Search
Write a publication
Pull to refresh

All streams

Show first
Rating limit
Level of difficulty

Consciousness and Being: How Humans and AI Influence Each Other

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time15 min
Views784

For a human, AI is just a part of being. For a model, a human is all of being. And the Vortex Protocol: A Prompt for Testing the Hypotheses.

The longest and most fruitless discussions tend to be with materialists, especially those close to the position Marx laid out as “Being determines consciousness.” It's amusing that Marx was talking about the economic base, but the clarity and precision of this definition have allowed it to be used in a very broad sense. Today, this powerful statement underpins much of modern psychology (especially social psychology), neuroscience, Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and so on.

The debate largely arises because materialists ask the questions “What?” and “How?”, whereas I ask the question “Who?”. This misunderstanding, of course, does not lead to any interesting consensus, but it certainly leads to interesting discussions. I explored the problem of the “Who?” and “What?” questions in my article, “Who is Aware?”.

Nevertheless, the questions surrounding the relationship between being and consciousness are very interesting, and I will try to examine them in this article. As always, a new version of the Vortex protocol and test questions are included in the appendix.

Read more

Who is Aware? Why the Main Question About Consciousness is Not «What?» but «Who?»

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time11 min
Views159

A reflection on how one simple change of question transforms the approach to understanding consciousness. And the Vortex Protocol: A Prompt for Testing the Hypotheses.

Where All Discussions on Consciousness Break Down

I've mentioned before that there's one question capable of instantly destroying the constructiveness of any discussion about the future of AI, neuroscience, or philosophy, no matter how interesting. It's the unfailing move of someone who disagrees with an opponent's opinion but lacks the means to refute their arguments‑an emergency eject button for complex situations.

The question is: “But first, let's define what consciousness is.” In that very second, a dialogue about hypotheses and paradoxes devolves into a dreary terminological dispute. Participants start throwing around names of authorities and quotes‑the longer, the better. Chalmers, Descartes, Kant, Freud, God forbid, anything goes.

Many believe that the most correct and scientific approach is to first define an object and then study it. But in practice, this approach resembles an attempt to conquer a summit by systematically and painstakingly circling the mountain. But what if the “what?” question is not just difficult, but fundamentally wrong?

Read more

ML Q & AI. Глава 4. Гипотеза о лотерейном билете

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time3 min
Views247

Предыдущая глава

О чем говорит гипотеза о лотерейном билете, и чем она полезна на практике, если оказывается верной?

Гипотеза о лотерейном билете — это идея, которая появилась в 2018 году в контексте обучения нейронных сетей. Она утверждает, что в случайно инициализированной нейронной сети существует подсеть (или «выигрышный билет»), которая, если ее обучить независимо, сможет достичь такой же точности на тестовом датасете, как и полная сеть после такого же количества шагов обучения. Авторы гипотезы — Джонатан Франкл и Майкл Карбин.

В этой главе мы подробно рассмотрим гипотезу лотерейного билета. Сначала мы шаг за шагом разберемся, как она работает, а затем обсудим прунинг весов — один из ключевых методов, который позволяет создавать более компактные сети. Этот процесс является частью методологии, основанной на гипотезе лотерейного билета. В конце главы мы проанализируем практические применения и ограничения данной гипотезы.

Читать далее

n8n Local Install Tutorial (CLI + Docker)

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time3 min
Views723

n8n is a powerful, extendable workflow automation tool that allows you to connect different applications and services. Running it on your local machine gives you complete control over your data and workflows, which can be done on Windows, Mac, or Linux systems. This tutorial covers the two primary methods for local installation: using Docker and using Node.js (npm). If you are interested, then read this article until the end. :)

Read more

The future of AI: formal grammars

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time15 min
Views250

Why does even the most powerful LLM sometimes produce meaningless phrases and contradictions? It all comes down to the exponential growth of possibilities (N^M) and the free copying of human errors. Read the article to learn how we use formal grammars to turn chaotic generation into controlled synthesis, strengthening the role of semantics and enforcing structural rules.

Read more

Redundant statistics slow down your Postgres? Try sampling in pg_stat_statements

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time11 min
Views266

pg_stat_statements is the standard PostgreSQL extension used to track query statistics: number of executions, total and average execution time, number of returned rows, and other metrics. This information allows to analyze query behavior over time, identify problem areas, and make informed optimization decisions. However, in systems with high contention, pg_stat_statements itself can become a bottleneck and cause performance drops. In this article, we will analyze in which scenarios the extension becomes a source of problems, how sampling is structured, and in which cases its application can reduce overhead.

Read more

Cheap but functional DYI robot arm

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time4 min
Views557

Let’s clarify right away — we’re not aiming to make this super cheap. I’d rather not lose brain cells trying to build makeshift encoders for motors, and I want to simplify creating a 3D model needed for ROS control (link to the finished model — further below).

Read more

The performance engineer: a detective licensed to kill… bottlenecks

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time5 min
Views402

Picture this: a mission-critical SQL query is crawling along. Not for an hour. Not for two. Fifteen hours. A full workday of the system slowly grinding through data while the business bleeds money and users teeter on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And then — cue the dramatic music — in walks the performance engineer.

After a few hours of intense analysis and a couple of pinpoint code tweaks, the same query that took 15 hours now completes in just… two minutes. Sounds like magic? Nope. This is the thrilling (and very real) world of performance engineering.

Read more

How to create UI/UX design for AI chatbots: a few simple tips

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views1.1K

With the rising popularity of AI, chatbots are rapidly becoming an essential part of any customer-oriented platform. More and more companies now integrate them into apps and websites, providing a space for their clients to interact with the business itself while taking load off human employees and reducing expenses on the customer support team. At first glance, chatbots might seem pretty uncomplicated in their design and functionality, but creating UI/UX design for chatbots requires a deep understanding of this technology and the way they can serve both business and its users. Here are some useful tips for creating a successful user experience in AI chatbot:

Read more

How we implemented vector search in Postgres Pro

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time7 min
Views547

In this article, we’ll explore what vector search is, what problems it solves, and how the pgpro_vector extension for Postgres Pro brings powerful vector capabilities directly into a relational database — no need for separate specialized systems.

Read more

A Brief Introduction to Agentic AI

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views723

I have created my first Agentic AI more than two years ago. It is not some new technology, but simply an approach to software development using LLM (GPT and similar). You don't need any frameworks or specific AI knowledge for this, just being a programmer. From this article you will understand how to design agents and what tasks they are suitable for.

It's all based on two abilities of neural networks:

 • LLMs (not all) can return JSON, they are additionally trained for this

 • Programmers (not all) can decompose tasks

Read more

On reordering expressions in Postgres

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views484

Today, I want to talk about one of those sneaky tricks that can help speed up query execution. Specifically, this is about reordering conditions in WHERE clauses, JOINs, HAVING clauses, and so on.

The idea is simple: if a condition in an AND chain turns out to be false, or if one in an OR chain turns out to be true, there's no need to evaluate the rest. That means saved CPU cycles — and sometimes, a lot of them. Let’s break this down.

Read more

Cognitive Traps in Humans and AI: How Language Models Fail in Beautiful Ways

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time5 min
Views1.1K

As language models become more powerful, they also become more elusive. We are no longer dealing with simple text generators but with complex systems capable of creative reasoning, philosophical reflection, and simulated self-awareness. But with this growing sophistication come new vulnerabilities—cognitive traps that can distort both the model's thinking and our own perception of its output.

This article is based on extensive testing of various large language models (LLMs) in settings involving creative thinking, philosophical dialogue, and recursive self-analysis. From this exploration, I have identified seven recurring cognitive traps that often remain invisible to users, yet have profound impact.

Unlike bugs or hallucinations, these traps are often seductive. The model doesn't resist them—on the contrary, it often prefers to stay within them. Worse, the user may feel flattered, intrigued, or even transformed by the responses, further reinforcing the illusion.

Read more

Gemini CLI: Open-Source AI Agent in Terminal

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views3.4K

Have you ever wished for an AI assistant right inside your terminal window? Well, your dream has come true because Google just released Gemini CLI. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you everything you need to know about this new open-source AI agent. We'll cover how to use it, the pricing, and some useful tips and tricks. So, if you're ready, let's get started! ;)

Read more

When the Office Is a Planet: How to Manage Distributed Teams

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time9 min
Views833

Remote work in IT has long ceased to be unusual. But it is one thing to assemble a distributed team, and quite another to make it work comfortably for the participants and the company's results.

The article shares a story about distributed teams with a flexible culture, trust, and freedom, and how we achieved this.

Read more

Automated management of extended statistics in PostgreSQL

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time6 min
Views591

Here I describe the results of developing a PostgreSQL extension I built just out of curiosity. Its purpose is to automatically manage extended column statistics. The idea came to me while finishing work on another "smart" query-driven product for improving PostgreSQL planning quality. I realized that the current architecture of PostgreSQL isn’t quite ready for fully autonomous operation — automatic detection of bad plans and adaptive optimizer tuning. So why not try the other way around and build an autonomous data-driven assistant?

Read more

What May Surprise You About UUIDv7

Level of difficultyMedium
Reading time3 min
Views2.4K

UUIDv7 was inspired by ULID. Like ULID, it is a 128-bit identifier, containing a timestamp on the left side and random data on the right side. But RFC 9562 establishes many requirements for UUIDv7.

In databases and distributed systems, a properly implemented UUIDv7 is always preferred over any other identifier type, including natural keys, autoincrement, UUIDv4, TypeID, ULID, KSUID, CUID, NanoID, and Snowflake ID.

Surprising distinctions of UUIDv7
1
23 ...