“In the World of AI, Everyone Can Find Something Exciting”
Yordan Darakchiev leads the only program in Bulgaria where, in just a year, you can gain enough knowledge to start working in artificial intelligence. How did Yordan, an astrophysicist by profession, come to create a venture that has now given so many people the fundamentals five times over, and how do its graduates go on to research institutes, to companies like Tesla and Meta, to promising startups, and even to ventures of their own? What does it take to succeed in machine learning, how does this kind of technology help us understand the world we live in, and which directions in artificial intelligence are the most exciting ones to watch?
122“Sometimes I’ll Come…”: How AI Illustrated 10 Classic Bulgarian Verses
What illustrations could artificial intelligence draw from the works of Botev, Debelyanov, Boris Hristov and Georgi Gospodinov, and how would image-generating algorithms interpret classic lines of Bulgarian literature? This kind of AI has been a hit in recent months, a striking example of what technology can already do, and it has given rise to a new skill: describing an image so precisely that the algorithm generates exactly what you expect. So what happens when we “feed” it the stanzas of proven masters? Here are the fascinating results!
123“Now It Is Crucial for the State and Society to Back INSAIT”
INSAIT is the best news in decades for the Bulgarian IT world, and for the entire education sector. As if out of nowhere, a modern institute unique in the region appeared in Sofia at the start of 2022. It was born thanks to the stubborn efforts of Prof. Martin Vechev, whose idea dates back to 2003: applying for a PhD at Cambridge, he had to write on yet another form what he dreamed of achieving over the next 20 years. How did this quiet scientific revolution happen, what are its biggest risks, what will Bulgaria look like if it succeeds, and how did Prof. Vechev bring some of the world's scientists who are building tomorrow to Sofia this week?
124Experiment: Can AI Do Our Writing for Us?
There is no doubt that we already read algorithm-generated texts every day. How does it work in practice? Are there AI-based programs ready to take the bread from the mouths of people who work with words? Reporters, editors, proofreaders, copywriters, digital marketers, writers, translators… which of them could be the first to be “replaced”? I meet several of the most popular apps for generating and processing text. Here is what they have to show.
125GPT-4 Is Coming, and It Promises to Change Everything
In the much-hyped world of artificial intelligence, there is hardly an algorithm more famous than GPT-3. It showed that AI is capable of miracles in a great many fields. And now the next generation is on its way. Although it is running late compared to the original expectations, GPT-4 is expected to be unveiled very soon. Can we get even more out of it? How does it differ from its predecessor? In which fields do we expect it to work wonders?
126“Within Five Years, AI Will Change Every Area of Our Lives”
Will AI-driven technologies really reach every area of human life within just five years, and are we already too late with ethical rules for them? Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova, a futurologist at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, makes predictions bolder than most science fiction. “Within just five years, technologies based on artificial intelligence will enter every field. They will be around us from our birth to our death.”
127Geoffrey, the Man Who Gave the Computer a Brain
Neural networks, artificial intelligence… we repeat these terms every day without stopping to think how closely they are tied to the idea of software that mimics the human brain. That is no accident; the association is logical. The first person not only to think of it but to put it into practice is today's hero, one of the greatest scientists of our time. We owe Geoffrey Hinton a huge share of the progress we see today in the ever-so-topical field of artificial intelligence.
128GAN: AI Has Started Making Up… People
Take a good look at these faces. You will never meet these people in real life, because… they don’t exist! The images were “made up” by an algorithm called GAN, which lets artificial intelligence create new images based on the data it is fed. Two neural networks compete in the good old plot of good cop, bad cop: the first tries to imitate the target, and the second judges when it has succeeded.
129“AI Is Bringing a Revolution to Photography”
“Photography works with a high level of abstraction and metaphor. I didn’t expect software like this to exist any time soon, but it turns out I was very wrong,” says Ivaylo Petrov. The experienced photographer is among the first enthusiasts to get access to a new artificial intelligence which, he believes, has the power to revolutionize photography and the way we perceive the world. See the wonders the AI painted from the prompts Ivaylo gave it, and read why the photographer is so impressed by what it can do.
130DALL·E, Draw Me a Sheep!
This picture was created by an algorithm. “A tiger anxiously waiting for its dentist appointment,” read the instructions it was given. DALL·E certainly deserves serious attention. It may lack the waxed mustache and the eccentricity of its namesake Salvador, but it does thrilling things. With the help of artificial intelligence it turns a description into an image, and with such precision and creativity! The rest of the examples will leave you amazed…
131RoboGod: What Should Artificial Intelligence Believe In?
If one day we create a technology indistinguishable from a human, will it… believe in God? What will its God look like? Might it try to become God itself? Or… simply be God? Technology and religion have always had a complicated relationship. But will they find the road to the future and to the survival of the human species together?
132“There Are Saints on Facebook, Too”
Where do the paths of religion and artificial intelligence cross? And those of God and social media? Father Nikolay Georgiev is just the right person, with a worldview broad enough to offer a meaningful perspective on the subject. Will robots have a soul? Where do faith and technology meet? What moral categories should we build into artificial intelligence?
133How the Algorithm Learned to Recognize Our Faces
Facial recognition systems have become so refined that they are practically infallible. How did we arrive at this technological breakthrough, and why does hardly anyone talk about it? What ethical questions does it raise, and why should each of us learn more about it?
134Hush! The Algorithm Is Dreaming…
How does artificial intelligence dream? Deep dreaming reveals what algorithms see before they “get the job done.” The result is magical and surreal, and could easily pass for the work of a human artist, because it peers beyond the visible and finds its own patterns, accents, nuances and stirring images in photos and paintings. Could this technology also help us understand more about how our own brains work…
135The Algorithms That Sealed Us Inside the Bubble
Recommendation algorithms are the reason we end up in the “filter bubble.” They already know everything about us, so it matters that we learn more about them, too. Machine learning algorithms are neither good nor bad. How much power we give them is up to us alone…
136Singularity: When Computers Become “Smarter” Than Us
Computers keep getting faster and more sophisticated, and at some point they will move beyond our ability to judge them. That point is called the “technological singularity,” and according to Ray Kurzweil, the researcher who popularized it, it will arrive in 2045. Some consider him a brilliant forecaster, others a charlatan. Either way, it is worth asking whether, at such a moment, artificial intelligence will help us solve humanity’s eternal problems—or enslave us…
137Car, Take the Wheel!
Autonomous cars have been a recurring topic for years. We were supposed to be done with driving by now, and that step still seems close… But is it really? Why is this innovation so important and so eagerly awaited? Here is a brief snapshot of the subject and the challenges ahead.
138The Fake News Hunter
It is called Tanbih, it comes from Qatar, and it promises to rescue us elegantly from fake news and disinformation. We meet its creator, Dr. Preslav Nakov, a world-class specialist in natural language processing with artificial intelligence. How can an algorithm tell that a news story is fake… before it has even been written?!
139Robot Pavlovich Chekhov: Artificial Intelligence as a Writer
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” said Hemingway. Can we teach artificial intelligence to create gripping literature, and how will the cultural world change if we do? Here are the most exciting projects and the arguments of the two extremes: that the robot writer will become reality, or that algorithms will never reach the human emotion of a text.
140“AI Revolution!” When the Hype Goes Too Far
“Artificial intelligence” has become such a fashionable phrase, a marketing cliché that is often completely devoid of meaning. We are all excited about the possibilities this kind of technology brings, but sometimes… the results can be comical and even dangerous.
