How Did AI Score on Bulgaria's School-Leaving Exam?
What happens if three of the most powerful AI models sit the matura, Bulgaria's school-leaving exam in Bulgarian language and literature, and two experienced examiners grade them? To make the contest fiercer and more revealing, two real graduates and the author of these lines join in. Will ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini earn perfect scores or fail spectacularly, can the teachers tell machine from human, and what do the results say about Bulgarian education and about the big questions new technologies bring?
22What Will You Be When You Grow Up?
What do today's kids want to be when they grow up? On their very own holiday, 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. Of the 350 people who took part in the site's 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? And what does that say about us adults, about technology, about the spirit of the times?
23Quiz: Who Drew It—a Child or AI?
It’s time for an unexpected but important test: an experiment that raises big questions about the future of creativity, of what makes us human, and of education. Challenge yourself and your intuition with 15 pictures drawn by children aged 3 to 10 and 15 generated by artificial intelligence—tell them apart and you could win a prize! Responses are open until July 1, the survey takes no more than 10 minutes, you can answer just some of the questions, and children are welcome to take part too.
24How Are Our Children Meeting Technology? The Survey Results
How many hours a day do children spend in front of a screen? Should phones be allowed in school? What does the technological future look like for today's children, and what is worth learning? In early February I put these and many other questions to the parents and relatives of children up to 11, and the Digital Stories survey gathered more than 350 responses. Here is what they revealed.
25What Is ChatGPT's IQ?
What is the intelligence quotient of advanced artificial intelligence? Does it reach, or even surpass, the average 100 points of today's humanity? And why does it matter? Let's find out together!
26“The Last One Wins”: ChatGPT Strikes Back!
Intelligence hangs in the air: just over 100 people are in the hall, most of them among the smartest in the country. That's not a guess, I can prove it. They are winners of “The Last One Wins,” the TV quiz that in recent years has reminded us why knowledge matters to all of us, even as a species, in the age of advanced artificial intelligence. My fellow players and I have an important task: to face AI together in a contest that can tell us, and show us, a great deal. Will artificial intelligence, with its incredible skills today, beat some of the most knowledgeable representatives of the natural kind? Time to find out. And to learn something new… ChatGPT against some of Bulgaria's brightest minds in a knowledge contest. Who will win? Have we finally lost this battle against the machines too? The gauntlet has been thrown!
27How Do We Introduce Our Children to Technology? (A Survey)
What kind of world will our children live in? And how do we introduce them to technology in the best possible way? I have two kids, and this site exists because these questions won't leave me in peace. And there are so many other important questions that it is time we found answers to. Let's talk them over, then go looking for the answers. Let's paint a picture together of digital parenting today and the way it looks toward the future. The survey is aimed at parents of children aged 0 to 11 (and at grandparents and anyone else who has children in their life). Teenagers' issues are extremely important too, and their moment will come. The survey is anonymous, and you can answer whichever questions you choose. You can also enter a prize draw for hand-picked books and T-shirts with the Digital Stories logo. Responses are being collected until February 28, and you can expect the results in early March. This survey opens a series of important Digital Stories about children and technology. We'll talk about motherhood and fatherhood today, about the changes in education, about the professions of the future. I've invited remarkable guests from whom every parent (myself included) has a great deal to learn. Heartfelt thanks for every response and every share!
28EI + AI: Shoulder to Shoulder, Neuron to Neuron
While we pelt each other with clichés and argue online about whether artificial intelligence will enslave us, leave us jobless or vanish under the weight of enormous expectations, I, for one, am sure it will do none of the things on that list—and a little of all three. AI is here, and we still haven't decided how to greet it: in the economy, in our lives, in the way we see the world and ourselves. The only sensible approach from now on is to learn to work together.
29“Hard to Be a God”: What Do Bulgaria's Tech Leaders Read?
Do the people who drive the world of information technology forward actually read? They read like there's no tomorrow, and you're in for a surprise. Time for a very important and very bookish experiment: I asked 15 leading figures from different corners of the Bulgarian computer world to name their three favorite books and tell me why they would recommend them. Is it hard to be a god? A question for connoisseurs. And why is it hard?
30Can We Tell Historical Facts from ChatGPT's Fabrications? (The Results)
A full 1,910 people took part in the Digital Stories experiment, which set out to test how well we know Bulgarian history: can we tell undisputed historical facts from the textbooks from ones invented by an artificial intelligence out to mislead us? Thirty statements—half historically true, half dreamed up by the algorithms. The results, at least to me, are impressive and give plenty of food for thought: did the AI manage to trip up the participants, and do we really know the Bulgarian past, such an important subject today?
31AI Makes the Finals of a Second Poetry Competition (An Experiment)
Literary circles were rocked by the news that an unexpected contender had made the jury's shortlist in the prestigious Veselin Hanchev youth poetry competition: 21-year-old Hristian Papazov, from the village of Nozharevo near Silistra, had submitted poems generated by artificial intelligence. Hristian (or whoever stands behind that name) withdrew, writing that his only goal had been to draw attention to the issue. I don't know whether you believe in coincidences; I don't. On October 25, a day before the news broke, the jury of another popular poetry competition announced its ten finalists. And once again the selection included… generated poems. This time as part of a Digital Stories experiment. So how, in just two days, did two “authors” with AI-written poems end up among the best, the ones from whom the winners will be chosen? And, more importantly: what are the big questions and conclusions here? Whether or not we believe in coincidences, it is clearly time to talk more sensibly and more deeply about the big questions of our day. The Day of the Buditels, Bulgaria's November 1 holiday honoring the enlighteners of the National Revival, is, I think, exactly the right day to wake up…
32Quiz: How Well Do You Know Bulgarian History? Will ChatGPT Trip You Up?
15 widely accepted claims about Bulgarian history and 15 invented by artificial intelligence. Can you tell them apart? Which is historical fact and which is nonsense?
33What Do Bulgarians Think About Artificial Intelligence? The Results
After a long stretch of collecting answers to the big Digital Stories survey, it's time to sum up the results! What do Bulgarians think about artificial intelligence? Are they impressed by its progress, do they use it every day, do they greet the next big steps with fear or enthusiasm, do they believe general AI is possible, and do they expect sweeping change in the years ahead? Time to find out through the impartial lens of the data!
34(In)Human Resources: A Referee Calls the Match Between AI and People
Can an algorithm land a job? A fake candidate dreamed up by ChatGPT made it to two job interviews, so I asked Petar Dzhuganski, a former assistant referee with more than 250 professional football matches behind him and now head of recruitment at a large software company, to analyze the match between AI and humans. Is the software industry still letting newcomers in, are professions disappearing because of AI, and should workers from distant countries frighten us?
35Bai Ganyo vs. ChatGPT: Will You Vote?
In a matter of days, Bulgaria holds its seventh parliamentary election in just three years, with turnout likely to sink below the records we keep breaking and even more parties likely to enter parliament. Where are the leaders, the ideas, the vision? Rather than ask the pundits, I hand the floor to two undisputed authorities: Bai Ganyo, the archetypal Bulgarian boor from Aleko Konstantinov's 1895 satire, and the newest version of ChatGPT.
36Did ChatGPT Land a Job as a Programmer?
Can ChatGPT manage to… land a job? Or at least make it to an interview, perhaps the hardest step when it comes to your first job? Instead of idle speculation, I'll test it in practice: the algorithm will write the résumé of a young programmer, and I'll send it to 10 entry-level job ads. Will recruiters invite him to an interview, grow suspicious, or simply ignore him?
37What Do You Think About Artificial Intelligence? Your Opinion Matters!
Your opinion matters! In recent years we have split into extremes and stereotypes in how we see technology, and artificial intelligence is becoming the leading topic that everyone has something to say about. What do you think—is artificial intelligence unjustified media hype, or the big factor that will change our future as a species? Will it open up incredible opportunities for people, or turn the world into a digital concentration camp? Now is the time to say what you think! I believe it is important to find out how as many people as possible feel about AI. I will be grateful if you answer 20 quick questions; it takes only 5 minutes. Heartfelt thanks for every response and every share!
38Poetry Comes Alive: What Videos Did AI Make from Classic Bulgarian Verse?
How close are we to models that generate video indistinguishable from human work? Let's find out together with one important experiment. Generative models are evolving at astonishing speed. Two years ago I ran the same test with images: I fed Midjourney classic Bulgarian poems to see how well it would cope. Would it catch the message? Would it create worthy images? Gradually the algorithms grew better and better at the task, so much so that today we can no longer tell the created images from the generated ones. But what about video? What kind of clips might artificial intelligence create from a selection of classic poems? I chose two platforms that take quite different approaches to generation. And the results, to me at least, are definitely impressive…
39How Would ChatGPT Do on Bulgaria's School-Leaving Exam?
The world may talk endlessly about the Turing test, but Bulgaria has its own equivalent that is just as telling: the matura, the school-leaving exam in Bulgarian language and literature. I gave ChatGPT this year's exam with no extra instructions, sat it myself as a rival, and handed both papers to a real examiner, who graded them and tried to guess which one was written by the algorithm and which by an overage school-leaver. Which of us embarrassed himself more? Grab the popcorn.
40How DALL·E “Read” Beloved Bulgarian Books
The Chukchi is no reader, he’s a writer, as the old Soviet joke goes. But what about ChatGPT? Time for another fascinating experiment to show what today’s algorithms can do, both at creating images and at understanding context. I will ask DALL·E 3, part of the paid version of ChatGPT, to illustrate classic works of Bulgarian literature from different periods. Why is this interesting? It will show how well the large language model works in Bulgarian and how far it recognizes some of our undisputed classics. And, not least, because… might it show us some unexpected, different, striking points of view? Could we speak of some form of collective unconscious? Will the pictures overlap, at least in part, with the images each of us carries in our head for these books?
