The Naked Truth: The Algorithms That Undress Us
You are scrolling through your feed and there is a nude photo… of you, just as your mother brought you into the world. You have never been photographed like that, and yet it all looks so real?! This can now very much happen, which is why it matters that we are ready, and that we keep asking the next question: how should we change the way we relate to what we see, so that it fits the reality technology has brought us to?
102Gatakka, ChatGPT the Psychologist and the Price of Critical Thinking
Ivan Vankov (Gatakka), a four-time IBM Champion, longtime tech blogger and author of free tutorials that helped many into software, has worked in machine learning, programming, team leadership, DevOps and blockchain architecture, and is now a freelance consultant to promising ventures. With his vast knowledge and wide view of the trends, he practically sketches the future. What big news is coming after the AI boom, how will machine learning change our attitude to work, and how did ChatGPT turn out to be a remarkably successful psychologist?
103Hollywood vs. Artificial Intelligence
160,000 people rose up in an unprecedented protest against artificial intelligence, which could take the bread out of every one of their mouths. No, they are not factory workers or taxi drivers, but Hollywood actors, many of them known all over the world and holders of prestigious awards, joined by the screenwriters. Why did technology spark the biggest revolt in Hollywood's history, and is it time we all learned something from the stars' protest?
104Do It Yourself: AI That Builds AI
What happens when artificial intelligence takes on its next big job: creating… artificial intelligence? What if we asked the famous ChatGPT to “create” a new neural network to solve a specific problem? Can complex algorithms build their own successors, what would that change, and could it lead us to the next step, an absolute AI capable of solving any task? These questions have many possible answers, but while we ask them we may miss something important: systems already exist in which AI oversees and assists the process of creating its own “kin”…
105“Game Over.” Is Humanlike AI on the Way?
“The Game is Over,” Nando de Freitas declared in May 2022, announcing big news in the field of artificial intelligence. Scientists were still arguing over whether artificial general intelligence, an algorithm able to solve all kinds of tasks the way the human brain does, could exist at all. And while they argued, it turned out that… the argument had perhaps already been settled? That terse tweet announced the arrival of Gato AI, the first contender for the title of “artificial general intelligence,” a step expected to be at least a decade away and one many thought outright impossible.
106AI and the End of the Stock Exchange
Today about 90 percent of the trading on some of the world's largest exchanges is carried out by algorithms, which mostly follow strict rules and do as humans tell them. What happens when they learn to “read” the signs of the market better and take matters into their own hands? Could this end emotion-driven financial crises, open the class ladder to more people, or make the rich even richer?
107LatticeFlow: Making Artificial Intelligence Reliable and Safe
LatticeFlow is impressive not only because it solves fundamental problems in artificial intelligence systems, but because it makes them more secure and safe, issues that grow more urgent with every big headline on the subject. It is also the first high-tech company to position itself next to the INSAIT institute and work closely with it. Even without an official funding round, the startup raised $12 million, part of which will go toward hiring specialists in Sofia. We meet AI expert Dr. Petar Tsankov to talk about building a startup in a field that is only just taking shape, how the team's algorithms help create a new generation of reliable AI across many applications, and the vast prospects opening up for the team that is already working in Sofia.
108Nothing, Forever: How The Bold and the Beautiful Lives On in the Age of AI
Nothing, Forever is a venture as wacky as its title. At first glance it is rather fun: a series, a sort of sequel to the cult sitcom Seinfeld, that runs without pause and without the plot ever repeating itself. Yet it gives us plenty of reasons to think about the future of art and entertainment in the age of artificial intelligence. Could personalized art be a dream, a new paradigm, or the end of human creativity as we have known it?
109“Artificial Intelligence Will Simply Make Our Work More Pleasant”
Will ChatGPT's successors write the news for each of us, exactly the way we'd like it? Hristo Tomov, head of AI at the software company Dreamix and one of its founders, talks about personalized news, filter bubbles, fake news and the limits of large language models. How far has artificial intelligence come, and what does the future look like if it keeps developing at the same pace?
110Where Is AI Taking Us? Five Key Points of View
Is AI the beginning of the end for humanity—or are we simply witnessing a giant marketing trick? Whose jobs will it take, and will it destroy us or grant us immortality? Here is what Elon Musk and Bill Gates, Sam Altman and Jaron Lanier, Noam Chomsky and Yuval Noah Harari have to say.
111Sam Altman, the Father of ChatGPT
Have you heard of Sam Altman? The famous ChatGPT owes its success to him; he runs OpenAI, the company that showed the world how far artificial intelligence has come. By all signs, he will be the next big name. He will make the Silicon Valley news that echoes around the world. His few interviews are worth listening to closely as we look for the big news coming in the world of artificial intelligence. A programmer who never quite happened, an entrepreneur who has seen both success and failure up close. An innovator who landed in exactly the right place. A visionary without grand words. An American of Jewish descent, the first leader on such a scale who makes no secret of being gay. This figure, still hidden behind the chatbot, has yet to give birth to big stories and big changes. And conspiracy theories, everything that comes with his status. Not long ago he set aside from his “savings” two sums of hundreds of millions of dollars each and gave them to research into dramatically extending human life and the search for cold fusion—a technology that could solve humanity's energy needs for the long term…
112“ChatGPT Is Just a Very Expensive Parrot”
“We don't know what nonsense ChatGPT will come out with next, because it is just a vast extrapolation of billions of sources, of terabytes of text. However much this machine seems to talk, it is really just a very expensive parrot. It burns through $3 million a day in electricity and has no idea what it is saying.” Mariyan Gotsev has more than 30 years of experience in information technology—as a programmer, but above all as a system-level architect and analyst. His other great passion is philosophy—he immerses himself in the search for meaning. Add to all this the fact that he is a poet. I was struck by his manifesto for a venture he calls “meaning robotics,” or “semantic robotics,” in which he argues that the much-hyped language models ChatGPT and GPT-4 cannot cope with many of their tasks because they do not look for meaning. Instead, they try to offer the most accurate answers possible through the well-known method of brute force. They look for patterns, yet remain far removed from human understanding, and so, in his view, they have reached their limit. Mariyan Gotsev, on the other hand, is convinced that a new approach could give us a technology that comes close to the human way of thinking. That is our occasion to talk about the much-hyped technologies as overpriced parrots. Can we really give computers common sense, and why does our guest believe the only way is to give them meaning? Can a machine think from a human point of view? Why must our relationship with future semantic robots necessarily be that of slave owners? And why did this computer specialist acquire domain names that he is selling for millions?
113Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: 10 Big Questions
The astonishing progress in artificial intelligence is a fact: technologies like ChatGPT have made it clear that scientists have taken giant strides, and these will go on producing big news. This has pushed the ethical side of such work to the forefront, and the answers may prove vital for each of us and for us as a species. While the European Union and the major powers prepare some form of regulation, the AI revolution is already unfolding before our eyes. What are 10 of the most important questions we should be asking more and more often?
114“Nothing Will Replace the Human Programmer. Not for Another 10 Years, at Least”
Will artificial intelligence soon put programmers out of work? Is the end coming for the huge demand for specialists, the hunger for talent, the good conditions in this industry? Is an algorithm on the horizon that will outstrip human intelligence? How is technology leading to the end of liberal democracy? We hear the view of someone from the heart of the software world. Mihail Panayotov has a long and colorful track record: he has been programming since he was 14 and started his first business at 15. He has more than 18 years of experience in a range of roles, from programmer and software architect to chief technology officer and entrepreneur. Add to that his interest in politics and his intriguing view on why it is time for more and more people from the software world to enter it.
115Who Are You, ChatGPT? 5 Masterpieces, 5 Flops and 5 Big Questions
Which camp are you in? The skeptics, for whom ChatGPT is much ado about nothing? Or the fans, who believe it is leading us into an incredible future? ChatGPT is an undisputed superstar, and everyone has been tempted to try it. Our feeds are overflowing with astonishingly accurate answers, with the algorithm's spectacular blunders and with news about it. Let's try to gather the most interesting and important of it all. We begin with 5 impressive digital stories born of the chatbot, continue with 5 of its remarkable flops, and end with 5 big questions our famous conversation partner puts to all of us and to our civilization…
116“Machines Remain Naturally Unintelligent”
How did underestimating the ethical side of artificial intelligence lead to enormous problems that have shaken the foundations of our civilization? What AI regulations is the EU preparing, and could they slow the boom in the field? How did the web move through its successive stages, and what should we expect from Web 3.0? Vladimir Petkov (Kaladan) has worked in IT for a quarter of a century, watching the past and present of information technology up close while waiting for the future. His experience lies in data and innovation, and for six years he and his friend Elenko Elenkov have been making the cult podcast Govori Internet (The Internet Speaks), now a whole platform of podcasts as varied in subject as they are consistent in quality.
117Steve Jobs Is Risen!
Did you catch Steve Jobs as a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast a month ago? Oh, it was fascinating. “Computers have the power to be 1,000 times more important than they are today. I throw my computer out the window every few years just to make sure it works.” Steve was in his signature form, visionary and funny, as he told some truly curious stories from the history of Apple. But wait… didn’t Steve Jobs pass away? So what? The interview is perfectly real. It was generated by artificial intelligence. What’s the big deal, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Want to chat with Einstein? No problem, technology makes even that possible. Are we ready for the moment when computers can imitate us so well that we won’t be able to tell ourselves apart? How is it possible, and is it right, to try to “resurrect” people by creating, one way or another, copies of them that are indistinguishable from the original?
118An Experiment: Has AI Learned to Translate Yet?
Is the technology finally here for high-quality translation, including to and from less widely spoken languages like Bulgarian? DeepL boasts of being “the world’s most accurate translator,” and plenty of people already use it every day, but how will it handle classic passages by Tolstoy, Murakami, Remarque or Gospodinov? Will we end up lost in translation, or is translation one more field where we can now rely on artificial intelligence, so that the money spent on the kids’ private language lessons turns out to be thrown to the wind?
119A Future Without Crime, or a Digital Concentration Camp?
Algorithms, it turns out, can already predict when and where a crime will happen. Countless lives could be saved this way. Humanity could be forced to bid farewell to that age-old dark side of its own—crime. And what about the justice system? In China, some verdicts are already officially decided by artificial intelligence, and its rulings are challenged only when there is serious evidence. Does this mean the end of judicial errors, legal tricks, the imperfections of the field? Will we put John Grisham out of work? Or will we end up in the terrible final scene of a famous novel—a man and a woman are talking when a steely voice behind them says, “You are the dead”? If every crime can be predicted or justly punished, will our lives become incredibly peaceful? Or will we find ourselves in an over-controlled global concentration camp?
120“AI Is Handling More and More Tasks. The Question Is What We Want Next”
Prof. Preslav Nakov is a specialist in natural language processing, ranked among the top scientists in the field worldwide. Which are the hottest directions to watch for news in artificial intelligence, and in text processing in particular? Where does enthusiasm outrun reality? Are we close to a general AI that can resemble and even surpass humans, is it possible at all, and should it frighten us or, on the contrary, fill us with enthusiasm for the future?
