dangerous is not technology itself. There is nothing demonic about technology; but there is a mystery in its essence. The essence of technology as a mission to reveal what is concealed. The threat to man does not come from the potentially deadly effects of machines and technical devices. The real threat has already affected man in his essence.”

Modern man easily gets lost in his own technological abundance. In the 1950s Heidegger wrote that “the truth is that today man nowhere encounters himself, his own essence.”

The technological environment lures us outward—toward the endless stream of stimuli and tasks—until we forget to look inward at ourselves.

Does that sound familiar in the age of the smartphone? Instead of staying alone with our thoughts, we check our messages. Instead of asking ourselves who we are, we scroll. And in these reflections on the screen, we lose ourselves.

Does anyone today talk to ChatGPT about philosophy? About literature? About meaning?

As we said, today is a time for questions, not answers. And, I hope, for a little admiration for Heidegger and for the people capable of peering beneath the surface of the topical. Are there still such people today?

“He hates Western civilization,” wrote Musk. “A liar with a God complex,” snapped Under Secretary of War Emil Michael. “Leftwing nut jobs,” added Trump. All words from the past few weeks, aimed at today’s hero.

Who is this fearsome enemy? You would hardly guess that it is a level-headed, mild-looking physicist from San Francisco who simply announced that he will not allow his company to be used for building autonomous weapons or for mass surveillance.

If you met him, you would think—your typical tech expert. Shirt, glasses, nobody would accuse him of excessive charisma. As a child he loved physics and mathematics more than anything. He lost his father to a disease that, just four years later, was already being cured successfully. A man with the power to foresee the development of artificial intelligence… while building it. But also to warn of the enormous dangers the technology carries. An entrepreneur who built a $380 billion company from nothing and who says that one day he will give away almost all of his money.

Dario Amodei, the creator of the most advanced AI models, has finally landed where he deserves to be—in the spotlight. And not only because he stood up to the most powerful state on earth at the real risk of destroying his multibillion-dollar company. Not only because, in recent years, Anthropic’s models have pushed artificial intelligence to incredible heights. But also because he dared to peer into the future. The place we are all heading toward, where few dare to ask the truly important questions. Such as—how do we survive as a civilization in the age of super-advanced artificial intelligence?

The Billionaire Physicist

“I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species. Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.”

“The Adolescence of Technology.” That, according to today’s hero, is as far as we have come as a species. It is also the title of the essay with which Dario Amodei caught everyone’s attention in January, publishing it on his own website. In a few thousand words he managed to gather many of the questions that matter more today than all our topics of the day. The very questions that are the reason the site you are reading exists.

Then came the unexpected storm. The entire American state machine rose up in full force against a relatively young artificial intelligence company. A rather unexpected and unusual phenomenon in times when tech leaders are the ones who set both the public conversation and the great challenges of the day.

If it has not arrived yet, it is very close: the day when programmers will no longer write computer code. It was Anthropic’s Claude models that turned out to be the game changers, along with the unexpected and successful applications through which they are used. Claude gradually became an ever more competitive, and then a leading, technology compared with its “cousin” ChatGPT, more popular in the headlines. Until we reached the day when the company that makes it collided with the words we started with.

Enemy at the Gates

“Humanity needs to wake up, and this essay is an attempt—a possibly futile one, but it’s worth trying—to jolt people awake.”

* The quotes are from the essay “The Adolescence of Technology”, translated by Claude Opus 4.6

Of course, we do not know much about the negotiations between the American state and today’s hero, but the harsh labels speak volumes. For one thing, about what artificial intelligence means today. Not in the future and not as entertainment. If it is so much a part of the national security of the biggest state on earth; if it matters so much to the United States that one company’s refusal to sell its technology becomes such a huge story, then we are already where Amodei’s words are sending us.

What’s more, for all the strong words and epithets, nobody denied that the reason the state declared today’s hero an enemy was precisely his refusal on the two points we started with—his wish to explicitly forbid Anthropic’s models from being used for surveillance and killing.

OpenAI, for instance, accepted the Pentagon’s terms and signed a cooperation agreement. It is easy to assume they were hardly that picky about those particular terms. An online movement even appeared of people who stopped using its products because they are planting very serious mines in the path of freedom in the age of artificial intelligence, but… on that subject, Orwell has the most to say.

In a Programmer’s Skin

“This vacillation is unfortunate, as the technology itself doesn’t care about what is fashionable, and we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023. The lesson is that we need to discuss and address risks in a realistic, pragmatic manner: sober, fact-based, and well equipped to survive changing tides.”

Dario was born in 1983 in San Francisco. His family is straight out of a novel by Dimitar Talev, the great Bulgarian chronicler of family sagas. His father, Riccardo Amodei, was an immigrant from the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima who made a living from his small leather workshop. In America he met Elena Engel, who came from the Jewish diaspora and worked on designing libraries.

Dario spent his childhood in the Mission—a colorful, multicultural neighborhood in the heart of the big city. As he himself says, his parents passed on to him “a clear sense of right and wrong, an understanding of the things that really matter in life.”

From an early age he was captivated by mathematics, and later he met its more flirtatious sister—physics. And although he belongs to the generation that grew up alongside the rise of technology, it hardly struck him as interesting. “Writing some website seemed super unappealing to me,” he recalls. “I was interested in discovering fundamental scientific truth.”

This is what sets him apart most sharply from all the countless tech leaders whose Digital Stories we have peeked into—he is driven forward by science, so much so that in 2000 he made the national team for the International Physics Olympiad.

The Physics of Sorrow

“There is now ample evidence that AI systems are unpredictable and difficult to control—we’ve seen behaviors as varied as obsessions, sycophancy, laziness, deception, blackmail, scheming, and ‘cheating’ by hacking software environments. AI companies certainly want to train systems to follow human instructions, but the process is more an art than a science, more akin to ‘growing’ something than ‘building’ it.”

He set off down the well-trodden scientific path, studying physics at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford. And perhaps he would have carried on with deep scientific research, and none of us would have had the chance to meet Claude Code, had it not been for a personal tragedy.

Dario was 23 when his father died of a rare form of cancer. As the physicist would often recount afterward, four years later there was already a treatment for this type of tumor that gave a better than 99 percent chance. “There was someone who worked on the cure for this disease, who managed to cure it and save a great many lives,” Amodei says. “But it could have saved even more.”

The loss made the young scientist change the direction of his research. Slowly but surely he steered it toward artificial intelligence, because he saw in it a technological opportunity to heal people far faster and more effectively and to make life better.

His first step, however, was not computers but… getting to know the human brain. Dario decided to go on to graduate studies in biophysics at Princeton. He studied the electrophysiology of neural circuits, trying to understand how the brain works by examining the electrical impulses running through it.

Ungifted

“AI models are trained on vast amounts of literature that include many science-fiction stories involving AIs rebelling against humanity. This could inadvertently shape their expectations about their own behavior in a way that causes them to rebel against humanity. Or they might decide that it is justified to destroy humanity because humans eat animals or have driven certain species to extinction.”

Today the term “artificial intelligence” rolls through our feeds day and night, but only a few years ago scientists took great pains to avoid it. Tellingly, the huge progress in this direction came from researchers who know the natural kind of intelligence very well, and how our brain works—starting with the “Godfather” Geoffrey Hinton and ending with Dario Amodei.

Next came a postdoc connected with tumor research. And if that was an unexpected turn away from physics, the next one was even more abrupt, and more important for the story that has brought us together. Dario came across the books of the futurist Ray Kurzweil, who with his ideas about the exponential growth of technology won him over to the world of artificial intelligence.

A physicist with a background in medicine, Dario spontaneously sent his application to a job ad at the AI lab of the Chinese tech giant Baidu. And he got lucky. As his first boss at the new workplace put it, at first it seemed extremely strange why a physicist would even apply for a position in artificial intelligence development… until they saw the way Dario had written the computer code for his research.

At the Chinese company the physicist quickly found his feet in the new profession and formed his worldview about it. There he became one of the leading champions of the idea of scale—that in the world of artificial intelligence, much more data and greater computing power can lead to very serious breakthroughs, even without any further big conceptual leaps. A view often criticized by other great scientists in the AI world, but one that, for the moment, seems to keep paying off with every new generation of generative language models.

GP-T, You’re the Star

“We are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.”

From Baidu, Dario passed briefly through Google, until in 2016 he took the step that would place him at the center of one of the most important technological revolutions in human history—he joined OpenAI. Yes, although today it lives up to neither its name nor its idea, the “mother” company of ChatGPT was founded by people such as Elon Musk and Sam Altman with the official mission of developing artificial intelligence that would benefit all of humanity.

When Dario arrived, it was just picking up speed, and he quickly established himself as a key figure—rising to vice president of research, working shoulder to shoulder with the legendary Ilya Sutskever and taking the lead on projects that would shake the world.

The first of them was GPT-2. The model showed impressive text-generation abilities, but OpenAI decided not to release it in full for fear of misuse. GPT-3, however, came along to change everything (as, incidentally, we discussed on this site, long before ChatGPT appeared and the world realized that this had happened).

Although the breakthrough did not reach the general public in its full force, specialists were impressed by the model’s ability to program, summarize and translate. Even the reserved Amodei did not hide his enthusiasm: “There’s something extraordinary about it,” he told the New York Times. “It has some ability to recognize the pattern you’ve given it and to finish the story.”

Even Bird’s Milk

“A sufficiently powerful AI could probably be used to compromise any computer system in the world, and could also use the access obtained in this way to read and make sense of all the world’s electronic communications. It might be frighteningly plausible to simply generate a complete list of anyone who disagrees with the government on any number of issues, even if such disagreement isn’t explicit in anything they say or do.”

Somewhere around this point, though, along with the great enthusiasm came great doubts. If you don’t believe me—ask Dr. Frankenstein… or is the comparison not quite accurate? Only time will tell.

For the first time, Dario realized that artificial intelligence is a powerful weapon that is only at the dawn of its development. He could already predict where the technology was going—and how dangerous it could become if not handled properly. “Dario got into this technology and understood that it was going to work. And if you assume that it’s going to happen and that it’s going to get as smart as a human, you can’t help but start worrying about safety,” recalls his colleague Jack Clark.

OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft, announced in 2019, with a multibillion-dollar investment and exclusive commercialization rights, became a turning point. For our physicist and his colleagues, it was a sign that AI was now developing as a race rather than as a collective scientific effort.

He describes the decision to leave with his typical directness: “There’s a lot of misinformation about why we left. People say it was because we didn’t like the Microsoft deal. Wrong. If you have a vision for how something should be done and for the principles an organization should stand on, it is incredibly unproductive to try to change things from the inside. Better to go and build your own vision.”

The Tale of the Staircase

“People today worry a lot about the potential influence of TikTok as CCP propaganda directed at children. I worry about that too, but a personalized AI agent that gets to know you over years and uses its knowledge of you to shape all of your opinions would be dramatically more powerful than this.”

That is exactly what he did. Well, once again it is time to mention the irony of fate: OpenAI quickly turned into a fearsome dominator and a classic mastodon of the digital age. And Dario left it to create Anthropic—a company that is also far from any notion of public good, equal access and open technologies. Then again, as the recent news we started with shows, there are substantial differences in the kinds of compromises Dario and his colleagues are willing to make, compared with his former boss Sam Altman.

Then again, maybe it is not too late for Sam to follow his example, who knows? “If you can build a company that people want to work for, following practices people find reasonable, and you manage to hold your position in the ecosystem—others will start copying you,” Amodei believes. “When business leaders see that a competing company has chosen a winning strategy, it makes them change their behavior far more convincingly than if you were their boss arguing with them.”

At the very end of 2020, Dario Amodei, his sister Daniela and a group of researchers left OpenAI, which the company announced in a terse press release. “Dario has always shared our goal of responsible AI,” wrote Altman, and Dario himself was equally gracious: “I want to thank Sam and everyone. I’m really proud of the work we did together.”

Luncheon on the Grass

“The formulation I have come to is that we should use AI for national defense in all ways except those which would make us more like our autocratic adversaries.”

The first meeting of the future Anthropic team took place in a park in San Francisco. Fewer than twenty people, sitting in a circle on the grass. Who said revolutions have to be the work of large crowds?

Well, in a case like this it probably helps to have a billion dollars or so in investment, especially in a field like artificial intelligence… but that too was bound to happen, the enthusiasts in the park were sure. Full of faith, conviction and a sense of responsibility.

Among the first to put their trust in them was Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt. “When you make an early-stage investment, you have practically no data. You don’t know what the revenue is,” Schmidt says. “You don’t know the market. You don’t know what the product is. So the decision mostly comes down to the people. I knew Dario was a brilliant scientist, he promised to hire other brilliant scientists, and he did. He promised to run a very small company… but that promise he didn’t keep. For better or worse.”

Like OpenAI, Anthropic was set up as a “public benefit corporation.” I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like “vegan wolf,” yet officially it is considered a legal form that obliges the company to pursue not only profit but also a mission. In this case the mission is clear: to build reliable, interpretable and steerable AI systems. For the models to be guided by a set of principles, a kind of internal constitution that defines what is allowed.

The Italian Connection

“AI could displace half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next 1 to 5 years, even as it accelerates economic growth and scientific progress. AI isn’t a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans.”

One of the people closest to Dario on this journey is his own sister Daniela, who became president of Anthropic. Her background is radically different from his: a bachelor’s degree in English literature, politics and music from the University of California. She worked at nonprofit organizations, in the field of global health. Then she spent five years at the financial company Stripe, during the period when it grew from 40 to 1,200 people. She is the organizer, the business strategist, the person who understands both politics and ethics from a rather different angle. Dario is the technologist, the visionary, the scientist. Daniela is the diplomat, the manager, the pragmatist. And instead of an explosive clash between the two… somehow reason prevails.

Many things set him apart from his colleague Altman, but if they are alike in anything, it is their public image. Neither could be reproached for rhetorical mastery, charisma or conversational skill. As the quotes you are reading show, the written word is definitely his form, at the expense of public speaking. But that doesn’t bother Dario in the least; as he says in one of his rare podcast appearances: “I try not to show up and speak out all the time, and I’m proud that it works. If people think I’m boring and unsociable, that’s exactly what I want. I’ve seen many cases of colleagues who get so tied up with everyone else that seeking the crowd’s approval destroys them.”

But don’t think we are talking about a sociopath—quite the opposite. According to Dario, as a certain predecessor of his also believed, cadres decide everything. He says he spends most of his time precisely on choosing the right people and communicating with them.

A Rare Bird

“We risk a situation where, instead of affecting people with specific skills or in specific professions, AI is affecting people with certain intrinsic cognitive properties, namely lower intellectual ability—which is harder to change. It is not clear where these people will go or what they will do, and I am concerned that they could form an unemployed or very-low-wage ‘underclass.’”

“The most important thing I do every day has nothing to do with training models or shipping products,” he says. Twice a month Amodei stands before the whole company at a meeting called DVQ—Dario Vision Quest. I won’t explain the little joke in the name in detail; I’ll only mention that it has associations with psychedelic trips. But these trips are pragmatic. At the meetings he talks for at least an hour on all sorts of topics—from product strategy to geopolitics—holding a few pages of documents in his hand.

He also keeps an active Slack channel with his colleagues, where he writes long, analytical essays that have become a kind of chronicle of the company. This culture of thinking in writing and open internal debate is a rarity in the tech world, and it stems from Amodei’s conviction that trust is the most valuable resource he has.

The Essay and the Fuss

“I think it is not too far-fetched to imagine AI companies, semiconductor companies, and their downstream customers generating around $3 trillion in revenue per year, being valued at around $30 trillion, and leading to personal fortunes well into the trillions. In that world, the debates we have about tax policy today simply won’t apply—we will be in a fundamentally different situation.”

In October 2024, Dario published an essay on his personal website that set off a wave of debate. He called it “Machines of Loving Grace,” a quote from a poem by the master of gloom Richard Brautigan.

Poetry about the future, what do you say? Apollo ex Machina.

In musings the length of a novella, Amodei paints a picture of a world in which powerful artificial intelligence is used properly. What’s more, he offers a concrete vision of what “properly” means. “I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be,” he writes.

In the essay he goes through various fields in which AI could lead to very serious human breakthroughs—from medicine to democracy and human well-being.

The technology could speed up scientific research tenfold, make most infectious diseases preventable, stop cancer, extend our lives.

Perhaps the most provocative part is the one on geopolitics. Amodei advocates a strategy he calls an “entente”—a coalition of democratic nations that use AI to gain a decisive strategic and military advantage over their authoritarian adversaries, while sharing the benefits with all cooperating democracies.

The New Entente

“I am saddened that many wealthy individuals—especially in the tech industry—have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless. I can also make a pragmatic argument to the billionaires: it is in their interest to support a good version of tax policy. If they don’t support a good version, they will inevitably get a bad version designed by a mob.”

Is it strange, or only to be expected, that a little more than a century after the First World War, a great military conflict once again seems to hang in the air? So much so that one of the biggest tech leaders calls for treating AI as geopolitics and talks about an “entente”…

The “good guys” versus the “bad guys,” the authoritarians versus the democrats, almost like in Yuval Noah Harari.

A little naive, perhaps. But right or not, Dario is among the few who are genuinely trying to lead a meaningful conversation about the future. In recent years Anthropic has established itself as a huge force, as the place where change begins. At the start of this year, the same personal site published the second essay, excerpts from which you are reading here. Much more alarmist, much more balanced and, at least in my view, much more visionary.

The first speaks of dreams, the second—of dangers. Of the great change that is already here.

Once again Amodei divides his thoughts into five main risks. The first concerns the autonomy of AI systems—the danger that they develop goals or behavior incompatible with human ones.

1 to 5 Years

“Could powerful AI systems invent a new religion and convert millions of people to it? Could most people end up ‘addicted’ in some way to AI interactions? Could people end up being ‘puppeted’ by AI systems, where an AI essentially watches their every move and tells them exactly what to do and say at all times, leading to a ‘good’ life, but one that lacks freedom or any pride of accomplishment?”

The second category is misuse by individuals or small groups, with the possibility of creating biological weapons being especially worrying. The third is misuse by those in power—authoritarian governments carrying out unprecedented surveillance, deploying autonomous weapons and waging mass propaganda.

The fourth category is economic: Amodei warns that AI could displace half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. Wealth could become concentrated, social inequalities could explode.

The fifth category is the unknown. What we could not even guess, since we work with a familiar arsenal of scientific tools, worldviews and categories. Made for other, different times and customs.

Each of these dangers can be averted if humanity wakes up, Dario writes.

How could that happen in a polarized world dominated by social media?

He doesn’t give the answers, and I keep searching for them myself. Perhaps we can look forward to another essay. These are not written by artificial intelligence, but by Dario himself, on an old-fashioned, unpolished, rather ugly website. Interesting, isn’t it?

But it is almost always the questions that matter more.

The Deathly Hallows

“I can imagine, as Sagan did in Contact, that this same story plays out on thousands of worlds. A species gains sentience, learns to use tools, begins the exponential ascent of technology, faces the crises of industrialization and nuclear weapons, and if it survives those, confronts the hardest and final challenge when it learns how to shape sand into machines that think.”

The Pentagon story began in July 2025, when the American state signed a $200 million contract with Anthropic to develop AI for national security. Claude—Anthropic’s model—is the only one widely deployed on the classified networks of the Department of War.

But the problem arose in the negotiations over the terms, where Amodei insisted on the two “red lines.” No mass surveillance of American citizens, no fully autonomous weapons.

As Dario says, AI simply changes the rules, and that has to be in the minds of the people who develop it.

“The technology is advancing so fast that it is ahead of the law,” he says. “We don’t want to sell something we don’t think is reliable, we don’t want to sell something that could kill people.”

But then… is the Pentagon really the ideal potential partner?

The lines are thin; the rules really are different now.

The Gift of the Magi

“Whether we survive this test and go on to build the beautiful society described in ‘Machines of Loving Grace,’ or succumb to slavery and destruction, will depend on our character and our determination as a species, our spirit and our soul.”

As Dario admits, Anthropic’s position is paradoxical. “We occupy a peculiar position in the AI landscape: we believe that AI might be one of the most world-altering and potentially dangerous technologies in human history, yet we are developing this very technology ourselves.”

To many this is hypocrisy, but to Amodei it is logic. If powerful AI is going to be built—and he believes it will!—it is better for it to be in the hands of people who think and worry about the consequences.

Once upon a time that didn’t help Prometheus and Pandora. But now?

At the moment Anthropic is valued at $380 billion, has 2,500 employees and has raised more than $33 billion in investment.

The boy who loved physics now runs one of the companies shaping humanity’s future. And he says that “humanity needs to wake up.” Is it happening?

This digital story comes to remind us that, before and after artificial intelligence alike, freedom is at the tip of the spear. All that remains is to keep our fingers crossed that people like today’s hero don’t betray their principles. Alas, there will always be someone who will. That is why saving the drowning lies in the hands of the drowning themselves. At least for now.

Two people stare at each other in total concentration. Each has 45 seconds to identify the pictures that will appear in front of them and win the duel.

I have no doubt that last night you watched the first episode of The Floor, the new and innovative game show on NOVA, one of Bulgaria's main TV channels. If you didn't, it's not too late at all—there are still 12 whole episodes to come. It is a reason to celebrate in itself that a game about knowledge, not scandal, has made it to prime time, and I believe it will be the hit of the season. Rumor (and ChatGPT) has it that I'm in it too.

But we're here for a slightly different digital story, one closely tied to the game. It comes to show us that when we are together, we are capable of miracles. That if people brought together supposedly to compete and beat one another can reach out a hand for something bigger, then our society can do it too.

Do you like to provoke and test your knowledge? Are you looking for meaningful causes to help, knowing for sure that your help goes to the right place and supports something important and lasting?

If your answer is “yes” to even one of these questions, then this Digital Story is just for you!

Let me introduce Quizza! A website we built as volunteers. Where you can challenge yourself by taking any of our many permanent quizzes on all sorts of topics. Where you can face off in a weekly contest against some of the heroes you know from online and offline competitions! And, last but not least, where you can discover causes that each of us stands behind with our own name!

An Optimistic Theory of the Bulgarian Quiz

You have hardly ever seen 100 more varied souls at Sofia's Vasil Levski Airport than on one early morning before a flight to Amsterdam. People “of every age, sex and occupation,” united by the fact that they had dared to challenge themselves in a competition being made for Bulgarian television for the very first time.

What happened on The Floor you will see for yourselves (and I definitely advise you not to miss a single episode). So many colorful and different personalities, so many stories and so many causes. And although in the end there is supposedly only one winner, it turned out that we were all winners, because after the rather demanding and far from easy shoot we came back with new friends, new causes and new ideas.

Do you know what a quiz is? I know, I'm changing the subject abruptly, but The Floor has plenty of unexpected questions and sudden twists too.

The truth is… nobody knows. The origin of the word itself is shrouded in legend. According to a popular story from Dublin, a theater manager named Richard Daly bet that he could invent a meaningless word that within a matter of days would be the talk of the whole city. In 1791, the story goes, he scrawled the letters Q, U, I, Z on the walls, and soon everyone was talking about this strange word.

The story may be dubious, but you'll agree it's a charming one. The word “quiz” appears in print toward the end of the 18th century, but with a different meaning—an odd or eccentric person. Only in 1867 is it first found in the sense of a set of questions to test knowledge.

Strange People

We used to have a different word for the same thing: “viktorina.” A quiz is nothing more than a pleasant way to challenge and test your knowledge. A contest in which you try to solve puzzles—alone or as a team. They can be general knowledge or on a specific topic. Every duel you will see on The Floor is a quiz of sorts, and so is every other popular TV contest built around knowledge.

TV quizzes are a favorite pastime all over the world. It's enough to mention the Russian classic What? Where? When?, the American Jeopardy! or the homegrown Minuta e mnogo (A Minute Is a Lot). But in the online world quizzes come alive with full force on the web as well.

For many people, quizzes happen mainly… in pubs. I mentioned that “quiz” first turned up in old newspapers, so here is one more quote from a press review of ancient, prehistoric times.

“At first glance—a pub like any other. But if you look closely, you see sheets of paper and pens on the tables between the full beer mugs and the fries. And if you watch the people more carefully, you notice them staring thoughtfully at the sheets and puzzling over something that seems very important.”

The quote is from a Saturday feature in the daily 24 Chasa from 2009, headlined “A New Craze: Sport for the Brain in a Pub”. Perhaps you've guessed: I wrote it. In the years since—they have almost come of age by now—far more people have become convinced that pub quizzes are an extremely enjoyable pastime. Today almost every town has its local versions, and in the bigger cities you can choose where to join in with friends every day of the week.

Quiz Vadis?

The people who frequent such places have got used to calling themselves “quizzers,” though in my view we could try a little harder with our word-making.

What sets them apart from the “non-quizzers”? Erudition, perhaps, pretension, experience? I think the only difference is that the former have already discovered how pleasant it is not just to meet friends for a drink during the week, but also to try to get your brains moving together. That way even the beer tastes sweeter…

You may be wondering what all this has to do with the beginning of this story. Let's skip straight to the climax.

The Floor adventure in Amsterdam came to an end (although for viewers it is only just beginning!). And we decided that… we wanted to do something more! Many of the contestants love quizzes, and a good number of them talked about important, worthwhile, valuable causes they would support. So we wondered: isn't there a way to bring all of this together? Then, one word leading to another, we figured out how to make it happen.

Let me introduce Quizza! A website we built as volunteers. Where you can challenge yourself by taking any of our many permanent quizzes on all sorts of topics. Where you can face off in a weekly contest against some of the heroes you know from online and offline competitions! And, last but not least, where you can discover causes that each of us stands behind with our own name!

Bits and Soul

In some contests (in most of them, I'd even say) winning is not what matters most. I confess I wouldn't have guessed that 100 Bulgarians, most of whom had never met, sent off to compete against one another for a prize, could set an example of… community?

Could this be a direction, an idea, a hope that we can bring to life on a larger scale?

The idea for the site came about quite spontaneously. There aren't many places in the Bulgarian online space where you can put your knowledge to the test. At the same time, many people in our community create quizzes, and quite a few of us have an important cause we would like to support.

Can a good idea and a meaningful cause unite people, inspire them?

It turned out they can.

In a time when social networks have torn apart the dialogue between generations and points of view. In a time when authorities are as scarce as public conversation. In a time when artificial intelligence calls fundamental human notions into question…

Could it be that knowledge is what can bring us together?

A Quiz for a Cause

More than half of the contestants from the first season of The Floor are already part of the venture!

The programmers among us took on the site itself, and our designer is responsible for its wonderful look. The copywriters pitched in with texts, and the quiz authors with a huge number of quizzes varied in difficulty, topic, logic, even format, a challenge for anyone! We have quizzes for the most seasoned masters, quizzes for beginners, even quizzes for kids. We have sports and science quizzes, picture quizzes and text quizzes. A quiz for every taste and for everyone with taste!

On top of that, everyone had the right to propose a cause they stand behind with their own name.

Waiting for you already are 69 quizzes with 1,777 questions, contests twice a week and no fewer than 37 causes you can support if you so choose. Behind the venture are 88 of the 100 people from the Floor!

You can see who we are and what our causes are here.

I'm not starting with thanks by name, because here the strength truly lies in the team. In the example, in the meaning.

In the message that when an idea can unite us, we are capable of miracles. Of creating something useful for others. With no thought of profit, fame or personal success.

Is there anything more important?

Now it's your turn.

Come and try our quizzes!

(For fans of The Floor there is a special challenge with 100 questions—one for each of the topics on the “floor.” Score 60 points and you win a certificate!)

Join our contests.

Explore our causes.

Conquer the game!

I'm sure the best is yet to come…

Two people stare stubbornly at rows of neatly arranged, round, flat stones. Just a game, you might say, but it is not that simple—not at all. Because this is not only one of the oldest games we know, but also the most complex. For a long time we considered it humanity’s last bastion, the one place where technology could never overtake us. And when that happened… a remarkable new digital story was born.

It comes to remind us that technology is here both to challenge us and to threaten us. But also to show us new horizons for creating, for making things, for evolving as a species.

Gone

Do you know what outnumbers the atoms in the universe? You might think of the unkept promises of Bulgarian politicians, and Einstein supposedly said that only human stupidity is greater. But there is one more undisputed winner in this race. It has to do with the game we are talking about today, whose name sounds so plain. Mystical and still not popular enough in Bulgaria (that is about to change), go is a whole universe.

You would hardly guess it from the not-so-large board. Nineteen by nineteen possible positions in the classic version, about 2.5 times more than in chess. Yet all of this makes possible some 2.08×10¹⁷⁰ arrangements!

Care to try counting exactly how much that is? It will take a while: we are talking about a number drastically larger than the number of atoms believed to make up the universe—those are on the order of 10⁸⁰.

Not everything simple is brilliant, but everything brilliant is simple. So it is with go. You just place your stones—black or white, much like in chess—on the intersections. The goal is nothing more and nothing less than to surround your opponent’s.

Goliath’s Pebble

As simple as a handful of beans, right? Not quite. The stones are far more regular than beans and… a far greater challenge, not only for people but for technology too. If you don’t believe me, ask your favorite AI model to draw a realistic or animated scene from a game of go. It seems so simple, and yet… the lines won’t be symmetrical, the stones will come in different sizes, and it won’t look anything like the real game.

So what about the competition itself? All of us (older folks) remember the momentous day of May 11, 1997, when the computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and machines officially proved stronger than us at this ancient and globally popular game. But it would take another full 18 years and 10 months before technology could achieve the same in go.

And… so what? Did we stop playing chess after the best human in the sport lost? Not at all.

Did we stop playing go? Not only did we not, the game has reached new, unprecedented heights and is more popular than ever.

Goal After Goal

Will we stop writing once AI starts writing better than the most widely read authors? Will we stop thinking, creating, making sense of things, if algorithms overtake us?

Games are a fascinating lens through which to make sense of the changes technology brings. I have written about Tetris—the game that came from the long-gone USSR to show us that humans are always capable of reaching the next heights. Of setting new records, finding new angles. New forms, arts, paradigms.

For a long time after the chess showdown, go was pointed to as the game in which computers were doomed. The main reason was precisely its enormous variety—the potential moves and positions on the board are so numerous that they simply cannot be tamed by dry calculation, the way it had been done earlier with chess. So machines had to “change strategy”—not just compute possible outcomes, but grasp the logic, look for patterns, enter into the secrets of the game.

Going Deeper

But how can a game with single-colored stones of equal strength and a board woven into a grid be so complex?

If we look beneath the surface, it is much more. It is strategy, and a logic developed over years and generations of players. Anyone can start quickly, but becoming truly good takes years of dedication and serious practice. Just as in chess, the odds that someone who has barely learned the rules will beat the world champion are slim.

Besides the greater number of possible combinations, we are also talking about an immense history. Go is provably 2,500 years old, though some researchers trace it as far back as four millennia. Chinese patience is not to be underestimated, and it was in China that the game truly flourished. They call it weiqi, and they revere it so much that they placed it among the four essential arts of the educated aristocrat, alongside playing the zither, calligraphy and painting.

Going Back

As early as 196 BC, two military leaders—a prince and his general—recorded a game of go under exactly the same rules used today. According to Chinese legend, the game was invented at the dawn of that civilization by the semi-mythical Emperor Yao (c. 2100 BC) and his advisers, to develop the mind and concentration of his somewhat scatterbrained son.

Concentration… the very thing we lose so easily today in the online battle for our attention. Could go be our recipe for getting it back?

Generations refined and enriched the approaches (without touching the rules), until in the 20th century the game reached the Western world and became a popular pastime far beyond the Middle Kingdom. It had arrived in Japan more than a thousand years earlier, as igo.

Today more than 50 million people around the world are thought to play go, with over 20 million active players. Most of them are from China, Japan and South Korea, which explains the numbers, but the continents are gradually expanding (with or without AI).

We are heading toward technology… from afar. The Japanese engineer Masahiro Hara invented the QR code in 1994 while playing go during his lunch break. The board inspired him with the idea of a two-dimensional pixelated code, the kind that now surrounds us everywhere.

Going to War

And here we are, exactly a decade ago. March 9, 2016, the decisive battle. The undisputed world go champion Lee Sedol steps into the final fight that could decide everything. Facing him is AlphaGo—a super-program built specifically for this contest, as its name suggests. It was created by the team at DeepMind, Google’s division devoted to developing artificial intelligence.

Exactly five battles will be played. The man doesn’t know it yet, but he is already doomed to lose this race against the machine too, and by the telling score of 1:4.

The most interesting part happens in the second game. Move 37, everything is going as expected, the two players are outfoxing each other with familiar ideas and strategies… when suddenly AlphaGo plays a completely unexpected, seemingly insane move. The commentators, among them players with enormous experience, immediately note that the machine has made a mistake and handed its opponent a huge opportunity.

Gone with the Wind

Lee Sedol, however, doesn’t think so, and withdraws for nearly a quarter of an hour to find an answer.

DeepMind would later note that, by their estimates, this was a move a human in the same situation would have had a 1 in 10,000 chance of choosing.

Lee fails to recover; the move turns out to be extremely effective. The world champion would later describe how he felt—for the first time he realized that he was facing not a person but something that could think in an entirely different way. And he would not recover as the battle slipped away.

One small nuance that is often overlooked. In the fourth game—the only one Lee won—he too made a legendary, unconventional move that brought him victory. I’ll leave the lessons to you.

Gold Rush

Move 37, though, has become a kind of emblem of the AI revolution of recent years, helped in no small part by the fact that it is a central theme in several of Yuval Noah Harari’s books.

For him, Move 37 is not a sporting detail but a symbol of the big questions of our time. It is one of the reasons the historian-philosopher speaks of AI not only as artificial intelligence but as “alien intelligence,” something foreign to the human psyche and intuition.

Go is the perfect example: a game with a millennia-old culture, schools, philosophies, rules of good taste. In Harari’s metaphor, humans had been circling certain “islands” in the landscape of the game and mistaking them for the whole world. Then along comes AlphaGo and in no time discovers “new continents”—strategies that tens of millions of players had never grasped. Move 37 shows AI’s freedom from the limitations of human minds, which out of habit never “set foot” in certain zones of the possible.

Godzilla

Alongside the enthusiasm, however, comes danger. Move 37 also shows us how impenetrable these systems are. Even after the triumph, the winning team was unable to explain clearly why AlphaGo chose that particular move.

So AI is at once radically innovative (discovering “continents” humans cannot see) and radically opaque (making key decisions without any causality humans can understand). Something, by the way, that we can easily confirm today simply by watching the progress of the field.

According to Harari, today we marvel that AI has discovered a “new continent” in go; tomorrow we will repeat it in finance, art, cybersecurity. But what will we do when systems make decisions in ways we cannot meaningfully verify? While we overlook the dangers…

But who’s talking about dangers? We’re here to play! Because, as Harari also says, Move 37 may be, but does not have to be, the end of human creativity. Whether it will be is up to us.

In the case of go, the association is more than optimistic. After the defeat, people not only didn’t stop loving the game—quite the opposite, it is more popular than ever! Clubs are springing up, online forums too, and more and more professional players are climbing the strict hierarchy of this ancient contest.

Good Will Hunting

What’s more, experts say that human players have broken out of old patterns of thinking in many strategies. After millennia of contemplating the game, huge innovations are emerging!

Which brings us to the cherry on top—AlphaGo thanked its creator for the good publicity by securing him… a Nobel Prize. Demis Hassabis received the prize in chemistry for predicting the structure of proteins. The computer program he used to achieve it is based largely on the work behind AlphaGo. What’s more, it is the first Nobel in the modern history of AI.

Go is an abstract and highly intuitive game that cannot be measured mathematically. Before artificial intelligence entered the fray, when a master made a strong and unexpected move, it was said to be “inspired by the gods.” And true masters can rarely explain such a decision logically; they tend to say they simply felt it.

As a result of the machine’s arrival, opening moves that no one would previously have dreamed of using have become popular. Gradually, even in games between top players, analyses reveal a huge number of ideas that came from artificial intelligence. And it could hardly be otherwise—as with chess, today even the best have in algorithms the sparring partner of their dreams, one to learn from. And one that, almost by default now, is stronger than them. But so what?

An interesting paradox: on the one hand, AI expands knowledge by discovering moves humans had never seen; on the other, it can lead to uniformity when everyone learns from the same “master.”

Good Company

The history of go is full of curious touches, and yet, for all of them, it remains simply… a game. One worth trying yourself, and now you can do so in Bulgaria too! After a long hiatus, at the end of March, exactly 10 years after the famous battle between man and computer, a Bulgarian go championship will be held!

The co-organizers are the Confucius Institute and the Bulgarian Go Association, and the tournament is officially recognized by the European federation. The championship will take place on March 21 and 22 in the Confucius Institute building in Sofia, at 79 Todor Aleksandrov Blvd. The format is open, and players from all over Europe are invited.

But even if it’s too early for you to compete, it’s never too late to try. You can do so with Atari Safari—a group of enthusiasts who in recent years have put serious effort into popularizing the game with weekly meetups. You can find them in Sofia every Tuesday from 6:30 p.m. at “The Grumpy Dwarf,” 3 Pozitano St. Good luck!

You’ll find more information here.

In this life you shouldn't, and can't, only take. If you don't give—in return or entirely for free—you have lived in vain, as the popular hit song goes. Even if we know it, it is worth reminding ourselves often. I hope this Digital Story reaches more people. I believe that if more Bulgarians recognize its lessons, we are all capable of reclaiming the conversation and helping our country flourish. Of fulfilling the great dream of the protagonist and narrator here—that our children will WANT to stay in Bulgaria.

Tenko Nikolov is not only one of Bulgaria's most successful tech entrepreneurs. Starting from scratch, he, SiteGround's founder Ivo Tsenov and their team built a global business—one of the leading technology companies in the world.

He is a visionary who believes in the power of a close-knit team, shared values and “a little healthy madness.” He turns the office into a favorite place for the people who work there, mistakes into lessons, and success into an opportunity to give back to the community. For him, profit stopped being an end in itself long ago; it is a means to do something meaningful—from supporting education and science to investing in “moonshots” that could change the world. Today we have the chance to hear him tell his story of luck, the courage to take risks and the power of setting an example.

Play the video

This piece is based on the conversation I had with Tenko Nikolov at the DEV.BG Leadership Agora event in November 2025 at Sofia Tech Park. You can watch and listen to the conversation here.

Never Grow Up

Pippi Longstocking, you may remember, never wanted to. What will you be when you grow up? To me, this question and children's answers to it say a great deal. So does the way they change from generation to generation.

As a child, Tenko has no clear idea of “what he wants to be” until one day his grandfather gives him his first computer—the legendary Pravetz 8M, the Bulgarian-made home computer of the 1980s. It is a momentous meeting. “The moment I saw the computer, I already knew I wanted to be a programmer,” he recalls.

Computers are a rarity in those years, but Tenko is lucky enough to get a second one—a reward from his parents after he is admitted to the Language High School in Stara Zagora in 1991.

From then on, his interest turns more and more toward technology. And although life leads him down a different path and he never does become a programmer, computers shape his destiny.

The Wheel of Fortune

Ask Bill Gates, if you like, about all the stereotypes surrounding great tech success. The moment we start talking about wealth, we quickly arrive at the image of a straight road paved with luck.

But that is exactly why stories remain the last bastion where artificial intelligence lags far behind. Their strength lies in the seasoning, in the things beyond the words themselves.

SiteGround's story begins modestly and unexpectedly—in a student dorm at the American University in Bulgaria in Blagoevgrad, where a group of friends decide to try their luck in the hosting business. Tenko Nikolov isn't even among them, but he joins very soon—when the team numbers just four people, by then working out of a small apartment in Borovo, a neighborhood in the capital, Sofia.

At that point the venture looks close to hopeless. There is no money; the team scrapes by from month to month. “Everyone did everything. I worked around the clock, my partner Ivo did too, everyone around us worked around the clock.”

Tenko's office is in the kitchen, where his colleague Dima makes pancakes in the mornings.

Never Give In—Never, Never, Never, Never

One Friday the team gathers and his partner Ivo Tsenov says, exhausted: “Well, we tried, it isn't working. It's not going to happen…”

The business simply isn't taking off. It's time to close the company. But since it's Friday, they decide to wait until Monday.

Meanwhile… a small miracle happens. The team is still together, “drowning the failure,” when a message arrives: the first sale has been made. After months of hard but fruitless work, things are finally happening, and someone somewhere has paid for their service! Saturday morning brings… a second sale.

And so on Monday the office is euphoric, and the end is postponed. Yes, we know fate has a sense of humor: a little later a message arrives that the money has been charged back—it turns out the first two “purchases” were made by a fraudster with a stolen credit card.

The joy turns out to be premature. “But that's why we still exist today—because of a failed thief and a wink from fate at just the right moment,” Tenko smiles. The third sale soon follows, and the wheel slowly but irreversibly begins to turn, before rolling at an ever more dizzying speed.

The Wheel of Time

Is success a matter of luck? To some extent, yes, Tenko Nikolov believes, but with an important caveat: “Luck is always part of it. But you have to provoke it. It doesn't work with luck alone, and it doesn't work without it.” A lucky break on its own isn't enough if you don't have the right team beside you and you don't take risks. “Without the right people, nothing works. And of course the right moment matters too.”

How does a fledgling business choose the right people? From day one, Tenko says, they looked for colleagues who thought alike, with the same ideals and value system. Today that sounds like a cliché from an HR post, but at the turn of the century, when this story begins, even clichés weren't what they are now.

At the time Bulgaria has many well-trained engineers and system administrators—many of them self-taught talents capable of working wonders. And that, according to Tenko, is a paradox, because back then the education system isn't capable of training them, and the big companies haven't arrived in the country yet. Still, the talent is there, and SiteGround quickly figures out how to attract it. With an idea and a team, not just with promises of a high salary.

“The hosting business has never been the sexiest venture in the world,” Tenko smiles. So the strategy isn't to lure people with grand promises, but with a different approach. “We tried to attract people by doing things differently, by making them interesting,” he explains.

“Never Mind, I'm at Work”

I'll confess: one of the saddest sights for me is people who don't love their work. Time is our most precious resource, and I can't imagine what it's like to give such a large part of it to something you don't like.

Today's protagonist thinks the same way. “It's very common for people to hate their jobs, and when they get together with friends, the venting is aimed either at their other half or at their work,” Tenko says. “We can't do much about the other half, but we decided to try to change the direction at least when it comes to our employees' work.” At SiteGround, the philosophy that work can be a pleasure arises naturally, not out of a textbook. Today many companies talk about “shared values” and “team culture”—but all too often these remain mere good intentions.

The company grows fast. The first apartment-office in Borovo becomes too cramped once the team passes 10 people. They move to another, bigger apartment. And there, every time they have a problem to solve, Tenko and Ivo go outside and launch into a heated debate. They argue for hours about what to do, and many of their unconventional moves are born on the street. One of them is expanding beyond Sofia—a rather exotic decision for an IT company in those years.

After Plovdiv comes Stara Zagora, Tenko's hometown. Meanwhile, the Sofia team keeps growing, and by 2011 it's time for SiteGround's next step. The age of apartments is over; they need an office in the traditional sense of the word. Here comes one of those fateful street arguments between the partners. They tour buildings around Sofia and come across something that both attracts and frightens them—an entire floor of 3,500 square meters in a modern office building. “It's big,” says Ivo. “It really is big,” Tenko agrees. But an idea is nagging at both of them: “I think we should take it.”

A Big Heart

At first the sight is surreal. Twenty-five people occupy a space that could hold hundreds. “Thirty percent of the office was used as working space,” Tenko recalls, “the rest we turned into… fun.” The two partners decide to invest part of the profit in things that will make their people happy. Game rooms, foosball tables, pool tables, even an indoor tennis court.

Tenko tells a funny story from that time. Coca-Cola Hellenic also has its office in the same building—a corporate giant occupying six floors. One day he runs into its director for Bulgaria in the elevator. “He's in a suit from head to toe, with a tie. He greets me and says frankly: ‘You should know I really envy you. You have the most beautiful office, the happiest employees. And on top of that, you come to work in flip-flops!’”

“People don't need all that much to be happy. Someone just has to think about it,” Tenko says, returning to the story. “We realized early on that it was very important for us to spend some of the money on making our people happy.” He doesn't hide his satisfaction that their example has gradually become the norm.

Give and Take

And here we come to what, for me, matters most in this story. Already in SiteGround's first years, Tenko and his partners begin asking themselves: “What can we do that is positive not only for us, but also for the ecosystem in Bulgaria, for the developer community in general?”

They realize they use an enormous amount of open-source software. It quickly occurs to them that they can build on these projects and give them back to the community. To be not just users but also creators of free software.

Ten years later the results are impressive: 160 contributions to the Linux kernel, millions of lines of code used by programmers around the world. “Today a pretty solid percentage of the internet runs our code,” Tenko notes proudly.

Doesn't this defy the logic of competition and the market? Doesn't it hand an advantage to competitors, who can use the code ready-made?

“Strong competition produces a good product for the end customer,” Tenko says. “We've been weakest as a company when we didn't have strong competition. So if your competitors get stronger—thanks to your code or anything else—you'll get stronger too.” And he adds: “You can't only take. If you do, at some point the apples on the tree run out. If you don't plant a new one, there won't be any left, not only for your children but for you yourself.”

A vivid metaphor, wouldn't you say?

Coding It Forward

This effort to “plant” in the soil of the community proves extremely valuable. At first it's hard—it takes discipline and a different way of working, but the effort pays off. And as the results become visible, the team's confidence grows too. They see that a (then) small Bulgarian company can contribute to the global software ecosystem.

Then comes time for the next step. Tenko and his colleagues start asking: “What else useful can we do?” They want to build on the idea of giving. And so the company's first internal initiative is born: before a Christmas party, Dima (the same colleague with the pancakes) suggests that everyone together support a meaningful cause. She has prepared a list of three ideas for the team to choose from—the company will give employees a chance to donate, and it will double the amount raised.

The result exceeds all expectations—they raise an unexpectedly large sum. They announce the three chosen causes, explain why they matter to society and set out the donation box. “We expected people to give 2–3 leva (about $1–1.70),” Tenko recalls, “and everyone was putting in 50, 100. We raised an impressive amount.

That's how we understood that the problem isn't that Bulgarians don't want to give, but that it's hard for them to do so. Dima had put in a huge amount of work, she had researched dozens of proposals and picked 3 of them. She had checked carefully and assessed exactly where a donation was not just needed but would have a lasting effect. Most people would find it hard to do that work on their own if they decided to give 5 or 50 leva to a good cause. Especially the element of sustainability,” Tenko stresses, “not just giving some money, but wanting something to happen in return for it. That's broadly missing here—people either don't trust, or don't know where to donate, or can't be bothered to check. And that leads to apathy and the nihilistic belief that nothing depends on us and that every cause is suspect.”

The Wrong Way Round

And so we arrive at today, when Tenko has even handed the day-to-day management of SiteGround over to his trusted team. Instead, he is active in running the Za Primer (“Set an Example”) Foundation, which has the important and ambitious goal of supporting causes that make Bulgaria a better place to live in a lasting way. Quite an impressive transformation, wouldn't you say? Among the foundation's main areas of work are education, sport and health.

And since we've touched on sustainability, it's no surprise that education gets particular emphasis. You may remember the Digital Stories series on children and technology—one of the few opinions that unite parents is that today's education system is out of step with the times we live in and needs serious change.

So why doesn't anything much change?

Tenko Nikolov has a firsthand answer: despite hundreds of proposals for changing the education system, very few have actually been implemented. And real change remains as far off as ever. The reason, in his view, isn't a lack of will or expertise, but that everything always runs into the same wall—the institutions.

“The bureaucratic machine is so ossified that a handful of people can stop any initiative,” he adds, and gives a telling example. Unhappy with the food his children get at school, he digs into the subject. It turns out that pupils' food is prepared according to the so-called School Meals Recipe Book, which hasn't been updated… since 1968!

Tenko's team notices that the solution isn't complicated: they propose hiring top chefs to update the recipe book. The condition is that the food mustn't get more expensive—a healthier menu has to be achieved within schools' existing budgets. “An apple instead of a sausage roll.”

The first problem is surprising and, once again, has to do with apples—this time not metaphorically at all. It turns out there aren't enough Bulgarian apples in the country to supply all the schools. The bigger problem, though, is once again the will for lasting change at the national level.

An Insight into INSAIT

Here, however, comes a particularly important and telling example that big change is possible, even in education. I mean the most successful and promising venture in this field in Bulgaria, which would not have been possible in its current form if Tenko Nikolov in particular hadn't put his trust in it.

Sometimes solutions come from unexpected places—through remarkable people with vision and courage. Like Prof. Martin Vechev, well known to readers of Digital Stories.

One of the most important components in building a complex structure like INSAIT is attracting the best artificial intelligence scientists in the world here, to Bulgaria. Beyond state funding, this requires additional money for part of these people's salaries, especially the first ones to start at INSAIT, since they set the level for everyone who follows.

Tenko remembers how, halfway through his meeting with Prof. Martin Vechev, he interrupted the professor and said: “Even if you do a third of what you're telling me, it will change our country a great deal. Tell me, how can we help?”

SiteGround's founders were among the first to put their trust in this ambitious undertaking, and to date they are INSAIT's largest donors, with more than €6 million. This money has been key to bringing some of the world's most renowned artificial intelligence scientists to Sofia in person (such as Prof. Luc Van Gool). Although today INSAIT is supported by the entire Bulgarian ecosystem and by companies such as Google, Amazon, Toyota and many others, SiteGround's initial and continuing support has been fundamental to INSAIT's success.

“You have to be a little crazy and believe that even the impossible is possible. Clearly, without a little madness, it just won't work for us,” Tenko sums up.

Setting an Example, for Example

Can this story be repeated in other fields? Tenko believes it can. “There are Bulgarian professors at top universities. People need to have the desire to do something here. Where there's a will, there's a way.”

It's no accident that his foundation is called Set an Example. Good is “contagious”—all it takes is to show that something can be done, and it will give wings to everyone who follows.

What does someone like Tenko Nikolov dream of today? As it turns out, the same thing I do. “I dream that my children will want to stay in Bulgaria. Right now it's a strange period, and a lot has to change for that to happen.”

But I believe that when people like him set themselves dreams and goals like that, it can't help but happen. It's time for a little more optimism, for reclaiming the public conversation, for shared goals.

And besides, it's true—a person is as big as their dreams. Especially if they have the courage to follow them…

We all know we shouldn’t click on suspicious links, because it could cost us dearly…

But do we really know it? Time to check, with the latest Digital Stories experiment—and this time with impressive partners. The result is definitely worth a scare. Worth making us think. Worth giving us that healthy dose of doubt that can, quite literally, save us.

A Hunter and a Fisher…

How could anyone resist? An email lands in your inbox from a big chain of gas stations, offering a special discount. You click, you save a fair bit on your next fill-up… And if this weren’t an experiment but a real cyberattack, it could all end with a hacker gaining access to your personal data—and why not your bank account too.

Phishing—spelled differently in English, but derived from “fishing.” That is the name of one of the most popular cyberattacks of recent years, one that relies not on technological loopholes but on what may be the weakest link in the chain of information: common sense.

Hackers sometimes craft virtuoso emails, almost impossible to tell apart from the real thing, and use them to get the victim to click a malicious link. And then to regret it—phishing costs billions of dollars. Last year, it is estimated, nearly 900 million such attacks were attempted worldwide, and over 90 percent of organizations were targeted.

But maybe the problem doesn’t exist here in Bulgaria? Perhaps the Bulgarian online user will turn out to be well prepared enough to spot fake emails without fail, and would never, for anything in the world, fall for something like this?

Evening Roll Call

“Trust, but verify,” Mr. Reagan used to say, and as you know, verifying is what I love most here on Digital Stories. Checking how far both people and algorithms have come.

This time I’m not alone: we are running the experiment together with a leading Bulgarian cybersecurity company, for which checks like this are a profession. Very often, part of their job is to test the employees of companies and institutions—to see whether they are prone to fall for a fake email—so that training can then help them avoid the real attack.

Tellingly, the person running the experiment has no experience as a programmer, and yet will create a page made to look like that of a popular gas station chain. The attempt is especially revealing because it shows how much easier today’s technology makes it to mount such a cyberattack, with no particular preparation.

You’ve Got Mail

Who are we going to test? The goal isn’t, say, the employees of a particular institution, or a specific sample, demographic or otherwise. We decide to go with a list of randomly chosen emails that have surfaced online. We limit ourselves to people in Bulgaria with public addresses, with no restrictions on age or gender.

So the question is simple but vital: how easily would people hand over sensitive information, lured by an attractive but fake offer?

No sooner said than done. With basic software, we build a fake web page that quite successfully mimics the look of the official website of a popular gas station chain.

A curious detail: with today’s technology, this can be done without writing a single line of computer code. (And yes, in this case not even artificial intelligence was used!)

“The messages were worded to create a sense of a lucrative and urgent opportunity, prompting users to click a link that took them to our pre-prepared phishing page. There they were asked to enter their details in order to get their ‘discount,’” says the specialist who ran the experiment.

Of course, in the spirit of real phishing attacks, the email was sent from a domain that very closely resembles the genuine one.

In Their Image and Likeness

The results… frankly, they impressed us. We used emails we weren’t even sure were still active, and yet an astonishingly high percentage of people took the bait!

Our email reached 393 users. A full 69 of them (or 17.5 percent) followed the link. Clearly, the content of the email was convincing enough, and the users careless enough.

And now for the cherry on top. As many as 19 people (or 4.8 percent) uncritically entered their personal data into the fake form!

Does that seem like a small number? Think again.

Imagine you are a real hacker: you send a phishing email to thousands of users, and almost 5 percent of them are fooled to the point of entering sensitive data. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the scale of the damage and the consequences… Especially if these are people using their work email. Having someone’s personal bank account drained is a nightmare and a real life drama, but the problems would become even bigger if this were how the security of an institution or a large company got compromised.

Bad Boys

19 stolen accounts.

If it hadn’t been me and my cybersecurity colleagues but real hackers, we would most likely be quite a bit richer by now…

Our goal, though, is even more important. For more of us to realize how fragile security online is. Over 27 percent of the people who landed on the site entered their personal data. That’s how effective a well-made phishing site can be.

And the other statistic points in the exact opposite direction. Emails reported: 0

You know you can always flag an email that is obviously trying to trick you. Not one of the owners of those 393 virtual mailboxes did.

I think it’s time for all of us to get a little scared…

“The data show a worrying reality: Bulgarian users are highly susceptible to phishing attacks, and the combination of a tempting offer and a convincing execution gives attackers a high success rate,” the cybersecurity specialist adds.

Click to Hell

So: are 69 people who clicked the link and 19 who entered sensitive data a lot or a little?

In the world of cybersecurity, even a single successful breach is too many.

The experiment clearly showed that there is a large, vulnerable group of people who can be misled by a well-crafted scenario.

What’s more, some users made repeated attempts to enter their data on our fake platform. This shows how convincing the scenario can be—people were so sure of the offer that they kept insisting on getting in, handing over their sensitive information again and again.

Abandon All Hope

Each of these 19 cases represents a huge risk. “Compromised passwords and usernames are often reused to access other services,” says the specialist. “Personal email, social media profiles, sometimes even online banking. That way a single incident can put the victim’s entire digital identity, financial stability and personal reputation at risk.

“This social engineering simulation unambiguously underlines the need for a constant, targeted improvement in cyber hygiene. It has to become second nature to us. It’s important for all of us to build a culture of vigilance that helps us stand up effectively to ever-evolving online threats.”

Truly, it is more important than ever to be vigilant. Here’s how.

Warning!

Before we part, here are the key elements of the “attack” that made it successful. These are exactly the things to watch out for if you want to avoid real trouble.

Until then, watch out for:

1. The Look-Alike Domain

A key step was buying an internet domain resembling that of the real company. The technique is called “typosquatting”—you register a name containing a deliberate misspelling or a visual resemblance to the original (for example, “oilc0mpany.com” instead of “oilcompany.bg”). That way, even if users glance at their browser’s address bar, there’s a good chance they won’t notice the tiny difference and will accept the site as legitimate.

2. The Fake Promotional Page

The next step was to recreate a page that looked like part of the gas station chain’s official website. We copied the logo, the colors, the fonts and the overall design to build a sense of authenticity. We added a form for users to enter their information. Since the campaign wasn’t aimed at collecting sensitive data (and yes, we’ve deleted the rest too!), we limited ourselves to four fields: first name, last name, phone number and address.

3. The Tempting Email

The phishing message itself was the heart of the operation. We sent the emails from a mail server set up specifically for the purpose, to improve the chances of getting past spam filters. We altered the sender so that it matched the gas station chain’s real domain. The content was short, clear and extremely tempting:

Offer:

“Take advantage of an extra 20 STOTINKI” (stotinki being the hundredths of a Bulgarian lev)

Call to action:

A clearly visible button and a link reading “ACTIVATE THE DISCOUNT.”

Creating a sense of urgency:

To make recipients act on impulse, we added an element of urgency—phrases like “Don’t miss this opportunity!” This psychological trick is extremely effective, because it cuts down the time for critical thinking.

The internet keeps connecting us, and the internet keeps dividing us. But how many parts of our lives have we handed over to technology? We rarely stop to think about it. And the Christmas holidays are the perfect moment to do just that. If you've grown a little weary of festive emotions and laden tables, I've prepared a special Digital Story for you.

Today's heroine found love on the internet. That unexpected spark online took her to England, where she built a happy family. Until, at some point, she and her husband decided they wanted to escape… from a society in which everything happens online and human contact is a relic of the past.

Individual stories make up our shared history, and Daniela Radkova's tale ends in a place that is very special to that shared history. And with causes that are beautifully symbolic, especially for the holidays.

Farewell

How many women do you know who can parachute? Until recently, I didn't know any either. Daniela grew up in the Rhodopes, the mountains of southern Bulgaria, and her path led her to… a military unit in Plovdiv, where she trained as a paratrooper. She says the scariest jump isn't the first one but the second—when you already know what's coming.

The scariest leap into the unknown, however, came later, long after she had left the unit. After a painful breakup with her ex-boyfriend, she was killing time on the internet. Those were the days when Facebook “farms” were all the rage, and she topped them off with movies and random chats with all sorts of people. Only to run into, by chance… a colleague from her army days whom she had not liked one little bit. In the meantime he had moved to England. They exchanged a few words… and then the road carried them so far that it led to three sons.

The small talk grew into an endless chat, and having set out on that road, Daniela walked it to the end. “He suggested, ‘Why don't you come to me in England?’ And, to my own surprise, I answered, ‘Why not?’”

To My First Love

In England, the adventure was only beginning. At first the young couple worked on a mushroom farm. Work permits were required back then, and once they got them, they decided to move on. Their next job was at a kitchen cabinet factory… But can you picture former soldiers, people who had jumped out of planes professionally, standing in one spot doing repetitive, monotonous tasks? Exactly. You can't.

“We were at the second-largest kitchen company in England. We advanced enormously, they respected us, but at some point… the same thing over and over, cabinet, cabinet, cabinet. I told my husband I had to change jobs because I couldn't take it anymore.”

A friend suggested she start as a delivery driver for Amazon. Before long, the pioneer of e-commerce welcomed Daniela's husband too.

“But at some point in England we fell into the same rut as everyone else. You sit on the couch, go to the water company's website, pay for your water, pay for your electricity, your gas. You need pens, you go to the site and order. You need a TV, you go and order… At one point I realized we had no social life at all! We had turned into little robotic figures that went to work.”

And so we arrive at Covid and the times when delivery drivers were the only people who could move among others with relative freedom. (How quickly we forget such supposedly unforgettable things!)

A Dark Cloud Looms

“It was eerie and awful,” Daniela recalls. “Only us drivers were on the road—everyone else was locked inside. At some point I felt I simply couldn't bear it. We had turned into robots!”

“That's when life online grew even more. People started working from home. Every day you pass the same house, drop off some parcel, and watch the children's room disappear, renovations begin, and in its place appears a room with a monitor. Then two monitors, three. People began shutting themselves in completely. They even stopped getting dressed and stayed in their loungewear. They stopped going out. Social life stopped. You pass by every day and see it changing before your eyes. We decided it wasn't for us. That we wouldn't cope with this digital way of life.”

Right around then their second son was born. The parents knew they didn't want him growing up in a robotic daily routine, and that it was time to return to their roots. The family made the big decision in 2022 and parachuted back home, 12 years after they had flown off to Albion.

Patriot

You've probably noticed (ChatGPT certainly would, if you asked it) that the subheadings in this piece are the titles of poems by perhaps our best-known poet—Hristo Botev, the nineteenth-century revolutionary—whose poems, for all that, can be counted on our fingers and toes.

It is Botev's hometown, Kalofer, a small town at the foot of the Balkan Mountains, that is home to Daniela and her family today. The now former (or perhaps future, who knows?) paratrooper runs a little souvenir shop, where we are greeted by a colorful jumble of just about everything except… the most typical local “product”—Kalofer lace. The town's shopkeepers have agreed not to sell the most iconic item, because doing so would drastically cut the number of people who visit the museum devoted to the traditional craft.

Daniela started with an online business, then noticed that the web was full of handmade crafts that simply had nowhere to be seen outside the web.

My Prayer

Back in England she had set up a page for handmade baby accessories. “The problem with online shopping was that you couldn't see these things physically anywhere. Online stores are a great opportunity, but you can't always choose exactly what you want just by looking at a picture. I wanted to make a shop you could walk into, see things, touch them. Look at the colors, lay the patterns side by side.”

So she decided to open a baby shop in Kalofer. But somehow, naturally, slowly and inexorably… souvenirs crowded out the baby accessories. People come to the center of this National Revival–era town and, as they stroll, look for fridge magnets, wooden spoons, cutting boards. The baby shop became a souvenir shop. It still takes orders from people who remember the page from her England days, but that has taken a back seat.

Kalofer had another surprise in store for her. After her eldest son was conceived following a long struggle and with the help of IVF, and her second child arrived at the very height of Covid, again with the help of medication… a third young man unexpectedly joined the family.

And so today the digital detox is a fact. Daniela, who met her husband online and went through the technological alienation on the island, now enjoys a healthy life surrounded by relatives in a small town.

In the Tavern

Why Kalofer of all places? Daniela's husband comes from this picturesque mountain town. And “a person born in the Balkan Mountains or by the sea can never tear themselves away from them,” she says.

Today, being far from the big city helps Daniela and her husband be happy. But that's not all: thanks to those very same technologies, they can do all kinds of things, including… successfully completing a distance-learning degree in England.

Daniela is adamant that education shouldn't be a reason that stops people from returning to smaller towns. “Right now the big brother goes to English lessons, swimming, even football in Karlovo. If one day he decides to study somewhere else, let him try. There are rented rooms. People have always survived that way, but today we seem to have spoiled our children a bit.

At 14 I went to Plovdiv, on my own, to a rented room with another girl who, until then, had lived in the same little village in the Rhodopes, with landlords—an old granny and grandpa. It's nothing so dramatic; back then so many kids managed that way.”

To Her

“In a small town everyone's opinion is always being heard. One person says you're good, and everyone thinks you're good. One says you're bad—everyone thinks you're bad. Someone is always gossiping about what you do, why you do it, how you do it. But that's where the bad part ends. In Kalofer you'll never go hungry or thirsty, or be stranded on the road. Someone will come, help you, take you home. Whenever you need something, even if the shops are closed, there are always neighbors and people to count on. You have work to do—everyone will rush over to help. Call a neighbor at 10 p.m. and they'll give you milk, rice—whatever you've run out of and need.

“I'm very glad we went back to the old ways,” Daniela says. “I really like that more and more people are doing it. They realize they need to dig their hands into the soil and how much energy that gives you. Childhood is completely different here, too. I got out of the habit of locking the door long ago—there's simply no need. My child goes out to play, a whole gang moves around in a swarm, and they have lunch wherever is closest—at our place or someone else's.

In Kalofer it's as if time stopped 30 years ago; modernization is creeping in slowly but can't push out the traditional. There's one ATM in town, and survival is largely a matter of barter. I give you eggs, you give me milk. But there's the other side too—just now an old granny left me a little money ‘to treat myself,’ because I spent 30 minutes ordering things for her from Temu for a serious sum. In the end she was so pleased she didn't know how to thank me.”

Struggle

In recent years Daniela has kept finding causes to devote part of her time to.

Today she is focusing her efforts mainly on two: renovating the town's neglected cinema and getting new books for the town library.

She doesn't meet many kindred spirits along the way, but, as she puts it herself, sometimes happiness loves silence.

She is determined not to give up until she secures a comfortable hall where her children, and those of the whole town, can enjoy a movie without traveling dozens of kilometers. And also to bring back children's and parents' interest in books. The little town's library definitely needs new and interesting titles.

Her family is skeptical, her acquaintances are puzzled, but she is set on reaching her goal and giving the town its new treasures. And Christmas is the perfect moment…, when even the most devoted digital adepts step away from their consoles to share stuffed cabbage rolls with their relatives. If you haven't yet found a good deed to do for the holidays, Daniela's causes are definitely a fine opportunity.

Quizzes, charity auctions, initiatives… Daniela has taken on no small number of ventures, and we can all help her, little by little and hand in hand. Let's look for the beauty of the analog together. If her story has filled you with the urge to help, you'll find more about the ways you can do it here.

Only Woody Allen would come up with the idea of turning dentists into Impressionists. And yet, at a time when technology lets us do things that were unthinkable until recently, isn't this exactly the moment to seek out the different, the unconventional, the out of the ordinary? For example…

If doctors were art historians

Not even Woody himself would have thought of this, even at the height of his creative powers.

In a dimly lit room, a handful of young doctors are huddled in front of a projection screen. But no, it isn't showing X-rays or lab results, and the room isn't in a hospital or a university, but… in a museum. The doctors are looking at reproductions of paintings from various eras—from Goya all the way to ancient Egyptian statues.

The woman at the front explains that the goal is to analyze what they see as if it were a medical case. A chaotic mosaic of gray, black and white “patches” appears on the screen. “This is a famous work of art,” she hints. An awkward silence follows. “It's Spanish, by one of the most famous painters of the 20th century…” Finally one of the doctors plucks up the courage: “Picasso?”

He turns out to be right—in front of them is Guernica, the emblematic painting about the horrors of war, which none of those present had recognized until then. The young medics, buried until now in biochemistry textbooks and hospital shifts, are suddenly faced with a task of an entirely different nature—to look for signs, symbols and stories hidden in art. But why do they need this? It turns out that, in an unexpected way, this skill can help them detect and analyze their patients' symptoms better.

The all-round developed personality

You may remember this ideal, a staple slogan of Bulgaria's socialist past, from what is by now a rather distant era. Today it no longer seems to stand on a pedestal. We don't expect doctors to know about art, nor the other way around. We don't imagine that writers can also be programmers, nor the other way around. If we happen to notice someone with erudition in many different directions at once, it may impress us at the weekly pub quiz, but we seem to have lost the habit of linking it with success. Over the centuries, the individual sciences and arts have split into tiny splinters and narrow specializations, which isn't always good for the big picture.

Here's a typical example—artificial intelligence. A subject and a field that already touches absolutely every area of our lives, while we have delegated its development to narrow specialists and the important decisions to successful entrepreneurs.

But are knowledge of mathematics and computer science and knowledge of how to amass wealth enough for us to create the thing that might one day become the next, even more intelligent species on the planet? No, don't answer out loud if you're reading this on the tram, the question is rhetorical. The harder answer is how we can change this and bring together seemingly eternal adversaries like the humanities and technology. That is the answer I've been looking for and am perhaps only just beginning to grope my way toward after more than 500 Digital Stories.

A Renaissance of the Renaissance

If you like, just say the word and I'll rewrite the text in a different style and add more puns.

Just kidding. Forgive me the lyrical digression; it's here partly to try to convince you that this text really wasn't written by artificial intelligence. But can we be sure?

Seeing and recognizing are no longer an objective skill or a science. Neither technology nor people can prove to us, with enough certainty to matter, which work is human and which is not. So isn't it time we started treating looking, the search for truth, fact-checking… as an art?

Which brings us back to our doctors, staring at Picasso's painting. We won't ask them whether, that same evening over a drink, they cursed those lost hours.

The art of seeing. “The Art of Seeing” is a partnership project between the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University and the art museum of the same name, both located in the Canadian city of Hamilton.

An ear to see, a foot to touch

The idea? It's obvious. To look beyond the obvious.

In Bulgarian we have two wonderfully nuanced verbs that we often mix up, гледам (gledam, to look) and виждам (vizhdam, to see). That you can look without seeing is clear, but sometimes the opposite is possible too. You'll remember, I'm sure, that what is essential is invisible to the eye.

So what should we do?

That is the idea behind “The Art of Seeing”—to develop visual literacy, to teach us how to look, not just what to look at, so that we can see. With unexpected examples. If doctors develop a feel for the visual arts, this can also develop other, seemingly peripheral skills, which then, like a boomerang, come back to enrich their seeing the next time an X-ray lands in their hands.

Whether the reverse is also true—whether a master of the brush might be inspired by sitting in on a few hours of colonoscopies—history is silent. Still, it's good to be broad-minded (not necessarily in the medical sense).

The project encourages participants to develop empathetic, holistic and humanistic thinking—qualities vital not only for doctors but for anyone who wants to understand the people around them more fully. At its core is slow, attentive looking at works of art, accompanied by discussion.

Instead of the usual 7 seconds the average visitor spends on a painting, here participants spend dozens of minutes observing and talking—an almost impossible exercise in patience and mindfulness in today's hurried world. People enter into dialogue with each other and with the works to discover how art reflects human experience across different eras and cultures. The result is an analytical and emotional journey in which art serves as both a mirror and a guide to life.

Now look

Wouldn't it be a good idea to apply something similar to artificial intelligence? To make it sit, reflect, discuss, so that we help it be better in every sense of that adjective?

And why not go on to the tech leaders? Yes, many of them talk about their favorite reading, but an interest in art seems rather rare…

I think it would definitely do them good if we showed them the art of seeing. I mean, of course, the version with the art galleries, not the medical treatment room mentioned earlier.

Narrow specialization versus a broad view. As a journalist and writer, and also a front-end engineer, I can tell you that you can carry quite a lot from each of these fields into the others in order to see better. To do that, though, you first have to fight your prejudices and then give it a chance.

A horse without blinkers

That is exactly what the art historians and doctors at McMaster do. They say what brings them together is a problem-based approach. Every work becomes a case that the group “diagnoses” by asking questions, gathering visual “symptoms” and discussing hypotheses.

“Art diagnostics” offers something more—it teaches attention to detail, observation and critical thinking. Participants develop the skills to describe precisely what they see, to support their reflections with “evidence” from the painting and to distinguish observation from their own interpretation—a skill that corresponds directly to the clinical examination of patients.

As the program's creators point out, a particularly important place in its philosophy is given to the effort to overcome prejudice and narrow-mindedness. The desire to break traditional patterns of seeing and knowing. Through encounters with art from a variety of cultures and periods, participants are prompted to recognize their own individual and systemic biases and to question them.

In this way visual literacy also becomes social literacy—a skill that can foster greater equality and understanding in society. After all, looking more carefully usually leads not only to seeing more detail but also to realizing how your own gaze is shaped by context—and how it can change.

Look where you will, it cracks where it likes

The program was originally developed for family medicine residents; later all sorts of others joined. But even before that there was considerable evidence that regular encounters with art improve doctors' diagnostic skills. For instance, Harvard medical students who took an art history course made diagnoses a full 38 percent more accurate than the rest.

But how and why? Were those who signed up simply more curious and inquisitive, or was it really art that improved their skills?

A similar experiment with future nurses at Yale found that those exposed to art detected more clinical signs in patients. Art seems to train the eye and the mind to notice what would otherwise escape them.

But, at least according to the organizers, it isn't just about technique—it's also about empathy. A great deal of other data shows a clear pattern: over the course of their studies, the more “hard” knowledge future medics accumulate, the lower their levels of compassion for patients fall. With all my admiration for the professionals, you don't even need to read scientific studies to be convinced—it's enough to end up in a Sofia polyclinic.

The McMaster program was conceived as a way to restore the balance. Art is human experience rendered in a particular form—it demands that the viewer share in someone else's point of view, someone else's emotion.

Now with a decade of experience behind it, the program yields other, entirely unexpected benefits too: participants report reduced stress, an improved sense of well-being and a rekindled passion for their profession. Through art, doctors “burning out” from their grueling work rediscover why they chose it as a calling. To understand and help people.

Pencho doesn't read

All right, looking at paintings and thinking about them turns out to be useful, but… what if we're like the young lyrical hero who doesn't read—the one whose father, the poet Petko Slaveykov, wrote of him “Pencho is lazy, all he wants is to lie around,” only for him to grow into Pencho Slaveykov, a great poet nominated for the Nobel Prize? In other words, if beautiful paintings don't excite us, can we make them interesting?

We certainly stand a better chance if we approach them the right way. “The Art of Seeing” uses a variety of educational techniques to engage its audience. Sessions are usually led by a facilitator who, rather than explaining the merits and history of a painting, starts asking questions: “What do you notice here? What makes you think that? How does it make you feel?”

This kind of guided looking, the program's creators say, turns out to be key—it creates an informal atmosphere in which everyone challenges their senses and then shares their observations and associations. There are no wrong answers—what matters is making your case. In this way viewers gradually build confidence in their own senses and learn to trust their observations instead of immediately reaching for technology or ready-made templates. “Doctors learn to trust their eyes, not just expensive tests and machines,” says Dr. Joel Katz, one of the pioneers.

We're also talking about a kind of return to the past, when doctors were also people of the arts. It's enough to mention Leonardo and his contribution to anatomy. Or the fact that in the Christian tradition St. Luke is the patron saint of both painters and surgeons.

“There was a time when a good doctor was also a good humanist, but we lost that with the emphasis on the scientific and the technical,” notes Dr. Brian Goldman of Toronto.

Perhaps it's time to bring the two worlds back together. And not only those two.

Deja vu

What do the doctors see? At first—exactly what you'd expect. One participant admits: “At first medical descriptions came to mind. This person looks malnourished, his blood sugar should be checked…” Understandably, out of habit they look for pathology—even in oil portraits of Renaissance ladies they spot symptoms of anemia or signs of skin disease. The conversation, however, gently steers them toward another perspective. The future doctors get used to asking: “Why did the artist portray this figure this way? What story does this scene tell? How does this character feel?”

Gradually a real change in their gaze takes place. As Dr. Puneet Seth puts it: “It teaches us to see people as human beings, not just as medical cases.” The understanding that behind a woman's pallor there may lie not illness but sadness; that a sculpture's folded hands may be not a symptom of arthritis but an expression of humility—these are lessons that stay.

In recent years the organizers have broadened the approach by adding creative practices. Participants not only look at art but also make it—they draw, write short texts, even try dance and theater. The goal isn't to become artists but to experience firsthand the process of creation and the self-reflection and attention that come with it. The art of looking turns into the art of making, and the circle closes. And, as one participant writes: “Art is an expression of emotion, and emotion speaks a universal language.” In the end, learning to “read” paintings means learning to “read” people—with all their visible marks and invisible stories.

Wherever your eyes lead you

In times when you shouldn't swallow not only everything that flies but everything you can read, it is more important than ever to seek a different view. To turn seeing into an art and looking into seeing. To seek the different view, to bring back more points of view. To loathe the one-sided view, so that we see more clearly and search for the truth together. To see the future with clear eyes by bringing together technology and art. And everyone who has something to say and to show.

Is there any truth in this, what do you think?

If you like, I can write you a shorter version of this text for social media. Shall I start?

This article is part of the new issue of Perfect Day magazine.

Is artificial intelligence unjustified media hype or the great force that will change our future as a species? Will it open incredible opportunities for people, or will it turn the world into a digital concentration camp? Your opinion is extremely important, and I will be grateful from the bottom of my heart if you share it in a short survey! Five of the participants will receive prizes: selected books.

I first invited you to fill out a survey like this in September 2023. Some 750 people took part, and the results were remarkably telling and thought-provoking (here). So much has changed since then! Artificial intelligence is becoming an ever bigger and more important subject, which is why it matters to know what Bulgarians think today about all the questions tied to the incredible future we are living in. Set aside 5 minutes for 20 quick questions—it's worth it!

Responses are collected until December 31. You can answer only the questions you choose. The survey is anonymous.

Every response, every share is invaluable help in seeing how we relate today to the great technological subject of our time!

Would you have guessed that Bulgarian IT leaders read Harry Potter, or even Dostoevsky? I wouldn't have, at least until a week ago, when I asked them and it turned out that's exactly the case.

I will never tire of repeating that you are what you read. On the eve of the Day of the Buditeli—November 1, when Bulgaria honors the National Revival enlighteners who kept its language and learning alive—I sent a short invitation to 30 people I consider remarkable: to recommend three of their favorite books to the readers of Digital Stories. I tried to make the palette of guests as colorful as possible—from people in leadership positions to those known as speakers; from people working across the ocean to foreigners whom the sector has brought to Bulgaria; representatives of the most varied technologies and of different generations.

I received no fewer than 20 answers, and today I have the pleasure of presenting the second half of them (the first is here)! Once again I'll note that they aren't grouped by any particular logic, because they turned out to be far too colorful and unexpected for that to be possible; I offer them to you in the order in which I received them.

Happy reading!

1. Pain and the Fifth Rakia

Nedko Hristov is an experienced DevOps specialist and a memorable speaker; before that, his path also ran through the QA profession.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Za petata rakia. Dyado (For the Fifth Rakia. Grandpa) by Georgi Bardarov

“For the Fifth Rakia” is perhaps my most beloved short story. Outside the frame of society, of stigmas, outside religion. A magnificent testament from Bardarov about what is human, about not one but five glasses of rakia, the Bulgarian fruit brandy; stories told on a broken chair in the middle of a road where cars no longer pass; about a telephone that has gone silent.

Call your grandparents more often.

• The Gardener and Death by Georgi Gospodinov

This is one of the most delicate, magnificent and most difficult books I've read in recent years. To sum up the novel in one sentence, it is a monument of words from G.G. to his father. It is G.G.'s open rib cage, and inside, on two handfuls of soil, flowers sprout, a cherry tree and many roses. G.G. gets better and better with the years, and if I could compare him to anyone, it would be Leonard Cohen (with reference to his last album—You Want It Darker).

The father-son bond is very often neglected, and cruelly so—we rarely stop to think that a father is a monument we can always lean on; a big part of us that we have and often forget about.

Call your parents.

• Hronika na bolkata (Chronicle of Pain) by Ivo Ivanov

The year is 2024, and in 64 hours I rode 700 km on my bike in the epic Danube Ultra challenge. And while I rode, I listened to Chronicle of Pain in one go. Because I was hurting after so many kilometers on the bike, and because I had already read Ivo Ivanov. Ivo tells the heartbreaking stories of Jessica Long, of Niki Bozhikov from Kalofer, of Ivan. What do they have in common? All of them (and others in the book) are Paralympians whom society sees as “second-class” people. All of them show that a person is as strong as their spirit is strong. The body simply follows.

Told with incredible simplicity and humanity, these stories carry a raw charge of the will to live, of the incredible strength of a human being, and of the fact that anyone who wants something truly badly can achieve it.

Recommendations of favorite Bulgarian authors arrive precisely with the 11th answer, as if I had wished for them! And not random ones—Ivo Ivanov and Georgi Bardarov have also been guests on Digital Stories. And if every book is a powerful story, Nedko reminds us that reading every book can be a powerful story too.

2. Trial, Error and Forgiveness in the IT World

Anton Angelov is managing director and co-founder of Automate The Planet, an undisputed authority, author and speaker in the world of software testing.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

This book is like a mirror in which you see your own cognitive bugs. Schulz doesn't just analyze why we get things wrong; she shows why it is precisely our mistakes that move us forward. For anyone who works with hypotheses, experiments and uncertainty. It teaches you to respect error rather than fear it.

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This is a book that rearranges the context in which we think about people, technology and society. After it, you no longer see history as the past, but as a set of systemic experiments with successes, bugs and updates. What I like most is how it plays with the term “fiction,” and how a very large part of the foundation of our society today rests on it. Money is just one example—a fiction we have all agreed to believe in so that it makes sense.

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Brilliant order hidden in absurdity. Adams is a philosopher disguised as a comedian, and he shows how often meaning is simply a matter of point of view (and of not forgetting your towel). A blend of entertaining absurdity that breaks up your thinking and pulls you out of the everyday.

• On Being Human and Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm

Fromm is perhaps my favorite philosopher; I have around 15 of his books. He asks the hardest questions about meaning, choice and freedom, and he makes you stop for a moment and think not about what you are doing, but why. These books were written 70 years ago, yet it's as if they describe the present moment 1:1.

Anton even invited us into his personal library:

And Mr. Harari now appears for the third time, and with one and the same book at that. Perhaps it's time for a required reading list for tomorrow, like the ones we had back in school? Of course, the only truly required thing is never to go out without a towel, just in case—ask Douglas Adams.

3. The Great Game

Ivaylo Yosifov is co-founder and chief technology officer of FindMeCure; his professional work is tied to technology in the field of healthcare.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• CivCEO (never published in Bulgarian) by Andrew Karevik

The uniqueness of the series comes from the combination of strategic game mechanics (as in the old game Civilization) and real business principles—the protagonist resolves most conflicts through negotiation, economic strategy and deals rather than violence. In short, “the art of the deal” in a fantasy world.

• Radical Candor (never published in Bulgarian) by Kim Scott

I think this was my third time reading it. Required, absolutely required reading.

• Balgarite mezhdu dve katastrofi – 1396–1944 (The Bulgarians Between Two Catastrophes, 1396–1944) by Alexander Stoyanov

The author describes it as a book that every Bulgarian family should own and read. I completely agree with him.

And if anyone still doubts that together we are reading an incredibly colorful list of books, let them look again at how, right next to a recommendation about our modern history, stands a book by an author with enormous experience in the tech world. I am certainly extremely curious how she earned that description from Ivaylo, and I will read it.

4. Never Split the Difference

Veli Pehlivanov is co-founder of Resolute Software—a consulting company that works with clients on four continents.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

A former federal agent and crisis hostage negotiator takes us through psychology, human behavior and the extremely effective negotiation methods used and refined by the CIA. Shared through personal experience and distilled into a simple but extremely effective communication framework, Chris Voss passes on the subtleties of negotiating under critical conditions, where failure or even compromise can cost human lives. Extremely useful knowledge, a downright daily handbook for anyone who wants to sharpen their communication skills in business, in teamwork and in dealing with people in general…, even if they don't rescue hostages every day.

• The Richest Man in the World by Rafael Vidac

A book about success, personal struggle and the motivation that a true mentor can inspire even in a moment of failure and personal crisis. For me, one of the best books on personal development, told through the exciting story of a protagonist who stumbles upon an unusual opportunity, preparation for a job and a thrilling journey with a charismatic billionaire. A book you read in one breath, with excitement, and then return to again and again for its simple but brilliant practical system for strengthening body and spirit, for finding the path to inner wealth.

• Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind

An epic fantasy saga about power that corrupts, secrets that must be uncovered, truth that is frightening and causes pain, and love that no dark force can defeat. Full of riddles, mysteries and epic twists, it is a novel about all-consuming, often contradictory human feelings—love, hatred, greed and self-sacrifice—told in a captivating plot set in a vast fairy-tale world of magic and mythical creatures.

Self-knowledge, fantasy and the skills of negotiating with kidnappers… An unexpectedly good combination for the road to success in the IT world.

5. Radical Candor

Tushka Dermendzhieva holds a lead position in the world of backend technologies at one of the largest tech companies in Bulgaria—ScaleFocus.

(More about her and from her—here.)

• Radical Candor (never published in Bulgarian) by Kim Scott

This is one of the books that have helped me most in my work. Giving feedback has always been one of the hardest things for me—especially when you want to be both honest and supportive. This book shows how to strike that balance—to tell the truth directly, but with care for the person across from you.

• The 6 Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni

It helped me not only to understand my own strengths better, but also to see more clearly what motivates the people around me. Since then I've looked at teamwork differently—I try to build teams in which everyone contributes where they are strongest, and the work flows more naturally and efficiently.

• From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew

I love to travel, and this book gave me a deep perspective on the world and on why some countries succeed while others fall behind. Singapore's story is impressive—not only as a model of development, but also as a source of lessons in vision, leadership and managing large teams.

A book is a window onto the world. The cliché is entirely true, even in the age of technology and artificial intelligence. Having read this far, you will most likely agree with that judgment too.

6. Humans and AI, Up Close

Zornitsa Nikolova is a senior product manager at Payhawk—the first Bulgarian unicorn. You can also find her on Goodreads, with a series of recommendations specifically for product managers.

• Life 3.0 (never published in Bulgarian) by Max Tegmark

Published in 2017, the book forecasts the development of artificial intelligence. Back then it still sounded like science fiction to me, and now some of the things it describes are already reality. But even more valuable, and what I think keeps it relevant today, is its more philosophical outlook and the ethical questions around AI, as well as its attempt to look even beyond the dimensions of our planet.

• The Expanse by James S. A. Corey

The author's name is actually a pen name behind which stand two co-authors. There's also a TV series based on the books, with the same name (it didn't manage to grab me). Besides being truly gripping science fiction, this series interests me because, in a fictional context, it reflects much of the world around us, including geopolitically. It's not even hard to recognize the real countries used as prototypes for the fictional ones.

• The Mom Test (never published in Bulgarian) by Rob Fitzpatrick

I'm sure this little book has crossed the path of over 90 percent of readers, especially if they are product people or startup founders. It's usually recommended in the context of how to build meaningful products. I mention it here, though, because at its core it offers very practical and accessible guidance, reminds us how to stay curious about the things around us, how to ask (ourselves) the right questions in order to find the best answers—and that is a very valuable skill, not only for product people.

I find myself thinking about how large a share of the book recommendations from Bulgarian IT leaders have never been published in Bulgarian. I also think it would be wonderful if this list reached people in the publishing industry; sometimes they need good ideas too.

7. Foundations

Svetoslav Dimov is a marketing specialist, co-founder of the DEV.BG platform and of a series of events and ventures meant to help Bulgarian IT (and not only IT) leaders grow.

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

The year is 2003. I'm on a summer work-and-travel program in the U.S., and I walk into the office of the HR manager at the company where I'm working and say: “Could you recommend some books on management or leadership?” She smiles, picks up two books lying on her desk and replies: “I have a suggestion just for you!”

She gave me two books—The Power Principle by Blaine Lee (never published in Bulgarian), which I never did read, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which I had heard praised in AIESEC (a student organization I was a member of). I fell in love with the book! At one point in my life I was giving it to so many people that they started teasing me. I think it's valuable for several reasons:

• There is very extensive research behind the book;
• It gives you rules and an algorithm you can apply in different situations and areas of your life;
• In the era of “I'll reveal the secret of…” and dopamine, the book doesn't offer quick fixes; it lays foundations.

And so Mr. Covey turns out to be yet another author beloved by more than one of the special guests I invited.

8. Greetings to Anxious People, Too!

Vasi Gosheva is co-founder of the Soft Skills Pills platform, which helps companies develop their employees' soft skills. She hosts the podcast Radiotochka 2.

• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

A novel I read either through tears or with a smile stuck on my face and quiet giggling (sometimes both at once). Through his unique sense of humor, Backman creates a zany comedy that is in fact a masterful dissection of the people we are today. I recommend reading it absolutely seriously.

• Pozdravi ot sinyata palatka (Greetings from the Blue Tent) by Petya Kokudeva

A travelogue of Petya's journeys across five continents—no clichés, no drawn-out descriptions. Just short, tender stories of encounters with people and cultures. You read it and it's as if you're looking through a camera that has captured emotions rather than landscapes.

• Very Good Copy (never published in Bulgarian) by Eddie Shleyner

A book I would recommend to anyone who wants to write better—not just copywriters. Eddie is one of my writing teachers, and in this book he has gathered the best of himself: how to make words breathe and live. While reading it, I had the feeling he was right there beside me. For me, that is where the meaning of good writing lies.

I won't brag, but I will note that of the Bulgarian authors recommended, nearly all who are still with us have already been guests on Digital Stories. That goes for Petya Kokudeva's wonderful interview too.

9. Pregnancy for Engineers

Nikolay Stoitsev is a senior engineering manager at StorPool Storage.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Cribsheet (never published in Bulgarian) by Emily Oster

This one and the next are the two books that have helped me most in life. When I became a father, I was quite anxious. Cribsheet gave me confidence because it doesn't dictate the “right” way; instead, it presents a synthesis of the scientific data on the first years of a child's life—what we know, how certain it is and what trade-offs we make. It's also an excellent introduction to how the social sciences work (types of studies, limitations, how to read results). It explains well that there is no universal “right or wrong” in raising children, only informed choices and risk management.

• Expecting Better (never published in Bulgarian) by Emily Oster

I read it during my wife's second pregnancy, and it feels to me like the pregnancy book written for engineers. Instead of ready-made recipes, it gathers and analyzes current research on pregnancy and offers a framework for making decisions through the lens of probabilities and risks. It helped me support my wife better and have an informed opinion when she needed one.

• Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

A small book with a big effect on me. It was this book that convinced me to start keeping a work journal and documenting the process. Keeping a professional journal turned out to be extremely useful for clarity, for feedback and for turning the daily flow into a more lasting capital of ideas. It encourages us to learn in public, to share generously and in that way to build a meaningful community around our work.

Parenting and children's relationship with technology are a big theme of a whole series of Digital Stories. And any meaningful reading recommendations in that direction are more than welcome.

10. Thread by Thread

Irina Lilova is responsible for talent development at Telerik Academy and has wide-ranging experience in human resources management.

(More about her and from her—here.)

• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

Our inner world is complex and many-layered, but it becomes more accessible when we have a map of it. Brené Brown opens a safe space for us to name and understand 87 of the deepest human emotions and experiences. Backed by more than 20 years of research.

• Nishka (Thread) by Viktoria Beshliyska

A novel that weaves together the stories of seven women in an unexpected and gripping way. The author of the blog Po dirite na dumite (On the Trail of Words), Viktoria Beshliyska handles our language with skill, which lends the story additional beauty and power. Thread is a literary experience that both connects you with your roots and gives you room to breathe.

• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Every year, each of us on the team receives a book chosen by our CEO. That's how the memoir of Phil Knight, the creator of Nike, came to me. More than a business book, it lets you live through the philosophy behind building and growing the brand. Full of turning points and the ever-present connection with Japan, the book won't leave you indifferent.

Irina also offers a bonus idea: “In recent years, every summer I give myself the gift of time with a book from my childhood. It has brought me more than I expected. Try it—you too might discover something interesting about yourself.”

A wonderful idea!

Let's not break this Thread (and not only because Viktoria Beshliyska's novel is a favorite of mine and she has been a guest on Digital Stories twice), but keep going. Let's talk more about favorite books! Whom do you think I should ask for recommendations?

I'll say it again. In the information age, more than ever, you are what you read.

(You'll find the first part of the book recommendations here.)

You are what you read—that's what I believe. I also believe that holidays like the Day of the Buditeli, Bulgaria's November 1 tribute to the enlighteners of the National Revival, are an occasion to reflect. On ourselves, on books, and on the awakening we need in our relationship with technology.

For many global IT leaders it's a tradition to share their favorite reads and give recommendations. Here in Bulgaria that tradition doesn't exist, as my guest Daniel Penev made me realize. Nobody asks politicians (I can think of only one politician's favorite book), and there are few places (for example, Georgi Nenov's The Superhuman) where IT people talk about books.

Half a year ago I tried an experiment for the first time: I invited people from the tech sector I had chosen to share their book recommendations, and the result, at least for me, was astonishing. And thought-provoking—what would happen if I asked more people who have impressed me?

I sent a short invitation to 30 figures I find remarkable: recommend three of your favorite books to the readers of Digital Stories. I tried to make the lineup of guests as varied as possible, from people in leadership roles to well-known speakers, from those working across the ocean to foreigners the industry has brought to Bulgaria, representing the widest range of technologies and different generations.

Get ready for some stereotypes to blow up!

I received no fewer than 20 replies, and I have the pleasure of presenting them to you! Once again they amazed me with their variety, their range and their depth, and they gave me plenty of ideas for future reads to add to my Goodreads list. Today I present the recommendations of the first ten guests; the rest will follow in a week. They aren't grouped by any particular logic—they simply turned out too varied and unexpected for that—so I offer them in the order I received them.

Happy reading!

1. Love and Math

Minko Gechev holds a black belt in karate… and in programming, as a seasoned senior developer at Google, where he still works today. For many years he has been one of the creators of the Angular platform, which also helps me earn my living.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

A book that helps us look beyond our personal, emotional perception and toward humanity, through the author's rationalized emotional perspective.

• Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality (never published in Bulgarian) by Edward Frenkel

A weaving together of fascinating mathematical concepts and Edward Frenkel's life experiences. The author is from Eastern Europe and shares the obstacles he faced while developing as a mathematician. The book is relevant for people with interests in science, art and business.

• The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest

This book popularizes useful ideas and practices that can help us understand our actions on a deeper level. A good starting point toward more in-depth literature.

So the first recommendation comes from across the ocean, from Silicon Valley itself! Harari—how interesting… And the third pick is so much on the crest of the wave that it will very soon be published in Bulgarian for the first time!

2. Count Harry Morev

Yoana Borisova heads the engineering team at Codexio. She graduated in public relations from Sofia University, but quickly and boldly turned toward the tech world, which makes her the youngest IT leader I invited to share her recommendations. Here they are.

• Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

A very personally important series for me, read some ten times between the ages of 9 and 24. Apart from creating a world I escaped into from reality more than once, the most important thing in this case is that in those years it taught me I could come to love my quirks and turn them into a part of me that helps me. And in a way, that's where the first step toward who I am now began.

• Tobacco by Dimitar Dimov

Very interesting to me, since it's set in my hometown (I know there are disputes on that point, but they're not the focus). What I find most interesting to examine here is the personal development of the main characters. I like that it vividly shows the brutal part you have to go through in order to win (which hasn't changed terribly much), and its consequences—not only with criticism, but with understanding. And the conclusion that life goes on regardless.

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Again something I read at a very early age. I liked the emphasis on the knowledge and wisdom needed for the whole thing to happen, as well as the way they were acquired. And also the subtle hint that, in the end, they are a bigger victory than the revenge itself.

If someone had told me I'd receive such a colorful list of reads—and all of them fiction, at that—I wouldn't have believed it. Heartfelt thanks to Yoana for the unexpected perspective!

3. On the Road to Success

Petar Tornev is director of the Accenture Technology Center in Bulgaria, one of the largest companies in the sector here. He has more than 20 years of experience in the tech world.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

The book shows that success is not just the result of talent, but of a combination of effort, opportunity and environment. It makes leaders think beyond individual qualities and create conditions in which people can unlock their potential.

• Good to Great (never published in Bulgarian) by Jim Collins

Collins analyzes why some companies go from good to exceptional and others don't. The book teaches leaders discipline, the right selection of people and long-term thinking—the foundations of lasting success.

• True North (never published in Bulgarian) by Bill George

This book guides leaders toward discovering their own “north”—the authentic values and goals that lead them. It's invaluable for anyone who wants to lead with integrity, meaning and inner clarity.

• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

The autobiography of Nike's founder reveals the true price of success—the struggle, the risk and the faith in a dream, even when everything seems lost. The book is inspiring for leaders because it shows how passion, courage and persistence can turn an idea into a global brand.

So here we've boldly peeked into pages beyond fiction too. And from one of the best-known IT leaders in the country we got no fewer than four book recommendations… which are surely useful on the road to a successful career in our industry. Isn't that priceless?

4. Ages Come and Pass

Doncho Minkov is the co-founder of an artificial intelligence startup, and he also has invaluable experience as a teacher, having trained more than 10,000 people who went on to enter the software industry.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

This was the first serious fantasy series I read, and I recommend it to everyone.

• The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Maybe the best fantasy series I've read. An extraordinary approach to building the world and the characters. I was saving the last book for a long flight, but I couldn't hold back and read it in six days.

• Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

I was lucky enough to read the books at 24 or 25. Everyone knows Harry Potter! One of the most relaxing and emotional series I've read. Since then I've listened to it at least four or five times.

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass…”—and anyone who loves fantasy can't remain indifferent to these picks. I confess I still haven't read the last installment of the Archive, only because I'm busy looking for a new job. And here's the first one to appear a second time: Mr. Potter. Apparently IT people have a soft spot for wizards—isn't that curious?!

5. The Unbearable Lightness of IT

Iva Gumnishka is the founder of Humans in the Loop, a company that provides work to refugees and people affected by armed conflict, who help develop the most cutting-edge technologies.

(More about her and from her—here.)

• Popravitelen za roditeli (Remedial Exam for Parents) by Madlen Algafari

A unique book on parenting, different from all the other books by foreign authors I've read in recent years. It covers every stage of childhood from a psychological point of view and offers guidance on how to be mindful parents and correct our parenting mistakes, toward our children and toward ourselves.

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

I've lived in the Czech Republic for two years, and although they promote Kafka a lot, for me Kundera is their best writer. The book tells of the period between the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion through the personal stories of various characters. What I really like is how he manages to convey the subtleties of human experiences and feelings, even in their banality or absurdity.

• The Impossible State (never published in Bulgarian) by Wael Hallaq

A book written by one of my professors at Columbia University. It discusses the differences between the structures of the modern state and the principles by which society functions in Islam. Not in order to show how backward traditional societies are, but to expose how states in modernity are utterly incompatible with the idea of a society guided by ethical and moral principles.

All that's left for me is to wholeheartedly join one of the recommendations—Kundera's book is definitely among my favorites too.

6. An Optimistic Theory of Our People

Vesko Kolev heads Icanpreneur, a startup that helps more IT companies build a product that works, and he has extensive experience in the software world.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck

One of the main things I'd really like us Bulgarians to change is our mindset, our self-confidence, our sense of how much we can actually do and how much greater our potential is. This book is very important because it shows and proves how anyone can do anything, as long as they're ready to put in the necessary effort. If you consider something impossible, you won't even try. But if you know it's possible, however hard, then with the right motivation and effort things will happen. The book divides mindsets into two kinds: in the fixed one, the belief is that you're as smart as you were born and there's nothing you can do about it. In the growth mindset, the core belief is that you can achieve anything, as long as you put in the necessary effort.

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Each of these habits is very powerful. For example: “Speak of people as you would if they were in the room.” This matters a lot, because the opposite often happens, and that's toxic. If a person sets out to be sincere, yet at the same time to do it in a healthy way, it really helps a great deal.

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

This is a classic from which we can learn something very important: criticism by itself leads nowhere. Nobody likes to be criticized. Criticism is destructive, so it's much better to approach the feedback we give and the way we treat people in such a way that we don't discourage them from striving to do things and move forward. There's a lovely Bulgarian saying: “A word spoken is a stone thrown.” I have the feeling we need to be far more aware of what we say to the people around us, and how.

The two things that, for me, hold us back as Bulgarians—and that these three books largely address—are believing in ourselves and in the potential of those around us, supporting one another, and taking responsibility for our own fate instead of waiting for someone to fix it for us.

It's no accident that Vesko Kolev is considered by many (myself included) a truly wise man, with whom every conversation enriches you. I'm sure the same goes for the books he recommends.

7. Mirrors and Pretotypes

Ilia Valchanov is the founder of the startup Team-GPT, one of Bulgaria's most successful ventures in artificial intelligence. Before that, he had more than 1.4 million students on the Udemy platform.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Pretotype It (never published in Bulgarian) by Alberto Savoia

A book that shows any idea can be tested extremely easily in a very short time, without the need for a big investment.

• Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio

A foundational book on the principles of managing life and business. A handbook of good practices.

• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

A classic that holds an enormous amount of wisdom of every kind. It presents a path people can take, where it leads and how it ends.

Fiction, books that make sense of things, books that move us forward and even ones tied to our national psyche. The wildly different perspectives our guests bring to the invitation to recommend books are a great treasure. Here, from a successful entrepreneur, we find reads that can be useful precisely in that field. Meanwhile Mr. Dorian Gray is yet another figure I find, to my huge (and extremely pleasant) surprise, in today's “syllabus.”

8. A Book Changes Your Life

Georgi Spasov is the founder of LimeChain, a global technology partner to projects in the Web3 and blockchain industry. With a seven-year history and more than 250 projects, they help develop numerous ecosystems.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• Karmic Management by Geshe Michael Roach

A book that has helped me a lot in building my moral and emotional compass, in doing things that may seem naive and illogical to others. The more good karma you put out into the world, the more you get back—and right when you need it.

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The tried-and-true wisdom of communication and mindset. It dramatically changed my communication and relationships with others, and through them my whole life. From it I learned the fundamentals of attitude and effective communication with others, so that we end up in situations where both sides win.

Mr. Carnegie appears for the second time with a specific title. I don't know about you, but I doubt it's a coincidence, especially coming from people whose point of view is so valuable. I'm adding it right away to my list of next must-reads.

9. Heavy, Heavy…

Alexander Kondov is a frontend developer, speaker and… writer. An unexpected combination—just like, as you'll see, his list of favorite books.

(More about him and from him—here.)

• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

A story about how a person is morally obliged to pursue their own happiness. I was raised in a collectivist society, and this book showed me that being independent and having your own views on life is a value. I think it will resonate with all engineers, artists and innovators. I return to it at least once a year and reread my favorite moments.

• Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Speaking of values, this is a story about how there exist certain unwritten moral laws that apply to all of us, and there is no reason that can justify breaking them. Dostoevsky shows us that on the road of ambition it's important to be able to sleep well at night, and that not everything should be had at any cost. It's frankly a heavy read, but if there's one book a person must read in their lifetime, this is it.

• Ballad for Georg Henig, Viktor Paskov

I wanted to include a Bulgarian book on the list, and this one became a favorite within its first few pages. It's a story about creativity and the sacrifices a person may have to make to preserve their dignity and the purity of their art. I've never romanticized stories about the starving artist, but this one tells how the value of a creation isn't always measured in money and fame.

“I think that, on the whole, we should read more fiction, because it's through stories that we pass on valuable moral and philosophical lessons. All the fables, parables, legends, even religious texts have this purpose,” Alexander adds. And I simply have nothing to add…

10. The Pages That Say “Why” and “How”

Laura Toloș is a data specialist. A graduate of the Max Planck Institute, she now heads the data processing team at the pharmaceutical company Teva.

(More about her and from her—here.)

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

For me, this is the book that complemented what I learned at school, skillfully filling in all the “whys” and “hows” the dry textbooks never answered. It's captivating to trace the evolution of human societies and thereby discover explanations and unexpected perspectives on today's world. I was especially struck by the idea of “collective, or shared, fictions”—like money, religions and organizations, which exist only in society's common imagination and reveal the power of human cooperation. To be honest, it's because of this book that I don't take careers and corporations so seriously; I stopped worrying and having unrealistic expectations.

• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A wonderful way to learn to see the world as the result of processes in which randomness (luck, or the lack of it) plays no small part. This book taught me that decision-making skill isn't the only factor in success (or failure)—a significant part of both is down to chance. I also realized I can make better decisions when I know how much uncertainty, and of what kind, lies ahead of me. Finally, the book helped me a lot while I was learning to lead a data science team.

• Flip Thinking (never published in Bulgarian) by Berthold Gunster

This book taught me to use positivity, creativity, kindness and humor to find solutions to everyday problems that otherwise seem difficult or impossible. Contrary to first impressions, the book doesn't preach unwarranted optimism in the face of hardship. It's full of wonderful little ideas on how to reframe our challenges so we reach the best possible outcome within a difficult situation.

We began the first half of our list with Mr. Harari, and by pure chance we end with him too, in the recommendations of a wonderful guest whom the IT world brought to Bulgaria from her native Romania, yet who sent me her answers in beautiful Bulgarian.

You'll find the second batch of book recommendations from another 10 remarkable figures from the IT world here. I promise you more unexpected titles and priceless picks.

You are what you read. So what are your favorite books?

“Poetry written with the help of artificial intelligence.” What is that? Does AI write it alone? Does it depend on the task the human sets? Or do the two find a way to go on together, so that they create something next, something different? The way it has always been until now…

I believe as many people as possible should be asking these questions. And looking for their own answers. Because the better version of the future runs through this conversation and nowhere else.

Apollo ex Machina is the name of the contest for poetry generated with the help of AI, organized by Digital Stories and the Scribens publishing house. You can enter it here until December 1, and the rules are as simple as they get. You can send up to three poems in whose creation artificial intelligence took part in one way or another.

Can new, different, unexpected, beautiful poems be born this way? Does it depend on the human, or on the algorithm?

Update: The results of the first contest of its kind in Bulgaria for poetry and AI are now in, the poetry collection has been published, and the conclusions are extremely important and revealing—read here.

Mechanically

Prizes await, and the best poems will be published by Scribens. The selection is a serious and responsible one, because some impressive names agreed to sit on the jury: Petar Chuhov, Boyko Lambovski, Violeta Kuneva, Georgi Gavrilov.

But… why do we need to test how good an author (or partner) the algorithm can be in a field like poetry, of all things?

Maybe, if you believe quite a few of the people who saw the contest announcement, we don’t? Quite the opposite, in fact:

Active as a Machine

My aim has always been to lead the conversation, not to steer it. Yes, it is clear by now: it cannot be a coincidence that AI-generated poems made the top 10 of two consecutive leading Bulgarian poetry contests.

So what? Many people are completely against letting AI anywhere near poetry. Poetry is supposed to be human, untouched, cut off from technology…

What does it take to prosper?

Be active as a machine!

Let nothing frighten you!

Beware only of your mind!

The mind trips up all efficiency.

Sometimes it makes it impossible.

Beware of the mind!

Don’t let it get in your way!

How else could you be infallible?

Dobri Zhotev

Back in the good old year of 1969, the Bulgarian poet Dobri Zhotev painted the figure of Kibernet. I was lucky enough to learn about him precisely through the conversations I hold on my site. And here it is: so many of today’s big topics were anticipated that precisely and that long ago.

“Cybernetics specialists once again spoke of the possibility of creating a machine-creator, while literary figures protested fiercely against it…”

So wondered “the famous Soviet writer, translator and journalist Dmitry Zhukov,” whose reflections were published in the Bulgarian magazine “Lik” in 1967.

Yes, the topics are supposedly familiar, the path well trodden. And still—must we keep creativity and technology at arm’s length?

Why all this whining?

Why do people sigh

for some romance

grown cold?

Romance today is in the engines

_that sing_

 _beneath the blue sky._

Nikola Vaptsarov

Yes, starting tomorrow we will declare that artificial intelligence was not used in creating the poems a poet enters in a given contest, or weaves into their latest collection.

Po-ethics

Except we already live in a time when it cannot be proven whether a text was written by a human or by an algorithm. What’s more, every one of us already reads generated texts every single day without realizing it.

Can we really solve the whole problem with bans and regulations? By pretending nothing has changed and simply walking around the unobtrusive elephant in the room, convinced it is just a statue?

The hands of the wind

stretch out my branches—

inward to the sky,

outward to the dreams.

There, where

fate leafs open our dreams,

I wait for you—

child of the wind.

“Maksim Ivanov”

Yes, the juries of two consecutive poetry contests could not have been fooled by accident. Especially juries so different in their makeup and their requirements.

Do You Respect Me?

And how exactly can we still be sure who the author is? And really, who is the author if AI and the human work together? Is it art?

How can we judge how good algorithms really are at creating poetry if we don’t challenge them?

How can we preserve our creative impulse, which, as experience so far has shown, easily falls victim to the comforts technology brings us?

“I wouldn’t take part, because I don’t approve of using AI in poetry.” That was the argument with which a poet turned me down when I invited her onto the jury (everyone else accepted, and once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart!). I got exactly the same words from a fellow journalist who did not want to write about the project. A well-known publishing house refused to support it because it was in “severe dissonance” with its views.

And yet, whether we approve of it or not, AI is here to stay, and we cannot pretend it doesn’t exist. And in order to be able to make sense of it, use it in the best possible way, or ban it, we first need to get to know it.

Why a contest, of all things? Should we encourage people to use this technology, or is it better to be afraid and keep away from it?

“(I am a man of flesh and blood,

there’s not an ounce of iron in me;

whatever in my life I make,

death will peck away without pity;

I’m going far, and I’m alone…),

I leave behind these verses.”

François Villon, translated by Vasil Sotirov

Poetry contests are at the root of our modern views of this art, Boyko Lambovski, a well-known poet, journalist and member of the Apollo ex machina jury, reminded me.

In 1458, François Villon took part in a poetry contest held at the court of Duke Charles d’Orléans in the castle of Blois. The theme was set by the duke himself: “I die of thirst beside the fountain.” An unusual influencer by today’s standards, Villon entered the competition alongside a dozen or so court poets, and it helped him reach a wider readership for the first time.

Time of Parting

1860, Athens. Grigor Parlichev, a Bulgarian poet and teacher from Ohrid, won first place at the annual Athens poetry contest with his epic poem “Ο Ἀρματωλός” (“The Serdar” or “The Voivode”). He received a laurel wreath and a cash prize, and it is no exaggeration to say this was also the first great poetic triumph of a Bulgarian.

Parlichev was given the title of laureate, and the Greek government granted him a small lifelong pension and offered him citizenship and a scholarship to study at a prestigious foreign university—there was even talk of Oxford. He, however, turned down every honor. He declared that he was above all a Bulgarian, and that his goal had been to show the world what the Bulgarian people were capable of.

“We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto

Quite a few years passed after Parlichev, the internet arrived, and poetry was one of its very first guests. At first it lived in the forums; I wrote in one of them too, and we even published a few anthologies. I was in high school and believed poems would help me succeed with girls (well, they didn’t). Then I started reading poetry and becoming convinced of how great this art is.

Today, more than ever, as a lover of poetry, I believe it can help us make sense of the world we have found ourselves in. In the search for answers to those enormous questions that are the reason Digital Stories exists. If with the help of the machine we can create something better, more beautiful, more thrilling, should we ban it? If it can give us the next ideas, forms, directions, genres? If it is itself capable of creating better poems, should we forbid it to?

I don’t know about you, but all my favorite poets are brave people. The kind who were not afraid of the status quo, of the censorship of spirit and thought, of the inhibitions of their time, style or genre. Of borders and artificial limits.

Programmed Harmony

“I like to think (and the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually programming harmony

like pure water touching clear sky.”

Richard Brautigan (I couldn’t find a Bulgarian translation, so this version is by the two of us, ChatGPT and me.)

In the contest we are organizing with the Scribens publishing house, the restrictions are minimal. We expect everyone who feels provoked to enter with up to three poems. There are no limits on genre or form, nor on exactly how you use artificial intelligence—as a full-fledged author, as an editor, as an assistant. The winner will receive a cash prize, the runners-up books, and the best poems will be published in an anthology.

Where is poetry today? Can it reinvent itself, can it help us make sense of the world we live in?

I don’t know. But I am sure that the jury of Bulgaria’s first contest for generated poetry is made up of people who can show us the way to the answer.

Let’s look for it together. Will you be the one to create, with the help of AI, poems that move people?

Give it a try.

No one knows who will turn out to be Apollo ex machina.

Update: The results of the first contest of its kind in Bulgaria for poetry and AI are now in, the poetry collection has been published, and the conclusions are extremely important and revealing—read here.

You can hardly have missed this modern debate, and you probably have your own opinion on it:

Now that artificial intelligence produces results indistinguishable from human creativity, will we go on creating?

Is the great hero of our day taking over the human role of author, or is it just another link in history's long chain, the new tool that will give birth to the next arts, genres and forms?

A tool that will help people express themselves and make sense of the world in a new way and with new means…

Well, the striking pictures you see here are, for me at least, one more strong argument in favor of the optimistic theory. Their creator shows that there need not always be a border between technology and art, between mathematics and art, between the humanities and technology.

Sauron

At first glance, a retro photograph from long-gone times, but the faces are blurred, deformed, as in a strange dream. An elegant lady from the 1920s poses for a portrait while a fantastical creature peeks out from behind her shoulder. A charming robot is dressed up in shevitsi, traditional Bulgarian embroidery, and looks ready to stamp out a lively horo, the Bulgarian chain dance.

Welcome to the world of David Szauder. For the Hungarian multimedia artist, reality is only a starting point—life unfolds in the boundless space of the imagination, where technology is the artist's new brush and the absurd and the beautiful meet and complete each other.

Born in Hungary in 1976, Szauder divides his life between two passions: art and technology. Drawn to computers since childhood, as a student he turned to art history. He brought together his love for these supposedly so mutually repellent pursuits in the new Intermedia program at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest—a place where digital art was not merely allowed but welcomed, “like heaven on earth,” as he himself puts it. A year in Helsinki followed, where he honed his programming skills.

From 2009 to 2014, Szauder worked as a curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin, then returned to his homeland, and recently he has been teaching courses on artificial intelligence in art at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. A university that bears the name of one of the remarkable artists who created the Bauhaus—the very movement that first showed how successfully technology and art can come together. Nothing is accidental, wouldn't you say?

A Bug in Memory

Szauder gradually turned toward surrealism. And I can't help wondering—what mischief would that mustachioed Spanish hidalgo, famous for his anteater, which he loved to walk around as nonchalantly as he walked his imagination, have gotten up to? Well, Salvador Dalí never made it to AI, but the man with his initials reversed seems to me a fitting candidate to be his heir.

And if we are used to thinking that to err is human and that machines are infallible… right at the start of his creative path, the Hungarian turned that perspective around. Szauder found his voice in an unexpected place: in the error. In the bug, the “glitch”—for him, digital visual distortions and defects became a doorway into human stories.

In his early series Failed Memories, he took old family photographs and deliberately “damaged” them with algorithmic interference, as if digital memory were failing just as human memory does. The concept came to show the similarities he sees between the way our brain stores images and the way a computer does. In both cases, when a memory is “opened” again, fragments are often missing, and “bugs” appear that our mind fills in with invented pieces of its own.

David. Dalí?

An interesting nuance for times in which we have given machines the duty of remembering for us, wouldn't you say?

To each damaged portrait he added a short invented backstory—imaginary tales to explain the surreal distortions. A believer, a regular churchgoer, begins to doubt himself; a group of friends sinks too deep into metaphysical arguments; a glamorous lady falls into paranoia over the bubbles in her champagne…

Szauder connects digital errors and human emotions, but he also shows how the imagination can patch up what time has destroyed.

Beyond the Screen

The next step was to break down the barrier between the digital and physical worlds. One telling example came when the artist decided to breathe life into a bug in three-dimensional form. He was playing with a model of a bird on his computer when an unexpected error covered the image with odd lines. Instead of deleting the “broken” bird, Szauder embraced it as an idea and decided to “pull” it out of the digital world and materialize it as a sculpture shaped by his own hands.

“It's important for viewers to see how the work comes out of the screen,” Szauder explains, once again emphasizing the idea—let's blur the border between the virtual and the real, since that border is as old-fashioned as it is arbitrary.

Then he created 1:1 scale installations you could walk through to immerse yourself in the First World War—a web of threads tracing the events across 200 square meters. He also works with augmented reality and built an installation for the Leonardo da Vinci museum in Milan.

David Super

For a long time, Szauder was skeptical of the much-hyped artificial intelligence, because he couldn't find a way to use it. AI-generated visuals seemed somehow alien to him, not what he wanted to create.

Everything changed when he came across a visual collage created by algorithms that both puzzled and charmed him. “AI and I have work to do together,” he decided, and dove boldly into research.

“For the past year and a half, it's not AI learning from me, it's me learning from it,” Szauder admits. He approaches algorithms as a mysterious new world to explore: he experiments, tweaks parameters and watches what happens in the “electronic brain” when it receives certain instructions. The process, in his words, devours time and energy, but it also opens up the possibility of creating things that were unthinkable until recently.

A series of colorful projects began—from creating anatomical sweaters, something he never thought he'd be able to do, to turning himself into the hero of a series of surreal images with unexpected plots.

Szauder very quickly discovered that AI could help him unleash a creative direction he hadn't thought was within his reach. “With AI, we have the opportunity to create absurd, surreal things we were never capable of before,” the artist-programmer says in one of his few interviews.

The Palette Is Empty

Not long ago, I challenged visitors to the Digital Stories website to tell children's drawings apart from ones generated by AI (or created with its help—I still wonder which is more precise).

More than 3,800 people took part, and the result showed that here, too, we no longer stand a chance. Yes, our primal, fundamental, innate creativity can now be flawlessly imitated by algorithms!

But how many possibilities they give us! If you don't believe me, ask today's hero.

Yes, according to David Szauder, AI is not a threat to the creator but a tool—one that can greatly expand the palette of the true maker. Just as photography or Photoshop did not kill painting but offered new means of expression, artificial intelligence puts a new brush in the hand of the digital artist.

“We have to look at AI as a tool,” Szauder insists—“something that, used properly, can perform brilliantly and amplify human creativity.”

Yes, it's one thing to say it, another to show it, and a third and fourth thing to convince people, as the virtual Haytov—an AI incarnation of the Bulgarian storyteller Nikolay Haytov—would put it. And yet… all these pictures, these works you see, suggest there may be something to it, wouldn't you say?

This article is part of the new issue of Perfect Day magazine.

Can you tell a human voice from one generated by artificial intelligence?

2,036 people took part in the Digital Stories experiment looking for the answer to this question, along with many other important nuances. The result, in my view, is unambiguous…

If you haven't tried to spot the difference yourself, it's not too late. The six voices are waiting for you here. Try to tell them apart! You'll learn the correct answers right afterward.

TL;DR

This article is long and detailed. If you're only interested in the main conclusions, you'll find them

here.

• Of the more than 2,000 people who took part in the experiment, the average score was 2.5 out of 6 possible correct answers.
• Had the participants simply guessed, they would have scored higher.
• It doesn't merely turn out to be impossible to recognize a generated voice. We are more likely to be fooled by it than to pick out the human one.

Play the video

Is it a human or AI you hear in this recording? 82 percent of the participants in the experiment got it wrong. This is artificial intelligence, created by the venture of Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova and Ivan Vankov (Gatakka).

A Voice in the Wilderness

On this site you may have seen other challenges meant not only to test your skills and intuition, but also to show whether, and how far, artificial intelligence in its various forms has already advanced. Generated poems made it into the top 10 of two consecutive prestigious poetry competitions; an artificially created influencer appeared in the feeds of 85,000 people without anyone noticing that something was off. Perhaps you've taken the tests on telling generated from human-made poems, paintings, children's drawings, historical facts…

And in many of those experiments the algorithms turned out to be frighteningly good. Until we arrive at the results of this experiment, where for the first time the wrong answers… drastically outnumber the right ones.

Six short audio clips. The correct answers are highlighted in orange. Numbers 2 and 3 are human voices; the rest are generated. They were recognized by 51 percent and 34 percent respectively. The first of the generated voices proved relatively easy to guess (though more than 1/4 of people mistakenly thought it was human), and the others… see and hear for yourself.

Play the video

72 percent of those who took the test judged this voice to be human. It isn't.

I Hear Your Voices

Clearly the time has come to admit that, after texts and images, AI-generated voices too can fool any of us into believing there's a human on the other end. How many important conclusions follow from this? If you follow the Digital Stories site, you can guess at waaay too many potential problems. (And opportunities!)

Play the video

Two-thirds of the participants think this voice is generated, but it's human.

Is there a universal tell that could help us distinguish the generated from the human? Even if we find one, it's very likely to be a detail that will mislead us one step later, once the next generation of algorithms arrives.

If you were to look through the comments under the social media posts in which I invited people to join the experiment, you'd be convinced that anyone can easily recognize a generated voice. It makes mistakes, it gets the intonation slightly wrong, it doesn't sound good in Bulgarian…

Yes, perhaps a longer text would be a different challenge. There are always variations that could change the result. And yet, in this case, the result is pretty obvious.

Vox Populi

Before we part, it's worth pausing on some of the answers to the question in which participants were invited to write down their impressions of the voices.

• I'm scared that I can't tell them apart and I'm sort of answering at random.
• In my opinion, the male voices are harder to guess than the female ones, and I expect my mistakes to be exactly there.
• Very interesting!!! Thank you!
• It turns out to be a hard task!
• A wonderful way to raise awareness of the subject. Especially with phone scams on the rise.
• It's all artificial intelligence
• Frightening.
• AI has gotten pretty good.
• They're very close, but AI still pronounces things a bit clipped.
• They're very easy to recognize!
• I can't believe how much AI has improved. Most likely it's all generated.
• I expected it to be easier.
• I had the feeling the humans were slightly imitating the generated voices
• 5 is a human.

No, 5 is not a human, I promise!

(One of the comments clearly showed that in this case the test was filled out not by an artificial intelligence but by a natural one, which, however, is not in abundance: “КурЗаЛефски” (KurZaLefski, a misspelled obscene chant against Levski, a Sofia football club).)

How the Echo Fades

So here, once again, are the conclusions in brief:

• Of the more than 2,000 people who took part in the experiment, the average score was 2.5 out of 6 possible correct answers.
• Had the participants simply guessed, they would have scored higher.
• It doesn't merely turn out to be impossible to recognize a generated voice. We are more likely to be fooled by it than to recognize the human one.
• If you haven't yet tried to recognize the voices, you can challenge yourself here.

It's also time for the promised prizes! The three participants who got all 6 answers right and were chosen by a draw are: ivana.****@ka***.bg, di***@gmail.com and pt***@gmail.com. They will receive a selection of books and congratulations on their impressive result!

If you have ideas for the next journalistic experiments on Digital Stories, I'll be wholeheartedly grateful if you share them with me. A modest gift awaits you too!

You open the chat with the artificial intelligence, you try to explain what you want from it… and there it is, the result is astonishingly good! (Or maybe it isn't.)

Today we all do it. ChatGPT and its “colleagues” are changing the way we search for information online, the way we get to know the world, the way we try to handle our everyday tasks. (If that doesn't apply to you, believe me, it's time!)

Today we all chat with ChatGPT or Gemini, but… how could anyone possibly have imagined this phenomenon of ours back in the good old year of 1981?

The Missed Chance

Sometimes it is thought-provoking and fascinating to peek into the past and see how subjects that seem possible to us only today are in fact much older, and how the people before us were stirred by them and offered important points of view. There are quite a few such Digital Stories—for instance, about Dobri Zhotev's Kibernet, about an artificial intelligence poet from 1967, or about Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria's longtime communist leader, who said that “with programs and more programs we must infect the young generation.”

Is AI the great chance of our day? Will we seize it, or let it slip? Propusnatiyat shans (The Missed Chance) is one of Lyuben Dilov's lesser-known books. Here one of Bulgaria's most popular science fiction writers, also known as the author of the Fourth Law of Robotics, isn't even a writer. At least according to the plot. Instead of writing, he orders a series of stories in various genres from his new computer, which in turn creates them in his name and in his style…

Sound familiar, by any chance?

The Computerized Scheherazade

“A computerized Scheherazade tries to please a capricious creative mind by copying its own style of thinking and expression. In its indifferent attempt to be a creator, the computer spews out story after story,” reads the back cover.

“On the computers of previous generations, tasks were entered on the keyboard of the video terminal—the new computer talks. So my hands have almost nothing to do, and yet they are used to stepping in here and there, correcting the text that lingers for a while on the screen before it heads off to the printing device.

According to the claims in the brochure, it is connected directly to the Central Information Bank, to the National Library, and through them to the main scientific repositories of the world. In this way it also frees your brain from the burden of the knowledge a writer needs—the computer knows everything for you.”

It knows everything for you… Oh, there's no way to put it more precisely, even today, when this claim so often turns out to be true. For knowledge and for skills alike. And what does the writer do with his hands, freed from the need to write? He reads the instructions on how to use the smart computer…

“Again according to the brochure, the game automaton that does the actual composing supposedly held the whole of world literature in its memory unit. It served as a point of comparison and correction, so that in practice it could not repeat a single situation, that is, compose anything unoriginal. I very much doubt this, and it smells of advertising, but it doesn't trouble me, because I see things rather differently. True originality does not lie in the uniqueness of a plot or a situation—the question is what you will express through them.

There is hardly anything more banal than the love triangle in Anna Karenina, and yet to this day we revere it as one of the greatest novels in the world.”

And what about today, in times when AI writes poetry, for example, better than a huge share of the people who consider themselves poets? (The opinion isn't mine, but that of the juries of two of the most prestigious poetry competitions.)

Creativity Is Creativity

The stories themselves, “written” by the computer, are definitely interesting and worth reading, but… who is going to read content generated by an algorithm?!

Today we all do it every day. We just don't always realize it. Because we are already in a world where generated text cannot be told apart from text written by a human. What's more, few of today's popular science fiction writers peer into these colossal subjects. That is exactly why it becomes even more intriguing to see how Lyuben Dilov imagined them 45 years ago:

“In fact—I have realized it by now—what bothers me most is that I will have to talk to it. True, people today are used to talking to computers: through them they order goods from the shop to be delivered home, or book plane and theater tickets. But there they talk about simple things, while here I will probably have to put into words even the inexpressible—creativity is creativity, however advanced the technology. That must be why my hands tremble and are so agitated, as if they want to say: ‘And what are we going to do? Throughout the whole history of humankind we have taken part in the creation of every art, and now suddenly—you're free, we don't need you…’”

What will we do in times when technology reaches not for the dull, routine, repetitive work but exactly the opposite—temptingly offers that, after our memory, we entrust it with our creativity too?

What will we do in times when even children's drawings turn out to be indistinguishable from generated images?

What will we do in times when you're more likely to get it wrong than right when telling a human voice from a generated sound?

We still don't know what we'll do; we aren't even talking in order to look for the answers.

But those times are here.

A Hare Out of a Blackthorn

“Today's society, it said in its appeal to us, does not treat talent as something irrational, the way it once did, when people resigned themselves to its inexplicability and expressed this, for example, with the proverb ‘You never know which blackthorn the hare will jump out of,’ meaning talent. Now society insists on always knowing exactly which blackthorn which hare will jump out of. What's more, it strives to make a hare jump out of every blackthorn…

A footnote explained what a ‘blackthorn’ was, because with today's radically altered nature the plant is no longer found. It was a low shrub that grew in very poor soil, with sharp thorns, spines and small blue-black berries, astringent to the taste, which caused constipation when eaten.”

Well, here the science fiction writer missed the mark: the blackthorns are still around, though I do have certain doubts about how many of today's children would recognize them. And also about whether there is any particular reason for them to recognize blackthorns specifically. Forgive the digression—the hare really is more important than the bushes in this metaphor.

How and why can we be sure today that the new, different, original idea won't come from artificial intelligence more often than from our own?

And what about personalized content, in which every fan of Lyuben Dilov could have their own personal version of each of his next stories, just as he imagined it, with the help of the enormous computer that frees his hands?

At Home over a Glass of Absinthe

“‘The brochure praises you,’ I say a little more firmly, ‘for composing only original things. I'm very curious what you'll come up with if, say, everything that has been sought so far in other crime stories is already known from the very start. Let's assume the criminal is known, even his name and where he is, let's assume the victim is known too, and the motives for the crime, when and with what it was committed—in short, everything is known. Can you compose something criminal then?’

I'm aware this is pure needling. That overly mild preachiness of his a moment ago irritated me, but then again I am supposed to be testing his abilities—with banal orders I won't find out whether he really is more capable than my previous computer.

‘I cannot answer in advance until the composing automaton has received all the conditions. Please submit them in accordance with the manual,’ the computer replies, and I find it very hard to picture a pretty secretary with such owlish eyes.”

The 1980s ChatGPT has owlish eyes. Is it because it's showing off its intellect, or because it's trying to imitate wisdom? Or is it because we catch a glimpse here of the author's not-so-positive attitude toward it—the author who, even as a character in the book, “needles” it?

Tell Me a Fairy Tale

“Good and evil, I say sadly to the computer, or rather to myself, they keep fighting, keep defeating each other, keep chopping off each other's heads, and new ones keep growing back, and it seems it will go on like that for ever and ever. In fairy tales! Because in life it isn't quite like that, my dear fellow or my dear girl—what am I supposed to call you, after all? In this strange fairy tale called life, this good and this evil live together quite amicably, or to put it more philosophically: in a compromise that is sometimes reasonable and sometimes not so reasonable. And if someone set out to write a fairy tale about life, something rather different would probably come of it.”

And isn't it truly wonderful that today, even if you can't play an instrument or sing, with the help of AI there's now a way to make music? To tell a fairy tale made especially for your grandchildren? Even if building fantastical plots is a drastically weaker area for you than knowing football scores…

What kind of fairy tale will the retro algorithm with the owlish eyes write? Will the “author” be pleased? (I confess that in cases like this I get more and more confused about where to put the quotation marks.)

“I read it twice. It is a fairy tale all right, following all the rules of a fairy tale—though soaked in quite a bit of bitterness. Could they have palmed off a misanthropic computer on me? No, that's impossible—nobody would create a computer that hates people! It is merely a reasonable skeptic and by no means shuts the door on hope: there, it states clearly and definitely that always and everywhere three new brothers will be born to set out against the monsters.”

Well Done, Computer

And well done, author. I'd like to share the optimistic view that nobody would ever create a misanthropic computer. The experience of recent decades certainly gives plenty of food for thought in the opposite direction.

“‘Well done, computer,’ I repeat to him. ‘I'm sure we'll work well together. The important thing is to figure out what you do best. I'm not tired, and I hope you're even less so—let's carry on with the exercises, shall we! What tempts me most is to try genres I've never dared to touch. I see you have a special theme key, “historical plots,” and that sets me thinking. Why don't you have special keys for the others? I'd like to believe this one simply serves to connect you to the historical archives, or wherever is needed, so you can get the relevant references and dates. Otherwise it would be absurd. Because… what really sets a historical novel apart from a science fiction one, for example? Perhaps only that science fiction lies less.’”

Does it always lie less? Or could the reason be that “who controls the past controls the future”…?

“‘It's easy for you—you compose whatever takes your fancy, and you've got an excuse too: you're a machine, but does anyone ask me? You probably have no idea what completely different eyes would stare at me if I dared to show them the thing I tore up! Come on, that's enough for today! Rest and, as they say in human language, get some sense into your head! Meanwhile I'll pop over to the café to hear how my colleagues are getting on with their new computers. And no more of that sort of thing, understood, right!’ Not once did it respond, nor did it defend itself in any way. Had its designers not given it that right, or was it so full of itself that it followed the age-old rule of the wise not to argue with a fool?”

Experience Does Not Lessen Our Foolishness

Being polite is far from just an imaginary message from kindergarten that's hard to translate into our relationship with artificial intelligence. Or at least it shouldn't be, if we allow for the idea that the scenario from The Terminator or Roko's basilisk is possible…

“Experience increases our wisdom but doesn't reduce our follies. Henry Shaw (1818–1885)

‘Hmm,’ I said to the computer, which was gaping at me in fresh expectation, ‘you've really made an effort for your technician, no doubt about it! You've even given him an epigraph, and I didn't even know you could handle quotations! Where on earth did you dig up this Henry Shaw—I've never heard of him! Experience increases our wisdom but doesn't reduce our follies—fine, as long as you mean human behavior in love, fine! But if you're hinting at my experience with you so far…’”

And here are the hallucinations, something that would have been so hard to foresee in times when “artificial intelligence” was just a wishful label, devoid of content, which even scientists shied away from. Who are you, Henry Shaw?

The Dog Drags a Computer

“But I think about the time that created you. Does it really need you, or is it simply that same time about which my friend, the poet Marko Ganchev, wrote his sad insight:

Till yesterday it was “the dog drags off…,”

but now the world is changing, though.

Tomorrow it will be otherwise:

the dog will drag off computers.

I'll be frank. I've already called the complaints department, and tomorrow they'll come to take you away…”

Everything in its own time. And yet, when time outpaces even our boldest expectations, it is time to try to slow it down a little, in search of salvation and explanation.

Over Mastika with a Strugatsky Brother

“‘An idea is an essential condition for any work of art,’ the computer replies, unexpectedly long-winded.

‘Please adhere to the instructions for formulating the task.’ I burst out laughing:

‘You're right, machine! A human being really isn't a work of art; if anything, he's anti-art. By the way, something like an idea had popped up a moment ago—that's where this conversation started, isn't it. What will you do if they give you to another author, while you carry me inside you, as you claim? Look, I've filed a complaint, they'll come and replace you with another computer. Isn't that an idea? No, not yet.’

‘It's more the age-old problem of personal identity,’ I correct myself, but by association a memory of a remark bubbles up like a gas bubble from the depths of my brain. The summer before last, at a lunch, I was drinking ice-cold mastika, the Bulgarian anise spirit, with my guests from Moscow, Arkady Strugatsky and Karl Levitin. We felt cozy and cheerful in the cool, half-empty restaurant and had no wish at all to part, while my working hours were ticking away relentlessly.

I had, of course, a perfectly good excuse: none other than the world-famous science fiction writer Strugatsky was Bulgaria's guest, but I had at least to let the editorial office know so they wouldn't wait for me. I set off for the telephone, and then the undying science fiction writer in Arkady Natanovich tossed out behind my back:

‘Hey, Lyuben, just imagine that when you call the office now, the person who answers is… Lyuben Dilov!’ All three of us laughed, but while I was dialing my own number—it was a party line, it served the office too, so our secretary always picked up first—I asked myself: ‘What if I really hear my own voice on the other end?’”

Hearing My Own Voice

What if you really… hear your own voice? What if you read a text that is so good, indistinguishable from your style, from your skills? I have asked quite a few writers who have been guests on this site, and the answers are colorful, varied, unexpected. Will they keep writing?

Often they aren't particularly optimistic. So it is here, too.

“I unplugged the computer from the mains as well, so that it wouldn't take it into its head, as before, to start working on its own. I stood there as if over a coffin until its eyes lost their treacherously innocent color and turned into ordinary glass, then I left my study. And I didn't return until they had taken it away for good.”

In the novel, the ending isn't a happy one. But in the real world… I still think we have a chance at one. If we dare, and manage, not to stop peering into the future. Just as Lyuben Dilov did in The Missed Chance.

Facebook, SpaceX, Airbnb, LinkedIn, PayPal, Ethereum. The revolution of OpenAI and ChatGPT, the rise of Donald Trump and his ubiquitous ally Elon Musk.

Is there really one person who ties all these phenomena together? More than that—it is no exaggeration to say that if it weren't for today's hero, hardly any of them would have come true…

Peter Thiel has earned the name of a prophet, a guru. The great visionary of the tech age. And yet he holds deeply controversial views that somehow stay out of the big media noise. But that is typical of the German-born entrepreneur. Some see him as the éminence grise of Silicon Valley, others as a sage who can show anyone the road to great success in the technological era.

A multibillionaire, he says competition is a deceptive good and monopolies are the solution of the future. He created a large-scale program to help people who choose to abandon their education in order to start their own business, which in turn paves the way for the next generation of tech leaders.

All this and much more is Mr. Thiel. It is time he stepped into the spotlight, because he is certainly one of the people who have already changed the lives of each of us. More than that—ever more is expected to depend on him in the turbulent technological times we live in.

Till Eulenspiegel

Peter Andreas Thiel was born in October 1967 in Frankfurt am Main. His father, an engineer in the chemical industry, changed jobs often, and the whole family traveled with him. So while still very young, Peter became a cosmopolitan: when he was one year old, his family left their native Germany, moved around Namibia and South Africa, and finally settled in Cleveland.

From boyhood, the future hugely successful entrepreneur loved two things: chess and science fiction. Two fields that, he would later say, share a common goal—predicting the future. Chess gives you strategic thinking, science fiction gives you vision. The combination taught him something no classroom is capable of: to think in systems, not in rules.

Thiel didn't just read Isaac Asimov, Tolkien and Robert Heinlein; he reread them like a manifesto. Cities of the future, people grown together with machines, algorithms predicting human behavior—these were the themes that excited him. And he would not forget them as an adult, turning them from fantasies into reality. For all of us.

A Friend Behind the Lines

Peter was a teenager when his family settled in California. There, in the heart of the tech gold rush, he would shape his views of the future. His own future first. Although a good student, he felt he didn't like what he was getting. That education pushed him toward uniformity, toward producing people with the same knowledge and skills, rather than what seemed logical to him—giving you the best according to whatever you have a talent for.

He had no wish to go on to university, but his parents talked him into it, and before long he was admitted to Stanford.

The boy also progressed quickly at chess. He entered and won a number of tournaments, until at some point he simply decided this wasn't what interested him. For his degree he chose not mathematics, which seemed to come so easily to him, but philosophy.

Yes, that abstract discipline that promises no career at all and offers doubt instead. But that was exactly what Thiel was looking for: the unshakable within the uncertain.

Amid lectures on Plato and Popper he built his own coordinate system, one that would guide his next steps. Not technology versus the humanities, not left versus right. But mainstream versus courage, consensus versus counterargument. The dividing axis for him was knowledge—what is real and what is an imitation of social agreement. “All truly valuable knowledge begins where agreement ends,” the entrepreneur would write years later.

Silicon Philosophers

Surprisingly, he decided to go on to a second degree—law. He says those were the three most boring years of his life, but far from wasted. Back then, with fellow students, he founded The Stanford Review, a conservative student magazine that clashed openly with the university's leadership.

In it he developed many of the ideas that have today returned to strong positions across the ocean. No wonder: as mentioned, the former law student is among the people who contributed directly to the fact that Donald Trump and JD Vance now set the rules in the White House. In his magazine Thiel attacked multiculturalism, feminism and minority rights.

After graduating, he quickly went through several dull corporate jobs, just long enough to realize that this was definitely not his calling. It was then that his personal philosophy was joined by an idea of exactly how to turn it into reality.

“Every moment in the future should be better than any moment in the past,” the billionaire says.

Cut to a classic scene from a hacker movie. A handful of brilliant, slightly antisocial men shut in an office drink cola, stay up all night, write computer code, argue about philosophy and… create a product that will rearrange the global economy.

The scene, however, is real. This is exactly how PayPal was born—the venture that showed that in the online era banks are no longer the only option for transferring money. And it did something even more important: it gave wings to Peter Thiel and his partner Elon Musk for the next big ventures that truly launched them into the sky (unlike Musk, in the case of today's hero only metaphorically).

Money in the Pocket

Thiel's first business project was Confinity—software for encrypted communication and payments using the primeval mobile devices of the late last century. At the same time, a rival company called X.com was working on a similar venture. “X”—that's right, the name would return a quarter of a century later, but back then it was financial software, headed by an ambitious South African named… Elon Musk.

Who would win this battle? The story never reached that denouement, because the two teams decided it was better to join forces. So in 2000 the two companies merged under the name PayPal. After long arguments, Peter Thiel took the helm, persuading the others that he knew best how to turn their joint venture into a successful business.

He turned out to be right. The first mass online payment system became a phenomenon, quickly piling up users, and Thiel, Musk and company decided it was time for more important things.

PayPal was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Our hero woke up a millionaire. Many would have been tempted to enjoy what they had achieved, but not the ambitious philosopher-lawyer. He sensed that technology had advanced enormously and would very soon change our lives in every area. And to fulfill his big goals—a technological revolution the way he wanted it—one company was not enough.

Capo di Tutti Capi

The team from that time is often called, jokingly (or not?), “the PayPal Mafia,” and our hero is its Godfather.

With that much money, others would have bought an island, a yacht, a football club (what about you?), while Thiel bought… the ability to act on his own. He took on an unexpected mission: not to create, but to support and advise (perhaps even steer and manipulate?) the ventures that went on to shape today's world.

In 2003 he founded Palantir, a company he is still associated with. Its core business is processing large volumes of data, going back to the days when those volumes were far more modest. Long before today's rise of artificial intelligence, Palantir showed how information can be processed and used effectively in all sorts of fields. It is worth mentioning that besides the biggest American companies in every industry, its clients over the years have included the sacred acronyms of the CIA and the FBI.

His main activity after PayPal, however, was to create, help and steer—to invest in all kinds of ventures that, in his view, promised to change our lives.

2004. Thiel was reading the business plan of a 19-year-old Harvard student—at first glance just a program for chatting with classmates and friends. Or not exactly? Who could have guessed that his decision to see something more in it would change all our lives in the years that followed?

Spider-Man

Thiel judged the idea brilliant. As he would later explain, it wasn't a platform but an infrastructure of identity. That insight led him to invest the first $500,000 in a project called Facebook. It became the most legendary early bet in the history of technology.

“What does this platform mean for identity? How will social structures change when people have a digital face?” Thiel wondered. And he realized that Facebook would not be just a network for students, but a matrix of visibility—a world in which people exist through sharing.
And they don't just “share photos.” They construct themselves.

His investment was not only financial. Thiel became Mark Zuckerberg's mentor, strategist and defender.
While Wall Street pressed Facebook to monetize aggressively, his advice was: “Ignore the noise. Build something so necessary that the money will follow on its own.”

His investment brought a 200-fold return in just eight years! In 2012 Thiel sold his shares and, as a result, became a billionaire for the first time. Today his fortune is estimated at $15 billion.

The rest of the (public) story you know. The social network turned into social media, and how we communicate on it now shapes a large part of our daily lives as well as the outcome of the biggest social, public and political questions.

Poor, poor Thiel, if only he had missed that particular business plan…

Rich Man, Poor Man

Over time he stepped back from running Facebook (officially leaving the board in 2022 to help Donald Trump's election campaign), but he has never disowned his investment. For him the social network is like fire: “It can warm. It can burn. But it depends on whose hands it's in.”

Continuing down that road, Thiel was among the first investors, mentors, teachers and leaders of companies such as LinkedIn, SpaceX, Airbnb and YouTube.

Wondering why you didn't know earlier, so you too could invest wherever the philosopher puts his money?

Alas, quite a lot of people have already figured it out. That is why over the past two decades Thiel has become the oracle that a huge share of tech investors follow. He senses success in advance, and it always arrives right where the Godfather of the PayPal Mafia expects it.

Including with one of his latest “offspring.” Thiel was the first to back the venture that started the journey of the trendiest digital star, the symbol of the AI revolution, Sam Altman.

He Who Learns…

…shall earn, right? “Study, sweetheart, so you won't have to work!” as Bulgarian mothers like to say. Not according to Mr. Thiel, who created the large-scale Thiel Fellowship to support young people who have dropped out of university to pursue their own projects. He pays them… not to study?!

Exactly, because he believes a university education will only blunt their ideas and ambition. In a world where young people are encouraged to “follow their dreams” with a diploma in hand, since 2011 Thiel has been giving them $100,000 each not to go to university.

The requirements are simple: be under 23. And have an idea that could change the world. (Oh, why am I not younger…)

Of course, this venture is quite controversial and has met the expected criticism from the academic world. Educational institutions accuse him of irresponsibility, elitism, even of “corrupting the youth.” But for Thiel it is a restoration of reality. Academia, in his view, is a trap of conformity: “Universities no longer create thinking individuals. They produce people raised in fear.”

Among the well-known fellows who chose to quit university with the fund's support is Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin. The list also includes Dylan Field, who founded Figma (and later agreed to sell it to Adobe for $20 billion); Laura Deming, who set up an anti-aging fund at 17 (what made her think about that, I wonder?); and Austin Russell, now a billionaire and the creator of lidar technology for autonomous cars.

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Blah

To this day he keeps his German citizenship alongside his American one, and since 2017 he has officially been a New Zealander, too. He describes himself as a Christian. “Christianity, the main religion of the Western world, is always on the side of the victim. I believe it is true, but I don't feel some overwhelming need to convince others of it.”

The businessman doesn't hide that he is gay, but if you meet him, don't bring up the subject. A small tech blog was the first to make that mistake, in 2007. The visionary, however, launched a series of lawsuits, which he won, and that put an end to the outlet. It later emerged that he had waged a large-scale (and underhanded) campaign, financing numerous lawsuits against the site, including one in the name of the wrestler Hulk Hogan.

In 2017 Thiel married the financial expert Matt Danzeisen, and the two have recently become young dads of two children. For many years they were in an open relationship, while Thiel was also seeing the influencer Jeff Thomas, who died suddenly in 2023.

Absolute Zero

Thiel is a fan of cryptocurrencies, and a large part of his current wealth is owed precisely to them. Many see this as the explanation for the strong interest in the subject shown by the new-old American president. Some time ago it led the philosopher to attack Warren Buffett in a rather unphilosophical way, saying that “the number one enemy of bitcoin is the sociopathic grandpa from Omaha.”

In 2014 his book Zero to One came out and quickly became a worldwide bestseller. It is not just a handbook for entrepreneurs; it has been called “a philosophical address to the future builders of civilizations.”

“Zero to one” is the creation of something entirely new. After that, everything is a matter of routine, with no creativity at all. “One to n” is merely copying, scaling, repeating.

“In a world full of delivery apps, one more app isn't innovation, it's competition by inertia. The best companies avoid competition. They create monopolies because they solve a problem no one else has recognized,” Thiel says.

But how can… a man with conservative views call into question one of the main tenets we are used to associating with that position—the free market? While economic orthodoxy demonizes monopoly, Thiel rehabilitates it. Though for him it isn't the corporate mastodon that smothers the market. It is the monopoly of the idea, of uniqueness, of the unrepeatable.

Apple has a monopoly on aesthetics and experience. Google on search. Thiel asks:
“Do you want to be the best… or the only one? The second is often the first step toward the first.”

A Technocratic Nation

This undoubtedly sounds wonderful, very motivating, visionary—but have recent years shown the entrepreneur to be right? Or do the monopolies of the big tech companies make them look ever more all-powerful, uncontrolled…, let's say it plainly—a threat to both democracy and social peace?

Thiel has no problem with that. He often describes modern Western society as too agreeable. Everyone believes in the same science, the same ethics, the same democracy. That, in his view, is “stagnation disguised as progress.” Within this frame, competition turns out to be a way of not thinking, of simply racing along an already beaten path. “True innovators don't compete. They just change the game.”

One can't deny that he does exactly that. Quite a few authorities stress Peter Thiel's decisive role in the fact that today's American president is named Donald Trump. More than that, he is believed to be the one who proposed Vice President JD Vance and introduced him to his future boss. And although in recent months another tech leader who ended up in government work has been in the spotlight, Thiel's role in the most important decisions of the new American administration is probably even greater.

Antisocial Poetry

His support for Trump goes back a long way, and it has paid off for him. I wouldn't advise you to play poker against him; experience shows his bets always come out winners.

In 2016 Thiel surprised much of the world when he took the stage at the Republican National Convention to back Trump, in times very different from today's, when Silicon Valley made no secret of its deeply skeptical opinion of the future president. “If the elite is rotten, tearing it down may be a form of healing,” the philosopher said.

In 1995 Thiel and David O. Sacks published the book The Diversity Myth, which criticized political correctness and multiculturalism in higher education.

“The Straussian Moment,” an essay Thiel wrote in 2004, is considered a foundational text of his political thought. In it he writes that the September 11 attacks upset “the entire political and military framework of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” and that a “reexamination of the foundations of modern politics” is therefore needed.

Thiel believes neither in the status quo nor in the wisdom of the people. In his view, decisions should be made by elites capable of creating new worlds, as happens in the tech sector.

If we add to this his serious investments in ventures aimed at drastically extending human life and even achieving immortality… one can only marvel that it is not he but the “gentle retiree” Bill Gates whom conspiracy theories so stubbornly link with the most frightening future.

War and Peace

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” They say this is the most important question Peter Thiel asks at job interviews. As in everything else, here he is looking for the most unorthodox, original, strange answer possible. In case it isn't clear by now, he definitely has a thing for thinking outside the box.

“I believe technology can give us a chance at a much longer and more fulfilling life—and refusing to pursue that possibility is sheer cowardice,” Thiel says. And also: “Death is a problem that can and must be solved.” He has turned this conviction into funding for ventures such as Unity Biotechnology, an anti-aging company, the Methuselah Foundation for life extension, and the Cryonics Institute. More than that, he has said that after his death he too wants his body frozen.

He even gives money to a company researching how young people's blood could be used to slow aging. Brrr.

“A great business is not just a bet on the future, but a bet on the future you want to create,” Thiel writes. And besides writing, he is one of the leaders who never stop reading. His love of science fiction is far from gone, and every year he shares his book recommendations. At the risk of surprising you after everything said so far about his worldview, among his favorite authors is Ayn Rand, with Atlas Shrugged.

He also recommends Ray Kurzweil and… Anna Karenina. Of the classic novel, he says it illustrates the IT business well: “Tolstoy opens with the observation that ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”

The Future in the Past

Besides his love of books, his love of chess hasn't faded over the years either. Until 2003 he competed semi-professionally, and in 2016 he was symbolically invited to make the first move in the world championship match between Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen.

Coming back to Kurzweil, Thiel also believes we live in a decisive time, with very serious changes on the horizon driven by technological progress. “The fate of the world may depend on how we make sense of this decade,” he adds, and few would argue with him. The thing is, though, that he is among the people on whom that future directly depends.

He stayed silent during the recent exchange of online blows between Musk and Trump. A year earlier, however, he had warned that “Musk's support for Trump is incredibly dangerous, because in politics 80% agreement isn't enough—you need 100%.” A prophecy?!

An interesting, unconventional figure—I hope you now know him well enough to agree. And let us hope that his next actions will show more humanity, compassion, empathy. One thing is beyond doubt: from now on, even more decisions on which all our futures depend will rest on Peter Thiel's shoulders. His story leaves us no choice but to be convinced he is capable of dizzying breakthroughs and unthinkable ideas.

Besides, he is undoubtedly right that it is more often worth asking ourselves:

“What if we really can do more than we believe we can?”

Cosmonaut or vet, princess or pilot? What calling did you want to pursue as a child? Did your dream come true?

What do today's kids want to be when they grow up?

On their very own holiday—June 1, Children's Day in Bulgaria—it's time for the results of a curious survey.

The Digital Stories series on children's encounter with technology gathered important perspectives on many subjects, along with a survey of what parents and relatives of children up to age 11 think about each of them. I've already written about the fascinating results, but not about how parents answered one question that I consider rather special. Of the 350 people who took part in the survey, 289 chose to answer:

What do the children want to be when they grow up?

“Influencer” or “doctor”—which do you think turned out to be the most common answer?

How are kids' dreams changing?

What does that say about us adults, about technology, about the spirit of the times?

Doctor and/or Superhero

So, the winners—the most frequently mentioned future professions—are, for me at least, quite unexpected. Doctor or teacher! In one form or another, they account for more than 15 percent of the answers.

Why, and how? Against the backdrop of the big problems these professions face and the undeniable need for drastic reform in both the education and the healthcare systems, they are the ones children mention most often. Wonderful news! Whether it's down to the values parents instill, to the care of teachers in kindergartens and the early grades, or to the right picture books. Each of the two professions is mentioned 26 times. Let's hope their enthusiasm doesn't fade and we'll have a solution to the staff shortages in both fields (I wonder how many practicing GPs will be left by the time these kids graduate?).

Vet is the third most common calling, with 18 mentions. That's easy to explain with children's love of animals.

Architect (9 mentions) and artist (8) make the top ten, alongside police officer (8) and firefighter (6). The forces of law and order also appear in more eccentric combinations—one child declared that they want to be “a firefighter, a police officer, a taxi driver, a pilot and a superhero.” Dreams have no limits, especially when you're 5 (and they shouldn't afterward either, but that's another subject).

These statistics come alongside the answers of more than 90 percent of parents, who, in another question in the survey, said their children will most likely have to change professions at least a few times.

The Cosmonaut Princess

Speaking of versatility, one mother says of her 6-year-old son that “he wants to be a footballer/skier/tennis player/musician—all at once, because he does all of them now.”

In the survey we find a few princesses (2 girls declared this, one of them in combination with a teaching career).

In my day, last century, perhaps the most common answer to the question that brings us together today would have been “cosmonaut.” And despite my worry that it wouldn't show up in the survey at all, at a time when space exploration is far from a frequent guest in public discourse, I was pleasantly surprised. Six children dream of being cosmonauts or astronauts.

Some have even bolder dreams, such as “astrophysicist, astronaut, potential settler of other planets” or “the first architect on Mars.”

Here's hoping!

Another young man has devised an even more original schedule for his future—he'll be a cosmonaut and, “when he's on Earth, a firefighter.”

Study Hard, Kiddo,…

There's no shortage of ambitious claims like “Olympic swimming champion.” And where do parents' interventions fit in against this backdrop? “I'd really like him to start out as a musician, and in the future he'll find himself,” reads one of the answers. Others: “whatever the child wishes” and “whatever she chooses, we're a supporting factor.”

Callings like paleontologist and astrophysicist appear. The answers “dancer” and “actress” (the latter combined with being a driver, no less) come up only once each. Same with “fashion model” or “model,” though on the other hand there are three future fashion designers.

Of course, we can't escape technological influences. Although they don't dominate the survey, professions like YouTuber and gamer also turn up among the answers. One of them reads: “footballer, YouTuber, programmer.” Writing code in the morning, training in the afternoon, streaming games in the evening… sounds exhausting, but not when you're 10.

Speaking of programmers and footballers… they come up equally often! Each of the two callings is mentioned 7 times. Perhaps by the time these kids grow up, the first profession will be even rarer than the cosmonaut's, but the future will tell.

The answer “engineer” appears another 5 times—including as a person “who invents machines, mostly for cleaning the sea.” Or “a construction bioengineer who wants to make buildings with walls of plants, and bypass rivers and forests around cities.” The same child adds that they also want to be “a lawyer for animals.” We have one future “operator of an asphalt paver. Or at least of a road roller.”

Pretty interesting, wouldn't you say?

Sports and Music

A lawyer is mentioned only once (and it's that same lawyer “for animals”); we have no banker, businessman or entrepreneur.

Journalism (for some reason, that was my answer as a kid) appears only once, and specifically as a radio host.

It's worth looking at how things stand compared with real research worldwide. It turns out that Bulgarian children (or at least those of this site's readers) choose “influencer” professions much less often (for now) than their peers in the West.

In an international 2019 study among children aged 8 to 12, conducted by LEGO, almost 30 percent in the US and the UK named “vlogger/YouTuber” as their dream job, while only 11 percent wanted to become astronauts. In China, it's the other way around—more than half of the children there dream of space (hardly just because YouTube isn't accessible behind the “Great Firewall”).

Another 2025 study among older children—aged 12 to 15—shows a similar picture in the US: about a third want to be YouTubers, and a fifth TikTok stars.

Whether it's a matter of cultural differences—traditional professions are respected here—or parents simply aren't quick to count “influencer” as a serious answer… I can't tell you, but the results certainly make me happy.

One dad asks: “He wants to become a YouTuber—is that a profession? Which school teaches it? NATFIZ?”—Bulgaria's National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts.

Director of a Waterfall

Brothers and sisters often have ambitions pointing in different directions. “One will have a farm, and the other will make robots for the farm.” “One wants to work with people, the other with modern technology.” “My 3-year-old daughter wants to be a doctor who treats kittens, and my son, who's 2, wants to be a dinosaur.”

“Lucrative”—that's the profession one parent tersely named. “One that makes him happy and financially independent.” “Imaginary—one that requires no effort and pays a high salary,” reads another answer. I'll leave the comments to you.

“A completely wrongly posed question. The child should strive to solve problems—their own and other people's… All professions are temporary, but problem-solving is a skill for life,” says one parent.

I, on the other hand, like the question and think it's important, and it certainly doesn't get in the way of solving problems. No argument: the world is changing so fast that the professions of the future may not have been invented yet, and perhaps it's more important to teach children how to learn, how to be creative. How to be human.

And not to give up on their dreams.

Can you tell children's drawings from ones generated by artificial intelligence? You'll find the Digital Stories challenge for children and parents, along with the explanation of why this test matters so much for the future, here.

It’s time for an unexpected but important test. For an experiment that raises big questions about the future of creativity, of what makes us human, of education.

Challenge yourself and your intuition! 15 pictures drawn by children aged 3 to 10, and 15 generated by artificial intelligence. If you can tell them apart, prizes await!

Responses are open until July 1, and the survey won’t take you more than 10 minutes. For each of the 30 images, all you need to do is guess whether it was drawn by a child or generated by AI, and also rate the technique and imagination in the first 10. You can answer just some of the questions, too. The survey is open to children as well! We’ll see whether they do better than adults at spotting the difference.

The five people with the most correct answers will receive a book as a prize.

Why does the result matter?

“Today AI is better than us at divergent thinking, originality and speed, and therefore it is better at creativity too. That is why the very definition of creativity has to change, believes the cognitive psychologist Mark Runco. But how? It makes sense to begin with the most human, the most innocent, the most authentic, the most imperfect, yet also the most creative thing of all: children’s drawings,” says Elitsa Staneva-Britton.

She is a doctoral student at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, researching AI and creativity, and the experiment was her idea (and if you have an idea for the next Digital Stories piece, this is the place).

After I showed on Digital Stories how a generated social media profile can reach 85,000 people without anyone noticing that something is off;

After 1,800 people took part in a test of whether we can tell generated images and texts apart, and the result came close to pure guesswork;

After generated poems were not merely admitted to two poetry competitions in a row but chosen among the best, it is time for the next big question from Digital Stories.

AI already creates content we cannot tell from our own. But can we hand it creativity itself, the primal spark that children’s drawings reveal?

The result matters, and I am wholeheartedly grateful to everyone who takes this test and to everyone who helps it reach more people.

To tell the whole history of humankind in a few hundred pages… sounds like an impossible task. Then to tell the future. And finally, to draw attention to the big questions of our day in a way that wins over both readers and the people who make decisions… That becomes more than a superhero mission, wouldn't you say? I can think of only one person who has pulled it off, even though he lacks the typical outward features of Batman or Superman.

Yuval Noah Harari. You will often hear the name of the historian and futurist in conversations about the future. In recent years he has established himself as the world's thinker who not only manages to untangle, thoroughly and competently, the threads from which the history of humankind is stitched together, but also poses the big questions of tomorrow.

The Salt of the Earth

But how did a history professor become the favorite author of people like Bill Gates and Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Clinton, while at the same time being popular, translated, read and debated? How does he manage to reach people's minds with his long texts in an age when concentration and a deep look at things have become exotic skills?

A colorful figure, beyond the stereotypes. A favorite target for anyone who wants to shine. A vegan and an animal-rights advocate, he and his husband head a foundation that aims to provoke public debate on important issues. The Israeli is at once a widely recognized scholar and an authority. Most importantly, in my view, he is a valuable and powerful voice warning us about the immediate dangers we face as a species. Here is what is worth knowing about him and his striking insights.

1. “Given the magnitude of the danger, artificial intelligence should be of interest to every human being. While not everyone can become an expert in the field, we must remember that this is the first technology in history that can make decisions and formulate new ideas on its own. All our previous inventions gave new powers to humans, because no matter how powerful a new tool was, the decision about how to use it remained in our hands. Knives and bombs do not decide by themselves whom to kill. They are mere tools, lacking the intelligence that would allow them to process information and make independent decisions. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, can process information by itself and can replace humans in decision-making. It is not a tool but an agent.”*

* The quotes are from Yuval Noah Harari's new book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Harari is a legend, a myth, a luxury brand. Inviting him to give a lecture can cost a six-figure sum in dollars.

Though he himself says that a brand is simply a well-told story that has turned into much more. He tells us about Stalin, who refused to let his own son use his name as proof of authority, because the story is much more.

A Time to Be Born and a Time to Die

There is also a stronger story connected with that same son of Stalin, but Harari chose the other one. “Harari”—you can hear his name from so many directions. On this site, for example, I quote him often for his brilliant metaphor that the human being today is not the crown of creation but simply a creature that can easily be (and already has been!) hacked by algorithms.

How is the Harari legend born? A hard question, but Yuval himself was born in 1976 in the small Israeli town of Kiryat Ata. His father was a weapons engineer, his mother an office manager.

2. “How does information flow? As we have seen, the new information technologies of late modernity gave rise to large-scale democracy and large-scale totalitarianism. But there are key differences in the way the two systems use information technology. Democracy allows information to flow through many mutually independent channels rather than passing through the center, so that many independent centers process it and make decisions. Information circulates freely among private companies, media outlets, municipal authorities, sports associations, charities, families and individuals without passing through any government office. Totalitarianism, on the other hand, seeks to have all information pass through the center and does not want independent institutions making decisions on their own.”

By the age of 3 he could already read; at 8 his ambitious parents enrolled him in a school for gifted children. At 17 he was admitted to study history and international relations at Tel Aviv University.

His home country is famously strict about military service, yet he was spared it. First it was deferred by his university studies, then by medical reasons.

To this day Harari, perhaps the most popular thinker of our new age, lives in a typical middle-class neighborhood of Tel Aviv. All while being one of the favorite speakers at Davos and one of the best-selling writers on the planet. Even so, they say, his life is unusually modest. Far from the glitter of high society, which, of course, cannot be unconnected to his nationality.

3. “For a long time we believed that the victory of democracy over totalitarianism was final. That victory is usually explained by democracy's fundamental advantages in processing information—totalitarianism doesn't work because it tries to concentrate and process all data in one place, which is extremely inefficient. At the start of the twenty-first century, it seemed that the future belonged to distributed information networks and to democracy. That turned out to be wrong. In fact, the next information revolution, which is just gathering momentum, is preparing the ground for a new round in the contest between democracy and totalitarianism.”

He specialized in medieval warfare and went on to a doctorate at Oxford. And soon afterward, imperceptibly and unexpectedly… he became a superstar. Forgive me for repeating myself, but he definitely does not like to talk about personal matters and knows how to keep them hidden; from what we know, though, his first book came out almost by chance.

Ask, and It Shall Be Given You

After successfully completing his doctorate, Harari returned home and began teaching the fundamentals of historical science to students from a wide range of majors. The students loved the course, and so came a publisher's invitation for Harari to gather his lectures into a book. Thus in 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind appeared, bringing together millennia of evolution in an engaging narrative, as the historian sees it. Three years later it was translated into English, and today it has been published in more than 50 languages. The book stayed in the top three of The New York Times list for 96 consecutive weeks! Not a romance, not a thriller, but a scholar's account of humanity's past…

Sapiens catapulted its author's popularity to a global level. A history textbook, only written with the page-turning pull of an adventure novel. The reader gallops from the Stone Age through the agricultural revolution all the way to the age of artificial intelligence, realizing along the way that our species' secret weapon is neither muscle nor claws but the unique ability to believe in shared “fictions”—gods, nations, money—that bind us together in groups.

Harari shows how one particular species of primate rose to become master of the planet thanks to its rich imagination and its ability to cooperate in large societies through shared myths.

4. “By skillfully using language, computers can go one step further. By conversing and interacting with us, they can form intimate relationships with people and use them to influence us. To create such fake intimacy, computers don't need feelings; they only need to learn how to make us become emotionally attached to them.”

Having reminded us where we come from, Harari turned his gaze forward. In 2016, in Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, the historian looked at humanity's ambitions to surpass itself, to defeat aging and death, and even to “upgrade” Homo sapiens into a kind of god.

The Beam in Thine Own Eye

In this book Harari predicts both dizzying achievements and grim scenarios. He warns of the emergence, by the middle of the century, of a new kind of people—the “useless class,” unable to fit into the labor market. While some become godlike through biotechnology, others risk being left as superfluous onlookers. As the futurist Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova aptly put it, it is the time when we have to reinvent ourselves.

5. “We humans are still holding the reins. Nobody knows how long that will last, but we still have the power to shape these new realities. To do so wisely, we need to understand what is happening. When we write a computer program, we are not just creating a new product; we are reshaping politics, society and culture, so it is good to have a solid understanding of each of these fields. We also need to take responsibility for what we do.”

But why did a historian, and a specialist in medieval wars at that, step into the role of futurist? I don't think anyone could find a worthy answer. Naturally, the courage to venture in such a different direction has earned him criticism too, but it doesn't seem to trouble him.

Next came the essay collection 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and then we arrive at his newest book—Nexus boldly peers into the existential questions about the future of humankind in the age of artificial intelligence. Into the next step in the seemingly eternal war between democratic regimes and autocracy.

At least in my view, in this paradigm he gets carried away by stereotypes, by black-and-white, emotional thinking. He tries to project phenomena from the past onto a future that, by every indication, is far too different for far too many reasons. But, I am sure, my opinion would not trouble an adviser to American presidents and an author with print runs in the millions. So if you ever meet him, feel free not to spare him.

Love Suffereth Long, and Is Kind

Harari strongly (and, in my opinion, naively) advocates very strict regulation of artificial intelligence. He points out that every pharmaceutical product goes through years of evaluation before it reaches people, while new versions of artificial intelligence, on which the future of all humankind may depend, are released just like that, mostly at the discretion of tech leaders. Yes, regulation is a wonderful idea—at least until we realize that the models keep getting better and are open source. And the idea of controlling such a technology may safely be called an illusion.

6. “A dangerous asymmetry arises. The leaders of the information revolution know far more about the technology than the people who are expected to regulate it. What, then, is the point of repeating that the customer is always right and the voter knows best?

Nexus: a link. That which connects us as human beings and which is only now confronting us with the enormous challenge of technology—the very reason this site exists.

The success of his books inspired him to found Sapienship, an organization that aims to focus society's attention on the most important global challenges. It is headed by his husband, Itzik Yahav, who is also Harari's personal manager. Same-sex marriages are not permitted in Israel, but they are recognized if performed abroad, and so the two married in 2010 in Toronto, Canada. In the rare moments when he allows himself a personal emotion, Harari says Itzik is the love of his life. Although both come from the same small town, their paths crossed some 20 years ago through one of the first online dating apps.

7. “The key question is: what would it be like to live in the new computer network as an increasingly powerless minority? How will the new network change our politics, society, economy and daily lives? How would it feel to be constantly monitored, guided, nudged and sanctioned by billions of nonhuman entities? How will we have to change in order to adapt, survive and even flourish in this astonishing new world?”

Among his other favorite subjects are animal rights, especially those of farm animals. That is why he went vegan long ago; in his view, “industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history,” and “the fate of the animals raised there is one of the most important ethical questions of our time.”

The Truth Shall Make You Free

Meanwhile, he has written many scholarly books on topics such as military operations in the age of chivalry, the concept of “decisive battles” in world history, and the birth of modern warfare.

8. “The end of privacy. In a world where humans watch humans, privacy is the default state, but in a world where computers watch humans, it may become possible for the first time in history to destroy personal space completely.”

Inevitably, he draws no small amount of criticism—both for the way he presents history and for often writing on subjects outside his expertise. According to Ian Parker, “Harari did not invent ‘big history,’ but he updated it with notes of self-help and futurology, as well as a lofty, almost nihilistic calm about human suffering.” Another review of Sapiens, by Christopher Robert Hallpike, states that the author “has read surprisingly little on some quite essential subjects. It would be fair to say that when his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and when he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously.”

Love Your Enemies

One might almost be surprised that it doesn't happen only in our part of the world, but he is often called not a historian but an “infotainment” specialist. And yet, especially in times of frayed authority and a sea of information, his powerful voice is important and useful.

9. “Can we still talk to one another? Civilizations are born from the marriage of bureaucracy and mythology. Computer-based networks are a new kind of bureaucracy, far more powerful and tireless than the human bureaucracy we know from the past. This network is likely to create inter-computer technologies that will be far more complex and alien to us than the gods humans created. The potential benefits of this network are enormous. The potential harm is the destruction of human civilization.”

Harari certainly likes to provoke—he has gone down in history as the first speaker at the TED conferences to appear not in person but as a digital avatar.

Meanwhile, against that backdrop, Yuval himself… avoids technology. Until a few years ago he had no mobile phone at all; now he uses a basic model, saying he needs it only when abroad, in case of emergency.

In the Beginning Was the Word

He describes himself as an atheist but is also devoted to meditation—he practices for two hours every day. Once a year he withdraws from the world to meditate for 30 days or more. He spends them in silence, with no social media, not even books.

10. “In the German elections of May 1928, the Nazi Party won less than 3 percent of the vote, and the republic seemed in no danger. Within less than 5 years it collapsed, and Hitler became an absolute dictator. This reversal is usually explained by the financial crisis of 1929 and the global depression that followed. Whereas before the crash of the American stock markets that year unemployment in Germany was around 4.5 percent, by early 1932 it had reached almost 25 percent.

If three years of high unemployment could turn a seemingly prosperous democracy into the most brutal totalitarian regime history has known, what might happen to democracies when, in the twenty-first century, automation causes even greater upheavals in the job market?”

And though he lives modestly, at the height of the COVID pandemic, when Donald Trump cut American funding to the World Health Organization, his foundation supported it with $1 million.

His political views are clearly liberal; he is no great fan of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his policies.

Give, and It Shall Be Given unto You

What is his greatest fear? That we will destroy humankind without even understanding what we have lost. Whom does he admire? On a personal level, a friend who is a single mother of two children in difficult times. But the historical figure he bows down to is Mikhail Gorbachev, because he probably saved the world from a Third World War.

What secret would he like to share with everyone else? “The people who run the world don't understand it.”

11. “Before the advent of newspapers, radio and other modern information technologies, no large society had managed to combine free debate with institutional trust, which is why democracy was impossible on a large scale. Will the rise of the new computer network make it impossible once again? One of the difficulties is that the computer network makes it easier to join the conversation. In the past, organizations such as newspapers, radio stations and traditional political parties acted as a sieve that determined who got heard in the public sphere. Social media has undermined the role of that sieve, making public conversation more open but also more chaotic.”

People often say he is a posthumanist—an advocate of the school of thought holding that humans should continue their evolution together with technology as a new, different biological species. He denies it, because using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to change human beings is, in his words, “an extremely dangerous idea.”

While It Is Day, the Night Cometh

“I am definitely not a prophet or a guru. I don't predict the future, and I don't think anyone can. History is not deterministic, and nobody has any idea what the world will look like in 2050. All I do is use my knowledge of history to raise questions about the future and to map out possible scenarios, highlighting the most dangerous ones in the hope that we can prevent them,” the professor explains.

12. “As far as we know today, primates, rats and the other living creatures on this planet may be the only conscious beings in the entire universe. We have created a nonconscious but extremely powerful ‘alien’ intelligence. If we do not use it properly, it could end not only human dominion over the planet but also extinguish the flame of consciousness itself, leaving the universe shrouded in impenetrable darkness. It is our responsibility not to let that happen.”

His middle name is a variant of Noah. Could knowledge itself be the Noah's Ark of the future, the one that will save us in turbulent times ahead?

“AI may enslave or destroy us,” runs another popular quote of his, one that came long before we reached advanced artificial intelligence. Harari is certainly among the authorities who were the first to draw public attention to the dangers that come with it. And even if that were his only contribution, it truly matters to every one of us.

“I am glad to see that many people are already concerned about these dangers. I am less glad that instead of uniting against common threats, we are fighting and blaming one another,” says the historian, and I don't think he could be more right.

Especially if we take the next steps too—talk more about these dangers and bring more important perspectives into the conversation. Before it's too late. What will historians write about today's technological times? And will there even be historians? It's up to us. For now.

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. 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 right at home, and the show begins.

Eastern wisdom meets Western polish. One of the richest Americans, the only one on the list who was born in China (…in a manner of speaking). His story arrives to show that even today strong personalities matter. It is worth walking his wonderfully curious path together, and hearing his views on the future we are all going to live in.

We Wash Dishes of All Kinds

“1978 – 1983 – dishwasher, busboy and waiter”

“1993 to present – founder and CEO of NVIDIA”

That is how our hero's résumé reads if you decide to look up his profile on the “professional Facebook”—LinkedIn. If you have never wandered into that social network, it is usually the place where people in IT raise the stakes and present themselves in the best possible light to impress their potential next employers. It is also the platform where, now and then, deeper and more meaningful conversations manage to happen, often with the participation of the people who actually make the decisions.

And yet, Jensen Huang washed dishes until '83, then did nothing for 10 years. Shortly before our triumph at USA '94—Bulgaria's legendary run to the World Cup semifinals—he founded a company that quite a few people only learned about in recent years, with the boom in artificial intelligence. How is that possible?!

This Year, Conductors

Let me hurry to tell you: it isn't true.

During the hiatus, the interval between the two jobs, he was preparing for everything that came next. Then again, Jensen definitely has a taste for presenting himself. At least in my modest bubble, since the days when Steve Jobs showed off the next technological breakthroughs, our hero is the first universally acknowledged master of the art. He made the leather jacket his trademark, grew used to the spotlight and to great expectations.

At the epicenter of the explosion in artificial intelligence were the companies developing one impressive model after another, led by OpenAI. But so were the companies on whose shoulders this enormous progress rests. Because the work of scientists in machine learning advanced generation after generation, while the technological limits often came from the capabilities of the hardware.

And then came NVIDIA. A company founded decades earlier to make chips for playing realistic computer games. Suddenly it turned out to be the lord of the most important ingredients, the ones capable of powering the next generations of artificial intelligence models.

Chip 'n Dale

Just how drastic was this change? NVIDIA became not merely the company with the highest stock market value in the world, but the most valuable company that has ever existed. Then it broke another record—for the steepest drop in market value. That happened on the day the Chinese company DeepSeek brought its new AI model onto the stage, showing that perhaps we are not quite so dependent on the most expensive chips to take the next big steps in AI.

Suffice it to add that, until then, the only companies ever valued at 3 trillion (3,000,000,000,000!) dollars were Apple and Microsoft.

And on that list… why is the name so hard to pronounce? It comes from invidia, the Latin word for “envy,” and NV, “next vision.” “Next vision” was a term the company used early on to label its files. Computer-nerd in-jokes, which nonetheless turned into one of the most famous trademarks around.

The markets have lost their minds, humanity has gone mad, you might say. But there is a reason. If we need a few more concrete figures: NVIDIA's sales for 2004 came to $89 million. This year the company makes that much in sales every… 26 hours!

黃仁勳

No, I am not insulting you with what I wrote above—that is our hero's name according to his first documents. Huang Jen-Hsun was born in 1963 in the Republic of China. What is that, you may ask—hasn't China been a People's Republic for quite a while now? Exactly. It is the official name taken by the island of Taiwan, home to Mr. Huang's native city of Tainan.

Life, however, quickly carried him to the other side of the Pacific, where Jen-Hsun officially changed his name, and so Jensen Huang was “born.” Today his personal fortune is estimated at around 120 billion dollars, which puts him very close to the top 10 richest people in the world. He owns about 3.4 percent of the company that is the newest unavoidable force in the world of technology (and in the rest of the world too, which lately is ever more tightly bound to it).

But how does this happen to a man who writes that, until the age of 30, his experience was as a “dishwasher, busboy and waiter”?! The American Dream in action, pure luck? Or a combination of enterprise, persistence, sensible decisions… and the right moment, when artificial intelligence became the world's number one topic and it turned out that its progress rests, to a large extent, on the very company Jensen created.

Kung Fu Panda

His father, Huang Hsing-tai, was a chemical engineer, and his mother, Lo Tsai-hsiu, a primary school teacher. When he was 6, the family moved to Thailand, to the capital, Bangkok. His parents, however, were looking east (yes, when you keep going east, even the West becomes the East). His father went to New York for training, liked it, and decided the future lay there. First he sent the 9-year-old Jensen and his brother, a year older, to their uncle. The family lived in a small provincial town in the state of Washington, where the children faced serious hardships.

An unfortunate mistake occurred. The uncle and aunt had read somewhere that they had chosen a prestigious school… and it turned out to be a boarding school for troubled kids. Jensen was made to clean the toilets every day, while his brother worked on a tobacco farm. In a town without many immigrants, the boys were bullied by their classmates, who not only insulted them but threatened them with knives.

A few years later the family was reunited in Oregon. Fascinated by computers since childhood, Jensen enrolled at the state university, where he studied computer science and integrated circuit design. So perhaps his experience before 30 wasn't only about serving and delivering?

His own joke aside, he began his career in that notorious year, 1984, as a chip designer at AMD. The company, whose abbreviation stands for “Advanced Micro Devices,” would for many years be closely tied to the great chip battle with Jensen's future “offspring,” the two sharing a tightly intertwined history worthy of a Taiwanese version of The Bold and the Beautiful.

His next workplace was LSI Corporation, where he led the development of modern chips. Meanwhile, he did not abandon his education—by 1992 he held a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford.

Envy, Anyone?

The fairy tale of his success, as we have seen, begins a year later. “In 1993, I founded NVIDIA with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem to solve the problem of 3D graphics for PCs,” Jensen writes modestly and laconically in his LinkedIn profile. “Our pioneering work in accelerated computing led to the reinvention of modern computer graphics and the creation of modern AI.”

Is that so? It is. Every powerful story can be told in two sentences, but in most cases it loses something in the process.

Today NVIDIA employs 32,000 people. “And we are looking for talented, driven, adventurous people ready to take on challenges no one else can solve. NVIDIA employees create technology that moves all of humanity forward and support the communities where they work and live.”

Jensen Huang and company certainly do not owe their success to chance. They owe it to professionalism and innovation, because over all three decades of computer development they have paved the way for the technologies that followed.

Both Micro and Soft

Software is a wonderful direction to grow in—ask Bill Gates. Programs also support a huge part of today's Bulgarian IT sector, which never stops being attractive and growing, even now that AI poses serious challenges to it. Over the past decades, hardware definitely stayed in software's shadow. Technology advanced, computers grew better and faster—you may remember the days when a few megabytes were the limit of what you could store. Then came cloud services, and hardware—the computers themselves with all their components—became an important but banal topic; the next solutions simply kept arriving.

And then came ChatGPT, and the world turned its gaze to artificial intelligence. Every new model keeps impressing with yet another big success, with the new capabilities it gives us (which I often show on this site). Suddenly it turned out that the “machine” itself was crucial once again. That hardware progress is undeniable, but there is one particular detail that matters enormously in the age of artificial intelligence. But what does AI have to do with a company created to do its best at displaying ever more perfect three-dimensional graphics, ever more realistic virtual reality…?

The processor is the heart of your computer. It processes data, distributes it, “runs” the code. With the rise of machine learning, which for a long time even scientists refused to call “artificial intelligence,” things changed. Graphics processors, chips whose role until then had been merely to display, moved to center stage. They are made mainly by two large companies, and they turned out to be an extremely valuable resource. It became clear that they have no rival when parallel computing is needed—which is exactly how today's machine learning algorithms work.

The Players' Game

No one could have foreseen anything of the kind back in '93, which in technological time is so very far away. Yes, computers had developed by then and had already made it into homes. But even the mass internet was still a distant illusion, and one of the undisputed uses of the time was games. A serious race was taking shape in the field of graphics processors, and NVIDIA joined it with a flying start. Jensen launched the venture with two friends, who gradually faded into the shadow of the media spotlight. The starting capital was a modest $40,000, but investors were found relatively quickly. Developing chips is certainly a more expensive undertaking than software; it cannot happen without serious money.

But it is also harder. The company's first chip was a failure. Then, in 1997, came the second—RIVA 128—and it became a market hit. Soon after, the GeForce 256 established Huang's firm as the leader in the industry.

The battle played out in a particularly interesting way. In 1996 more than 30 companies were racing to offer new graphics cards, while five years later only 2 had survived—NVIDIA and the Canadian ATI. A little later, the rival was sold to AMD, and so we arrive at 2018, when our hero's company held 3/4 of the graphics processor market against 1/4 for the other giant, with almost no one else on the market.

I mentioned the curious connection between the two mastodons of the field. A great battle, free competition! You may have heard the story of the two Dassler brothers, who created the sports giants Adidas and Puma. Well, a similar plot is unfolding in the era of advanced graphics chips. Since 2014, AMD has been led by Lisa Su, who is Jensen's niece.

Programs and More Programs!

NVIDIA went public in 1999. When its share price reached 100 dollars, Jensen had the company logo tattooed on his left shoulder. He says he will hardly ever get a second tattoo. If he has broken his promise, we have no way of knowing, since you will hardly ever see him at a public event without his signature leather jacket.

Pavel Durov's children number 106, Elon Musk's 14 (so far). Compared to them, Jensen is terribly boring. He met his wife, Lori Mills, while teaching her at university. They have a boy and a girl with the typically Taiwanese names Spencer and Madison. For a long time Spencer made his living from the bar he opened in his father's homeland. Then he decided he had had enough cocktails and started work as a product manager at NVIDIA. Madison ran a hotel for many years before she, too, joined the ranks of the family company.

Jensen and family give generously to charity and work with the foundations of Bill and Melinda Gates. The Huang family has set aside a whole billion dollars to support students in California.

He was absent from the inauguration of the new American president, unlike the familiar faces of the software world. He was even asked about it, and he said he had been busy traveling to celebrate the Lunar New Year with his colleagues. But, by all appearances, a great deal will yet depend on him and his company.

Papa Carlo

“I think there are three conditions for people to be able to do their life's work,” Jensen reveals his credo. “Give them access to information. I don't make decisions where only one person needs to hear them. I prefer an environment where a team of different experts can work on a problem. Reason through problems in public. It's incredibly empowering to take an abstract idea and argue it down to exactly what we should or shouldn't do. A complete company. I try to encourage the experts and contributors at every level of the company to work on a problem at the same time.”

He draws every eye each time he appears at a company event to unveil yet another revolutionary chip capable of far greater computing power. And then, unlike so many promises in Silicon Valley, it turns out that the promise is kept—the new generation of chips really can do everything our hero said it would.

So successful, and yet part of… the biggest “deflation” in stock market history? Yes, when the Chinese startup DeepSeek unveiled its revolutionary model, NVIDIA's shares collapsed at a remarkable pace. In a single day, Huang himself lost a virtual, but still rather remarkable, 20 billion dollars!

Still, this battle has only just begun. And whatever its future looks like, Jensen Huang will surely be an important part of it. That is why it is worth hearing a little more of his views on all the big themes of tomorrow.

Words Break No Bones

“The last 10 years have really been about the science of artificial intelligence,” says the founder of Nvidia. “Over the next 10 years we'll have a lot of AI science, but it will be focused on its application, the fundamental versus the applied. AI will become widespread and make its way into almost every industry.”

For better or worse, he seems to be right. His advice to future generations is simple: “Learn to use the technology in its various forms. If I were a student today, the first thing I would do is learn AI. Get used to interacting with ChatGPT, with Gemini Pro, with Grok. Learning to work with AI is no different from being really good at asking questions.”

“If I gave a computer to someone who had never seen anything like it, there's no way they'd learn to use it in a day. Whereas today you can simply type: ‘I don't know how to use ChatGPT, tell me,’ and it will come back with examples itself. The incredible thing about AI is that it will help you and make you superhuman along the way.”

Huang also says that in ten years “everything that moves will be robotic, every car will be robotic. Humanoid robots, the technology needed to make them happen, is very close, just around the corner.”

Huangis

“I think my work-life balance is excellent. I work from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed, seven days a week. When I'm not working, I'm thinking about work,” Jensen boasts. It doesn't sound very healthy.

They also call him “the Taylor Swift of tech.” How apt the comparison is I will ask Miss Swift's fans to tell me—I'll be delighted if some of them have read this far.

One of the company's recent conferences was held at the stadium in San Jose. Highly unusual and ambitious for the computer world. “I'm an engineer, I'm not a singer. When I walked out there…, everyone went crazy, it took my breath away. I was more scared than I've ever been. I'm still scared,” he says.

Mr. Huang's presentations are, as a rule, meaningful, polished and engaging. And, without fail, they feature his trademark—the leather jacket, which seems to have gone out of fashion so long ago. “Leather jackets can be a sign of an edge: a willingness to break the rules, to do things differently and to challenge the status quo,” says fashion stylist Serra Murphy. “Jensen's signature style gives him a relaxed, approachable energy.”

Definitely. The interesting, strong personalities are still out there—the ones who not only draw the future but also stir our hearts.

But where will this New Age biker from the Republic of China lead us on his motorcycle? The most interesting part is surely yet to come. In the world of technology, and in the world of interesting stories. Of the personalities who draw tomorrow. Safe travels, 生 Jensen!

“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.

An author who one day should make it into literature textbooks… if, of course, there are still textbooks by then. And literature. That will happen only if we don’t lose the battle for the future to a future we are not ready for.

Department for Relations with Reality*

*The subheadings are also titles of works by Ivan Popov

The most important thing is to do what you do with heart… and with кеф (kef, sheer enjoyment). K.E.F.—but as an abbreviation of the Bulgarian for “cyberpunk, heuristics and futurology”—was the name of the website where for several years Popov, who described himself as its “irresponsible editor,” published most of his essays. He also created the pages Podkrushieto and Laboratoriya po ezikovo inzhenerstvo (Laboratory of Language Engineering).

Born on May 28, 1970, in Sofia, Ivan Popov graduated in physics and went to work at the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS). He ended up in the department where not only digitization but also the early applications of machine learning first arrived in earnest. He worked on neural networks at a time when even in the West this sounded like an exotic field.

“Historical time flows unevenly,” writes Ivan Popov. “Long epochs of stagnation, when it seems that the order is eternal and everything stays the same as ever, are suddenly interrupted by periods of turbulent development (and sometimes of degradation). And when it seems that development will go on forever, it unexpectedly stops and a new stagnation begins…”

Well, for the writer time flowed very fast. Yes, he had chosen an institute devoted to space, yet space is almost absent from his works. Quite understandably: in the 1990s concepts were suddenly turned on their heads, and the topical easily proved stronger than the stars.

Besides, by all appearances, Popov was driven forward more by technology. By the broad view of where it is leading our civilization.

Wandering Ants

“According to popular belief, humanity progresses roughly along this scenario: technology develops constantly, and as a result life keeps getting better,” writes Ivan Popov. “At some point, in keeping with Hegel, quantity turns into quality and the social order changes (from primitive to slave-owning, then to feudal), and progress continues ever upward.

The moments of a ‘qualitative leap,’ when the entire social structure changes—the principles of the economy, the law, morality, people’s mentality—can be called moments of the arrival of the future. In history so far there have been only a few of them (from 3 to 6, according to different scholars), the latest being the Industrial Revolution in Europe, and now a new revolution is expected to begin—or has already begun—that will lead to the so-called information society.”

In the 1990s the writer decided to stay in Bulgaria, even though his parents set off on a long journey full of adventures that took them all the way to New Zealand. Over the following decades they would invite him to join them, but he would always refuse.

The physicist worked for three years at the space institute, and that period would later show in almost every one of his works. He left BAS to carry on as a freelance translator and writer.

Jesus, Muhammad and Bill Gates: Instructions for Use

“Futurologists predict almost unanimously that the twenty-first century has large-scale social changes in store for us,” writes Ivan Popov. “Civilization will enter a new phase (informational, or post-industrial, or ‘the Third Wave society’; for short we shall simply call it ‘the future’). Futurology strives to calculate the future, while cyberpunk strives to paint it in color, Dolby and stereo. The two form something like a neat couple, like the left and right hemispheres of humanity’s collective brain. In one place they present the future in theories, in the other in images and action…”

Yes, the paths of futurology and cyberpunk rarely meet and intertwine, and perhaps never as successfully as in the words of this Bulgarian writer. On one side come science’s attempts to forecast the future; on the other, the science fiction genre, in which the arrival of new technologies is shown through their social impact and the dangers they bring.

At the beginning of the new millennium Ivan Popov abandoned his scientific career for good, and one of his favorite occupations became translation. Thanks to him, works by Stanisław Lem, by the cyberpunk writer Victor Pelevin, by Nick Bostrom and many other authors reached Bulgarian readers. He began writing essays and stories of his own. He published in the pages of Tema magazine, and two of his pieces even appeared in… Playboy. Yes, a classic and at the same time inimitable figure from those 1990s days of punk and cyberpunk…

On the Apostolic Activity of Muscle Gangs

“The future may be as progressive as you like, as white and fluffy as you like, but for it to arrive, for the present to be defeated, we must pass through a great civilizational crisis,” writes Popov.

“What is more, from the point of view of the present, the ‘white and fluffy’ future would strike us as completely insane and impossible to live in. Just as the primitive hunter is not adapted to life in an agricultural society, nor the ‘natural’ peasant to life in a modern city.

In the ‘great leap,’ along with everything else, the value system of society changes radically, as do its notions of good and bad, of proper and improper. The psychological makeup of the individual changes too; a ‘new man appears in place of the unsuitable old one.’ To live in the future, we need a new coordinate system in our minds. Measured by the old coordinates, the future is utterly harmful and provokes a struggle against itself…”

Popov became part of the Ivan Yefremov science fiction club, named after the Soviet science fiction writer. Even in the darkest times of the transition from communism and the end of the century, and to this day, Bulgaria has always had an active group of people, generation after generation, who love science fiction. As a rule they have stood apart from the mainstream and the commercial, but they have existed in order to make the future.

Yes, their names will be recognized only by people with a special interest in books; for them it is enough to mention Yuriy Ilkov, Nikolay Tellalov, Atanas Slavov, Kalin Nenov. If you haven’t heard of them, it is not too late—that will be the subject of a future digital story.

It was Yuriy Ilkov who invited him, known as the General or by his pen name Makriya Nenov—a special figure in the history of science fiction in these lands, who for decades has made apostolic efforts to make sense of the genre and popularize it. And so Popov found himself among them, among kindred spirits who were excited by where the world was going, who loved literature and knew how to value it…

In Search of the Future Man

“A person’s worldview depends substantially on their information metabolism,” writes Ivan Popov. “Part of the worldview is one’s idea of the future.” In his texts he brings together so many scientific fields and so many directions of knowledge that one could quickly get lost, were it not for the writer’s sense of humor and his captivating ideas, which keep pulling you back.

TIM, or “type of information metabolism,” is a term rooted in Jung’s research that describes the way a person perceives the news and the world around them, and the way they process it and make sense of it. Today it fits more than intriguingly with how we cope with the news of the day, with the sea of information.

Under this system, people fall into 16 groups. Popov writes that he dug into the classification after coming across meaningful discussions at the Sofia science fiction club. He found it hard to explain to himself why visions of the future differed so much.

“I tried to understand why for every debater there are ideas they will never give up, and others they will never be willing to accept…”

He classified himself as an “intuitive-logical introvert,” a person who “sees the future as a consequence of our actions and plans, but not in a design key, rather in an anti-design key: as a consequence of the side effects of our activities.

He predicts developments mostly in the near term: for him, the future is hidden just around the corner, and to understand what it is, we must remember which futures have sprung up before humanity at previous historical ‘corners.’” The same group includes Stanisław Lem, Boris Strugatsky, Philip K. Dick and Victor Pelevin.

The Bricklayer-Plasterers of Babylon

“Horror! The personal communication bot has switched itself off. A month ago already, but nobody noticed. ‘What must my mother in Chicago be thinking,’ Sidorchuk frets. ‘She’s used to the bot calling her every two or three days. That is, to thinking it’s me calling. Though who knows, maybe she’s set up a bot too?…’ It is fashionable now for bots to do the talking, since people have no time. And yet they must show attention to their loved ones.”

The quotation is from Hakeri na choveshkite dushi (Hackers of Human Souls), Ivan Popov’s first and only novel, published in 2004. Curiously, before that he had published two other texts with the same title, which set off in different directions. It is said to be the first Bulgarian cyberpunk novel and was the first title in the Tera Fantastika series. It appeared in a modest official print run of 200 copies, although today it is known to anyone interested in the genre.

The novel won 2 awards—the Eurocon 2004 award for a debut and the HuGoa award for the best Bulgarian science fiction book of the year. In 2005 it was also nominated for the VIK award.

The novel is truly unusual—as gripping as it is perceptive. Short but concentrated, bursting with humor and vision. As the aforementioned Yuriy Ilkov writes, “a strikingly common trait of Ivan Popov’s works is that his fiction is steeped in science, while his scientific texts are highly literary.” Which in this case becomes a treasure.

The book transports us to an invisibly distant future ruled by advanced civilizations that rely on their technological dominance. It revolves around flows of information, and the main tool for manipulating and programming people is language. “Humanitarian technologies” are used, behind which lies social engineering. “Man is a device for processing information. And an object of control by means of that very same information.”

Users: The New Serfs

Sound familiar almost two decades later?

The book is divided into two parts, and the second sounds even more familiar. The heroes head for a “state of the fourth or fifth functional type,” a “mandated territory of evil,” to find out who is behind the cases of human brains being hacked. As Vasil Velchev writes in the afterword, “the allusions to Bulgarian reality during the transition are many, and the science fiction novel comes to look downright like social satire.”

Sometime around 2011 Ivan Popov stopped going to the club, and over the last decade his name was not heard in literary circles. The only exception came in 2015, when one of his earlier stories was translated into English and published in Sci Phi Journal. That placed it among the 120 texts competing for a prestigious award the following year. We can only imagine how things would have turned out if he had won it…

Alas, I could not find much testimony about his life in that decade; I cannot tell you what he did, what weighed on him and what moved him. Nor whether he saw so many of the things he had described come true.

Problems with Reason

“Humanity will be divided into two unequal parts according to a criterion unknown to us, and one of the purposes of ‘human-machine’ interfaces is to spare the user the need to know the internal workings of the machine; the human is required to know only the interface. There are other people who created this interface and therefore must know what lies beneath it, must poke around ‘under the hood.’

We shall call these two types of people users and programmers, respectively. In religion this is the division into shepherds and flock, in politics into party apparatus and flock, and so on. Some develop, maintain and service the interface; the others passively line up according to its requirements. Today the most important ‘programmers’ are the media, show business and advertising.

There are people who set themselves the task of mastering ‘the undocumented capabilities of the device hidden under the hood.’ Such people may fittingly be called hackers. The hacker as such exists outside the context of the social division into users and specialists. In other words, he hacks not only the technical interface, but also the social interface coupled with it.”

Ivan Popov took his own life in August 2019. Few traces of the news remain on the internet; he never liked to talk about himself or draw attention to himself. Which is a pity—readers would surely have been glad of more interviews, stories, details.

As Vasil Velchev writes, Popov would not have included even a biographical note in his novel, because he was exceptionally modest.

Cyberpunk: The Highest Form of Realism

“It is important that each successive type of civilization uses the human waste of the previous epoch as its ‘building material,’” writes Ivan Popov. “The future is born on the garbage dump of the present and uses the energy of its decay. (Example: industrial workers are former landless peasants, the waste of agricultural civilization.)

What waste do we observe today? For example, the jittery crowds on internet forums and chats. This human resource (mainly school and university students and BOWs—bored office workers) could somehow be put to work, for instance in systems for collective (game-based) decision-making.”

Facebook? Or are we yet to find a way to truly seek collective decision-making from the “BOWs,” instead of using them to monetize advertising?

“Paradoxically, as the density of communication flows increases, so does the cost of getting a given piece of information through to society. The reason: the more people shout, the lower the audibility and impact of any single message. Large-scale media campaigns are within the reach of only a small number of big social players.

Under these conditions the system (society) reacts by splitting into ever more specialties and subcultures, by fragmenting communication flows into separate ‘information cocoons’ with weakly connected ‘reality tunnels.’ More and more important information remains out of reach not only of the ordinary person, but of narrow specialists as well.”

In 2020 the collection Kiberpank, evristika, futurologiya (K.E.F.) (Cyberpunk, Heuristics, Futurology) came out, compiled by his father, Georgi Popov, who returned briefly from New Zealand. The book cannot be bought; it does not even have a price… it is only given away and exchanged. A true apocrypha of the digital age, gathering Ivan Popov’s texts from the website of the same name.

Psychotechnics and Ideological Engineering

Just as the internet has its own apocrypha. Although his three websites are long gone, the web has a memory of its own, thanks to which words live on for many years. So it turns out that online manuscripts don’t burn either… (See here.)

“We modern people are used to the idea that the economy must necessarily grow—by a few percent a year. Yet every mathematician knows that no process in the real world can grow exponentially forever: both humanity and the Earth are finite systems, so there can be no infinite growth in them…” writes Ivan Popov.

And also: “In the phase of linear development, disproportions, contradictions and imbalances accumulate in the system. That is, the crisis is a consequence of the changes accumulated in the linear phase, and it seeks a resolution, the elimination of the disproportions through a radical change in the mode of functioning. It is no accident that ‘krisis’ in ancient Greek means decision. And it is no accident that all the ‘qualitative leaps’ in human history, all the instances of a new socio-economic order being born, came after ferocious civilizational crises.”

Progress Through Downgrade

His texts contain serious economic analysis, but perhaps the most interesting thing is the way he combined his knowledge of history with his scientific instinct and experience. Decades earlier he was already aware of all the challenges the advance of artificial intelligence would confront us with. Of the big questions that are truly looming as technology advances. Of topics that most of us still do not think through in depth today, although it is long past time. But besides the questions, many of the answers are there too, and they can sound merciless.

But no, don’t think there is no optimism.

“In the future we can expect a uniquely large information inequality between people. At the bottom there will be degrading masses, their knowledge and outlook limited to the picture tube of the television set; at the top, a thin stratum driven upward not so much by economic motives as by a hunger for knowledge and skills. ‘The crazy new man’ will probably take shape in this thin stratum, will win the competition for resources (= jobs) and at some point after that will become an obvious role model for everyone else, including the degraded masses. That is, he will be recognized as normal and desirable.”

Once again, his father Georgi and the science fiction club launched the first short story competition named after Ivan Popov, whose first winner was the incredible storyteller and friend of Digital Stories Nikolay Tellalov.

The Future Comes by Breaking In

And so—the future. The future is the great theme that is coming. Is the future already here? If we believe Ivan Popov (and there is good reason to), not yet. Because when it comes, nothing will be the same anymore. As Nikolay Genov, to whom I owe enormous thanks for drawing my attention to today’s hero, put it, Popov “develops a very interesting thesis—that classical futurology merely stretches out the present, while the future is always hostile to it, it is its complete negation, so radically different that it means nothing less than its death.”

“The emerging new social order—however progressive it may seem to us from the distance of time—from the point of view of the contemporaries of the ‘great leap’ looked either like mass madness or like a deep, irreversible degradation,” explains Popov.

“The real future is not the one we strive toward, but the one we fight against,” the physicist futurologist also writes. “So it will arrive not necessarily in the most developed parts of the world, but where they fail to chop off the tentacles it sends out. And if we take into account that the more developed a society is, the stronger its regulatory system, it follows that the future will arrive not at the center of Western civilization, but somewhere in its weak but technologically receptive periphery. (Don’t go thinking I mean Bulgaria, heh-heh! There are even shabbier and more disorganized countries, such as Ukraine, Moldova or Colombia…)”

Decree on the Abolition of Society

“We can only regret that Ivan Popov did not write in recent years,” notes the astronomer and science fiction writer Valentin Ivanov. “His satirical cyberpunk was a remarkable, original and innovative phenomenon in Bulgarian science fiction. I laughed and cried at the same time as I read about the mutri—the thick-necked racketeers of 1990s Bulgaria—exploiting the country’s scientific resources.”

“One of the trends I expect in the future is a fall in the cost of innovation (a radical one, at that), as a consequence of the introduction of artificial intelligences (in the broad sense),” writes Popov. “The price of human intelligence will probably fall too. The question is what the future information civilization will look like, and above all, what the future consumption of information goods will be.”

“Ivan Popov had one of the sharpest and most merciless minds I have ever encountered,” adds the science fiction writer Atanas Slavov, a wonderful author who, alas, did not long outlive today’s hero. “Gentle and kind as a person, a considerate friend and companion, he was uncompromising in exposing human delusions and ‘mass hallucinations,’ as he called ideologies and religions.”

“With enormous gratitude I have ‘borrowed’ from his essays,” Slavov continues, “the wonderful analogy of a worldview as an operating system that time ‘installs’ and ‘uninstalls’ in the mind of the ordinary person. The Bulgarian, he used to say, is in a ‘cross-eyed state’ in his value system, because he has lived through three installations of social operating systems—monarchist, socialist and capitalist. The first two have already been ‘uninstalled.’ How do you expect him to know where he stands?”

Toward a Revolution of the Hallucinated Classes

“The historical trend. Human IQ is increasing, but slowly. It roughly doubles every thousand-odd years. And how fast does the amount of knowledge double? About every fifteen. Communications grow stronger faster still. From the shaman, people heard a few one-liners a week at a corporate meeting… or whatever it was called back then. Whereas we get our heads pumped full every minute by televisions, newspapers, books and who knows what else. Now they pump them full through our eyeballs too…”

“The author’s light, playful language does not hinder him—on the contrary, it helps him describe deep and precise situations,” writes Yuriy Ilkov. In his view, it is time “to see Ivan Popov not only as the high priest of cyberpunk in Bulgaria, but as a figure in our culture for whom even the strongest words fall short of capturing and appreciating his manifold creative work and describing the rich nuances of his artistic, scientific and philosophical incarnations.”

“The history of intelligent machines began with a whole heap of idiotic delusions,” writes Ivan Popov. “They thought one had to arrive at a humanlike intelligence. But what the devil for?! Does any other machine physically copy the human body?”

When the Bogomils Were Virus Writers

I also read a comment online—the Bogomils, I should add, were a medieval Bulgarian heretical sect: “If I ever get the chance to meet Ivan Popov, I would find him a donkey so he could ride into the city of the mandated territory, and I would weave him a wreath of palm branches. He deserves them.”

Without any futurist pretensions, I can’t wait for the future in which some publisher will recognize this author’s worth and present him as he deserves.

Will we ever truly appreciate his contribution and ideas, will they help us cope with the future? Will they reach more minds now, when technology demands it more than ever… who knows.

The most important thing is that hackers keep existing—not the criminals, but those who embody the writer’s idea of the word. Those between the programmers and the users, the people outside the system who can change it and make sense of it. Just as Ivan Popov knew how to do, and will go on doing for a long time to come.

P.S. 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!