21.12.2021
RADOSTIN CHOLAKOV FROM THE RHODOPES IS THE YOUNGEST IN THE "TOP 30 UNDER 30" RANKING OF FORBES - BULGARIA
15-year-old Radostin Cholakov from the Rhodopean village of Barutin is the youngest Bulgarian to be included in the prestigious ranking of Forbes - Bulgaria magazine - "Top 30 under 30", we learn from the site epicenter.bg
The tenth-grader from the Plovdiv Mathematical High School creates software that voices textbooks and makes grammatical and syntactic analysis in Bulgarian.
Radostin explained to bTV that the software aims to improve the support of the Bulgarian language on the Internet by providing linguistic tools for language processing.
Artificial intelligence for the Bulgarian language - this is the most prestigious thing at the moment," added the computer science teacher from OMG" Acad. Kiril Popov”- Plovdiv Maria Vasileva.
"It was like magic - I was very interested in how to write codes, numbers and get interesting applications," added Radostin.
Today, the young programmer is in Forbes' annual Top 30 Under 30 for Europe's leading young leaders, inventors and entrepreneurs.
"It really inspires me. This is a very high assessment," he added.
Now Radostin is developing a new platform in which he is trying to use artificial intelligence to predict how cryptocurrencies will move forward. The student dreams of creating his own software company and building products that are useful to people. Let us recall the biography of Bill Gates (see here), and the fact that the young Bulgarian is ahead of him in his development.
Five months ago, Radi became famous for the fact that artificial intelligence solved problems from the state matriculation exam in Bulgarian language and literature with 78% accuracy. This project impressed the participants in the forum "STEM, innovation and something else", which was organized at the Mathematical High School "Acad. Kiril Popov” in Plovdiv, within the National Program “Innovations in Action”.
The creator of the platform is the young programmer Radostin Cholakov, who finished ninth grade at the high school. He is now 15 years old, but he started developing software at the age of nine while studying in the Rhodopean village of Barutin.
The project, entitled AzBuki.ML (https://azbuki-ml.com/), is an online platform that is a set of algorithms and models with artificial intelligence, with the ability to process the Bulgarian language. This includes correcting grammatical and punctuation errors, generating texts, synthesizing voice reading from written text, summarizing, assessing the mood in the texts. The computer can make short retellings of long news articles, as well as put commas in sentences.
Teachers joke that Radostin's invention is another argument for conducting exams in person, not online, as has been heard lately. The program can help tricksters get undeservedly high results.
However, Radi's last thought is to help with unfair exams. "My goal is to prepare a service for developers, companies or researchers who have no knowledge in the field of neuro-linguistic programming. My idea was inspired by similar English language models behind Google and Apple's voice assistants. I have developed applications for them and I have always been annoyed that they do not have good support for the Bulgarian language," says Radostin.
According to him, one of the main challenges in developing such a project with neural networks is data collection. For AzBuki.ML several million sentences and words were used, collected from the buildings of BAS, BulTreeBank and open online portals. He was assisted by scientists from IICT, IBE and UCHIMI at BAS, with their expert knowledge of the Bulgarian language, or with provided access to data. The platform is also used for scientific and demonstration purposes in several universities and high schools.
The possible applications of such a product are many. It can be used to analyze mood, it can be applied in online stores to measure the success of your products through user comments. Media websites can incorporate voice reading into their articles. Chatbot developers and other smart helpers can integrate the grammar analysis module.
The latest service in AzBuki.ML is software to improve the performance of voice synthesizers for the Bulgarian language, so that a more realistic voice can be synthesized from written text. With this addition, the platform already provides many opportunities not only for developers and software companies, but also in the field of education. For example, the computer will be able to read the text of textbooks to help children with disabilities.
Before participating in his first Olympics, the boy from Barutin heard from his math teacher in the village: "Radi, you do not have the necessary training here, there are no city lessons, entertaining, private teachers, we are not at this level, no wonder you can't do it." I was still young and that disappointed me a bit, but I didn't give up, says the young man.
"Being from the village of Barutin in the Rhodopes has never stopped me from dreaming, fighting and moving forward," says the programmer, who loves the beauty and fresh air of the Rhodopes.
Radostin already has many successful projects, won competitions, scholarships and awards. The applications and programs developed by him are of great interest. From the age of 12, Radostin began partnering with the global giant Google, which evaluated his programming skills. Radostin Cholakov developed two applications for "Google Assistant" and then it brought him gifts and $ 2,400 in the form of vouchers. Radi also made an application for playing chess.
Radostin's parents live modestly, his father works in a carpentry shop and his mother is a seamstress. But they are proud of their son, who has won every Olympics in the region, and his notebook is from top to bottom with sixes. He is a laureate of the National Olympiad in Information Technology for 2020 and 2021. He is also the winner of an award from The Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies, in the youth category, informs the Ministry of Education and Science.
