by Christos Zabounis

Today is St. George’s Day, and I thought about sending a photo of the roadf sign on Vasileos Georgiou B’ Avenue to two of my friends with the same baptismal name. I shared the idea at the morning coffee at “Queen Bee” and announced my move to the street adjacent to the Palace. One of the people present told me that I don’t need to spend gas and time, since I can, through Artificial Intelligence, find the sign. So, I filled in the “Ask anything” of chatGPT with the phrase “I’m looking for a street sign on Vasileos Georgiou B’ Avenue”. Nothing. After the app described the street and the sign (a typical one, with a blue background and white font, following the pattern of the main streets of Athens), it connected me to Mapio.net, which in turn referred me to Immobilien in Deutschland. I waited a minute and was asked to enter my mobile number to continue downloading the file. I entered it five times. Answer: This mobile number is incorrect. Try again. I came back with a new search. “Photo of a sign on Georgiou B’ Avenue in Athens.” Nothing again. The image that was found was a general view of the corner apartment building bordering the Truman statue, with a bit of lawn from the garden of the Athens Conservatory and a market vehicle triumphantly descending towards Vasileos Konstantinou Avenue. “Ca suffit,” I said to myself, in my native French, avoiding the domestic profanities. So I got in the car, turned left from Herodou Atticou Street, stopped at the intersection with Stesichorou Street, photographed the street sign, and without the help of Artificial Intelligence I sent it to the celebrants. Happy Nameday!