Pavel Soukenik

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Intelligence in AI: Seeing Past the Symbols

Part 1: Machines, Understanding, and Intelligence

Explore how the debate on AI’s capacity for understanding sheds light on the strengths, limitations, and future of machine intelligence.

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Promoting Transparency in Authorship

A New Standard in the AI Era

Discover Authograph, an authorship label and certification service promoting transparency in content creation in the AI era. Learn how it lets you build trust and credibility with your audiences.

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Unseen Impact

Navigating the Purpose and Responsibility in Our Work

When we’re immersed in our daily work, it’s easy to overlook a profound truth: the tasks we undertake – both big and small – and the reason why we pursue them have a far-reaching influence. Our actions ripple beyond our...
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Interpreting 2001: A Space Odyssey

How Intentional Ambiguity Leads to Richer Interpretations

The impenetrable black monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey neatly encapsulates the qualities of the whole film. Its meaning is as opaque as its surface. The ambiguity of its function is the complete opposite of its clearly defined...
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Winning Together

Fifteen Years of Collaboration in a Single Post

HHH I am sharing this article as a reflection, a thank you, and maybe an inspiration after fifteen years of working together with my colleagues, partners, and clients on building solutions that break down language barriers and make amazing devices...
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ZipChord: Hybrid Chorded Keyboard

Faster and More Comfortable Typing

Thanks to Zipf’s law, it takes only a small number of chorded shortcuts to improve one half of all the typing we do. Trained stenographers type at over 200 words per minute. This is because stenotype machines use chords of...
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Direction-Based Notation for Hive

A Thematic Symmetrical Notation System for the Hive Board Game

This notation system fulfills the following goals: (1) Games that are mirrored, rotated or played with reversed colors have identical notations. (2) Pieces of the same kind do not need to be tracked to be told apart. (3) Every move has only one notation.

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Originality and Ownership in Digital Art

The idea of owning an original digital art can be both intriguing and confusing. How do the concepts of originality and ownership transfer from physical to digital art? And are some historical works of art digital in nature?
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Building Bridges of Understanding

What Should We Ask of Translators

Most of my career has centered around languages, translations, and building technological and figurative bridges that allow people to communicate and collaborate with each other regardless of their native language, country of birth, or the color of their skin. What...
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Revisiting the Big Tech ‘Frightful 5’

What Set the Big Five Apart From FAANG+

FANG, FAANG+ and MAMAA are some of the acronyms used in reference to high-performing tech companies. And even though the ‘Frightful 5’ label has vanished since being introduced in 2016, things have come back full circle to the companies it...
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Corporate Brands and Constitutional Amendments

Four Years Later

The current news prompted me to update and republish this article which I originally wrote in October 2018. It will be a good segue into a problem which was, back then, only emerging: content moderation on online platforms in relation...
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Unlocking the Meaning of Genjo Koan

A Discussion and Interlinear Translation of the Essay’s Opening

Genjo Koan is a key writing in Zen Buddhism and Japanese literature in general. Ten years ago, I wrote an article on the challenges of translating this text to accurately convey its meaning to modern readers. Now, I come back to it to solve two mysteries that eluded me.
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Keyboards and Their Remarkable Resistance to Innovation

The typewriter was invented around the same time as the telephone, but while phones have changed beyond all recognition, the keyboards of today look substantially the same as when they first made their entrance.

Putin-Kasparov: A Ruthless Game

The Continuing Fight for Russia’s Democracy

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted me to revisit what I wrote three years after Garry Kasparov retired from professional chess to pursue his fight for Russian democracy – a fight which has only grown in importance.

What Makes a Schattenjäger

“A mix of good mystery, writing and music,” would be a correct answer. If you are thinking “What is a schattenjäger?” you will find the answer in the game series written by Jane Jensen. The first game, Sins of the Fathers, could not have appeared at a different time.