"Thank You" Seems to Be the Hardest Word

To some people "sorry" may seem to be the hardest word. But to me "thank you" seems to be the hardest word for so many people. In Israel I met so many people in whose daily lexicon this expression didn't exist. Unfortunately, even in the country where I live now, I meet so many such people, who are otherwise well mannered. In both countries the majority of the people I've interacted with have just kept silent in those contexts where I would never fail to say "thank you."

I never complain to these people as I never take this personally. Nor do I even point this out to them as they seem unaware of a deep, spiritual, consequence of this verbal action of theirs, or to be more precise, lack thereof, for which I'm truly sorry. Actually, I've even stopped expecting this hardest from others in order to maintain my peace of mind.

Many teachings of spirituality, including Chassidus, emphasize the importance of not only being grateful for any favor one receives, however small it may be, but also verbally expressing that gratitude. This must be the reason, or one of the main reasons, why the Rebbe said that his most favorite prayer is מודה אני. Since I heard this, I've been reciting this prayer first thing every morning to verbally express my gratitude for having my soul restored to my body.

What is the deep, spiritual, implication of verbally expressing gratitude constantly? My understanding is that this prepares a "container" for receiving blessings that fill the universe by making the flow of spiritual energy smooth and preventing spiritual mud from filling this container as well as the channel that leads to it.

Living as If Each Moment Were the Last Moment in Life

I've suddenly realized that the majority of people, including myself, seem to be living as if we would live forever, judging from how we treat each moment and waste our time, without realizing that the time we lose is lost forever.

Having learned from a number of teachings the importance of living the present moment, I've been trying to do so, but as you can easily imagine, I haven't always been successful though I've made a significant progress in comparison with my "prehistoric" days when I was deeply trapped in the egoic illusions of the past and the future.

I remember reading a highly inspirational book entitled A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last by Stephen Levine. I also remember reading afterwards a similar book entitled One Month to Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life by Kerry Shook & Chris Shook.

Though the time spans these two books propose for their respective experiments are different, the principle is the same. By narrowing the imaginary remaining time in our life, we can understand the importance of the present moment as a direct experience and not conceptually.

We can narrow the time span even further and start living as if each moment were the last one in life. I've decided to start living this way and see how this practice will help me live fully the present moment.

Generative Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots

Generally speaking, I've been an early adopter of new technologies, but when it comes to generative artificial intelligence in general and chatbots as its application in particular, I'm apparently a latecomer.

Having read and heard about ten days ago about the recent meteoric rise of DeepSeek from China, I finally decided to try it as well as ChatGPT from Sillicon Valley, the market leader, both online and as mobile applications (DeepSeek for Android and ChatGPT for Android).

I'm not surprised any more at this and other technological breakthroughs by China, which has already surpassed the US in a growing number of areas. But I didn't know what I could expect from DeepSeek (as well as ChatGPT). In overall terms I've had a very positive experience with both of them since I started using them about ten days ago.

When I saw that I had to register my email address to start using DeepSeek, I rather hesitated to do so at first. But my curiosity about it got the upper hand over my concern for privacy, and decided to go for it, using one of my backup email addresses instead of the main one. Actually, my concern for privacy was - and still is - much greater for ChatGPT than for DeepSeek. Since ChatGPT allows us to use it without registration with a limited number of queries, I continue to do so as I'm not planning to use it regularly, except for comparison with DeepSeek at this initial stage.

This is mainly because I've also found DeepSeek much better than ChatGPT so far. In the past ten days I've asked them the same questions in a number of areas, including Judaism, spirituality and geopolitics. The answers I've got from DeepSeek have been generally much better in both quantity and quality.

I've intentionally asked provocative questions in the area of geopolitics, questioning the official Western narratives propagandized by Western mainsteam media outlets. As I expected, the answers I've got from ChatGPT have been more or less in line with these narratives. In quite a few cases I've also received the same warning that I've violated the rules and have had my queries immediately deleted.

But in the area of spirituality I've had quite meaningful dialogs with both of them. I've also been impressed with their multilingual support. I've asked questions not only in English but also in Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Yiddish and Esperanto and received grammatically correct answers in all of them.

What has impressed me most so far is that in one of my fascinating dialogs with DeepSeek it showed what seemed to be a sense of humor. Actually, I found it even superior to that of many people I've met and communicated with in certain countries.

Perhaps for strategic and similar reasons the US, China and Russia seem to be the only countries that can develop generative artificial intelligence that can affects not only themselves but also the whole world.

In this specific area of technological development Russia seems to lag behind the US and China. To the best of my knowledge, GigaChat seems to be the most ambitious chatbot developed in Russia. Though it understands questions in multiple questions, it can only answer in Russian so far. It also requires registration for its website, and only Russian phone numbers are accepted so far for registration. One workaround I've found so far is GigaChat Bot for VK. Since it's optimized for Russian, I'm thinking of using it as my conversation partner to improve my Russian.

A special mention must be made of Jewish chatbots. AI Rabbi has impressed me most of such chatbots I've found so far, mainly because it has been developed by some individual or team affiliated with Chabad. Quite expectedly, its answers to questions on Chassidus in general and Chabad in particular far surpass those by the above three general-purpose chatbots.

All in all, I feel that I'm witnessing a true revolution that is comparable to the invention of the Internet with far-reaching implications for various aspects of our lives.