Artificial Inteligence

 I do not have much experience with it. Yet, the artificial generation of nice,  sleek texts  that look professional  is now possible- it was not the case some 10 years ago. There is a lot of excitement about  it.  

As a former scientist, I always had a dislike to smooth flowing  sleek texts and therefore I somehow do not trust  anything associated with the artificial intelligence.  I have two points to make here. 

Say, we place a mathematical, physical, chemical,  or even an engineering problem to AI. How do we know that the answer that is given is actually true?  Whatever the AI tells me,  I can accept  as a brainstorming hypothesis that I  later will need to validate, but not as the final solution. Of course, having hypotheses helps when one has a mental block, so it is not completely useless.

My second point, I never realized how big is the demand for nice looking smooth flowing texts. They flow  like honey or milk and fill many, many pages. There is a big market for it! You can use it as a  high school essay; you can use it as a college essay, you can write a book and add it to your resume, you can write  speeches for  CEOs, you can become a ghost writer for a politician- no end to it. Is it true and insightful? Nobody knows and nobody cares but this is not the point. 

The pages are being filled. This is depressing. 

Russia Internationally

 Many of political problems Russia is facing now on a political level may root in a deep dislike of Russians and Russia on  social, cultural, and every-day-life level. This is of course on top of the fact that  all the countries of the  former Eastern Bloc hate Russians for keeping them as satellites for too long, and leaving them economically and politically underdeveloped. Former Soviet Republics hate Russia as de-facto colonizers, even worse there.

The question comes to mind, what does Russia bring to the European/International  table that is of value?  Simple things that are easy to understand. Tell me.  Is it a good business environment, being trustworthy and reliable? Is it highly developed technology that can be used elsewhere?  Is it culture (literature, music, painting of international significance?). Is it good business acumen and ability to learn and scale up technologies?  Is it  respect to people within the country and to the neighbors? Is it sports and athletics?  Chess?

I am trying to think about something simple here, like 'French wines are great' 'German automakers are reliable', 'Japanese speed trains go fast and are always on time',  'British pubs are great and British comedy is funny' 'Italian cuisine is unbelievable', 'Chinese know how to scale up technologies' 'American National Parks are open to public and very nice to visit' 'Swedes are fair'

Very little of it. Russia does not bring much love into the hearts of their neighbors. 

It takes a long time to develop such love but  it is essential for any kind of progress on international level. Otherwise it may remain 'the country nobody cares about' with all the consequences.