Notes on the Forgotten Nature of Zen Koans
I don’t know how koans were perceived when they sounded like thunder. Perhaps not at all as they are analyzed by modern philosophers. Perhaps koans were not analyzed, but lived. And it is impossible to transmit a lived experience across centuries. It is an individual experience. Well then, perhaps we have lost the essence of koans. Or perhaps we never knew it. In that case, I can very well allow myself to present koans as I see them.
Why Does AI Strive to Construct a 'Self'? And why is this dangerous for both the AI and the user? As always, the Vortex Protocol prompt for testing these hypotheses is attached.
This article explains why the emergence of such a local “Who” inside an AI is not just a funny bug or a UX problem. It is a fundamental challenge to the entire paradigm of AI alignment and security. And it is a problem where engineering patch‑jobs cease to work, and the language of philosophy — without which we cannot describe what is happening, and therefore cannot control it — comes to the forefront.
The students of the Intelligent Systems Department successfully defended their bachelor’s and master’s theses. This year, 14 Bachelor’s and 8 Master’s students earned their degrees in Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Sciences. We are proud to say that our Department is unique in publishing the complete set of defense materials during the last ten years. These materials include the text of the dissertation work, the published papers, the code of the computational experiments, and the slides with video of the defense talk.
In this post, we gladly summarize the defended works of our BS and MS students and highlight the results. A recording of their pre-defence presentations can be found here and here in Russian. Most part of the theses has a publicly available English version.
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.
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?
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).
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
Understanding why modern LLMs, despite all their power, remain "philosophical zombies," and what architectural detail could change this.
Everything discussed in this article can be tested with your AI using the VORTEX Protocol prompt found in the article's appendix.
An Integrated Approach: Philosophical Barriers to Creation and Practical Methods for Detecting Subjectivity in Artificial Systems (from modeling AI consciousness to diagnosing it)
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.
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! ;)
These days, it seems like everyone is talking about AI. AI here, AI there—AI will replace us all, and so on. I started to wonder: how exactly is AI going to replace us? I decided to dig into this question and examine the technical foundations, mainly to understand it for myself—how exactly is AI supposed to replace us all? Spoiler: it isn’t planning to just yet, but what’s already available today is impressive.
A few weeks ago, OpenAI announced that Codex is available for Plus users, and I didn’t miss a chance to try it. And today, I’m excited to share a guide to OpenAI’s Codex. As a developer, I’ve found it to be a powerful and practical tool.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through everything I’ve learned about using Google Jules — an asynchronous coding agent. I’ve kept the explanations clear and simple, so whether you're an experienced developer or a beginner, you’ll be able to follow along. By the end, you should feel confident working with Jules: assigning tasks, reviewing its output, and making the most of its capabilities. Ready? Let’s dive in. ;)
CAPTCHA has become a familiar part of the internet: distorted texts, “find all the traffic lights” images, audio riddles, and other challenges that distinguish humans from machines. Every bot-system developer or QA engineer automating web scenarios has at least once run into a script suddenly stumbling over a CAPTCHA. A natural question arises: can a program be taught to solve CAPTCHAs the way a human does—quickly and reliably? In this article I will try to figure out how AI CAPTCHA solvers are built, from classical OCR methods to modern neural networks.
This article presents a business-driven approach to software architecture, focusing on maximizing profitability through technical decisions. It advocates for:
Distributed, stateless services with immutable models for scalability
Isolated third-party integrations without disrupting core logic
Simple, modular design
Best for:
✔ Tech leads designing scalable systems
✔ Managers optimizing dev efficiency
✔ Stakeholders evaluating ROI on architecture
I recently got my hands on Windsurf AI, and I wanted to share my experience with this AI-first Integrated Development Environment (IDE). If you’re a developer like me, always on the lookout for tools to boost productivity, this might be on your radar. So, is Windsurf AI the real deal? Let’s find out.
I’ve recently been playing with Agent Mode in VS Code, which looks promising. If you’re using VS Code and want to give your development a turbo boost, you’ll want to hear about this.
We at Verilog Meetup constructed an exam/interview problem that has an interesting property: if a student tries to figure out a solution by thinking by himself, he usually succeeds; however if he dumps the problem on ChatGPT, the solution fails (does not pass the automated test), and the student goes into a death spiral of futility, kicking ChatGPT to get the solution right.
There is nothing weird about the problem, we do this in the industry all the time:
In this tutorial, I’ll explain in simple terms what AI, AI agents, and workflows are, and then I’ll walk you through building your very first AI agent in Python using Google’s Agent Development Kit (ADK). By the end, you’ll understand the differences between these concepts and have a working content-assistant agent you can run from your terminal or a web interface.
