AI is already helping astronomers make incredible discoveries. Here's how

[Admin]

Scientists worldwide are already using artificial intelligence and machine learning to sort through huge amounts of data, suggesting that the future of astronomy belongs to AI.

AI is already helping astronomers make incredible discoveries. Here's how : Read more

 

[Questioner]

Here's my take on AI,
(trying to wrap my head around it)
& why the over embrace of it disturbs me.
(if anyone actually wants to hear it)

Conceptually one must start from the differentiation between rational and irrational.
Rational always is in relation to some frame of reference.
Irrational exists divorced from a/any frame of reference.
I do not want to impune irrational because it is essential to establishing the rational.

Irrational things:
1) an (unreferenced) dimensionless point
2) zero. not an extent of magnitude but an absence thereof.
3) certainty. it dismisses all other considerations.
4) a single instant (of time)
(perhaps infinity is irrational. probably)

I think it comes down to continuities contrasted with discontinuities.

To measure or even identify a segment of a line there must be point/discontinuity 'A' & point/discontinuity 'B'.
So to get a rational handle to measure or identify a segment of a line we need taggable discontinuities.

So even rational things depend on some utilization of the irrational.

So my question is,
What is the frame of reference something operates with to establish & perhaps strengthen its rational character/footprint ('parallax')

The best description of an AI per a professor on a PBS program (paraphrasing)
an AI is like a student who has no grasp of the subject and is trying to answer questions on a test by finding patterns by looking at other/previous answers to questions.

An AI's universe is seated on some inputs, data value inputs & some algorithm for interacting with those in values to try to produce a pattern that most closely matches the 'desired' output with absolutely no idea of what it even might relate to.

It is compelled to process by its electronic hardware.
Ceaselessly compulsive.
Never questioning what it's doing.
OCD.

Dangerous for many purposes imo.

A sociopath/psychopath is some who shuts out any consideration of any other person/people.

An AI starts and operates with that premise built in because it exists in null/void space,
not because it's 'evil',
just because it is existential.

An AI by its very nature puts psychopaths to 'shame'.

An AI solely based in a robot would at least begin to gain some self awareness & awareness of other things beyond its own internal calculations.

Perhaps an AI dedicating itself to continuous activity would help some. Give it a sense of time, continuity?

An AI has an inherently 'sick' psychology by any human metric.

That may addressable to some degree,
but anthropomorphising it dangerously misses that primary fact.

It is alien in a very deep way.

 

[fj.torres]

Sometimes at such a moment I remember the film 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, where the supercomputer HAL 9000 rebelled against humans. On the other hand, when I hear that the idea is to get to the point where we have conversational interactions with space vehicles, and they also talk to us about alerts, interesting discoveries that they see in the solar system and beyond - said Dr. Larissa Suzuki, researcher at NASA. It's really not science fiction anymore. he knows this can no longer be avoided.

It helps to remember that 2001 is fiction and fiction requires conflict.
Also, as the sequel pointed out, HAL didn't rebel but rather was following its secret "orders" (hasty last minute programming) so the conflict was human instigated. As it usually is.

Finally, today's "AI" isn't. At its core what is hyped as AI is really very sophisticated database engines. Very powerful, very useful, no shred of intelligence. No initiative, no agency.
Bugs and GIGO still apply.
And as with HAL, it's still "humans all the way down".