ChatGPT Shows up at the 2025 Balzan Prizewinners Interdisciplinary Forum

A long time ago, historians of science started to come up with examples of how “progress” – sometimes – needs a push from Lady Luck. Ernst Mach wrote and talked about it at the very beginning of the last century, for example, following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin’s pathbreaking theory of natural selection. Call it “serendipity”, or “chance”, or just “luck”, it can happen in a scientist’s career, just as it does in anybody else’s everyday life. For example, a person may have to endure a delay in closing their day of work at a grocery store, have to cover for a colleague who is late, and be home late themselves as a result of it – but just to find out that, surprisingly, their loved ones are not at all angry, or (God forbid) have left the scene altogether. Instead, they are only more aware of how much they love each other, including how much they are loved by the latecomer of the day. In other words, an unfortunate turn of events may sometimes turn out to be a blessing.