Speaker

Professor J. Xavier Prochaska, UC Santa Cruz

Sea Meets the Stars: How AI is Accelerating the Scientific Pursuit

Abstract

In less than 10 years, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have built systems to distinguish cats from dogs, translate English to Japanese, and record your sentiment on Facebook. With the appearance of chat-bots, AI has reached astonishing if not uncomfortable levels. In science the impacts of AI have been nearly as impressive, but tempered by the rigor and greater scrutiny of the scientific method. In this presentation, I will review the rise of large datasets in Astronomy and Oceanography on the sky and ocean, and then describe how AI enables scientists to perform unprecedented analyses. I will note the slow pace thus far of new AI-led discoveries and speculate on the future of scientific pursuit accelerated by ChatGTP and its friends.