Comments on: Astronomers use AI to discover hundreds of weird galaxies in Hubble archive https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/astronomers-use-ai-to-discover-hundreds-of-weird-galaxies-in-hubble-archive/ Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:30:29 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Robert Zimmerman https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/astronomers-use-ai-to-discover-hundreds-of-weird-galaxies-in-hubble-archive/#comment-1627957 Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:30:29 +0000 https://behindtheblack.com/?p=121057#comment-1627957 In reply to jburn.

jburn: With any tool humans create, whether it be a bulldozer or a software game, the real problem is deciding how and when to use it, and to avoid its misuse. With new tools, we often don’t think about this very much and thus end up using the tool badly in ways that are not only counter-productive, but often do serious harm to ourselves and others.

This is the fundamental issue with AI right now. The question is not whether we should reject it but whether we are using properly for the most benefit. And that question is not simply one of practicality or efficiency, but of morality and ethics. We should be asking ourselves if using AI in every situation is not only practical or efficient, but moral.

This is one reason I report about both bad and good uses of AI. We need to explore when it does good and when it doesn’t.

]]> By: jburn https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/astronomers-use-ai-to-discover-hundreds-of-weird-galaxies-in-hubble-archive/#comment-1627956 Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:57:38 +0000 https://behindtheblack.com/?p=121057#comment-1627956 This may be a little off topic.
As a new and expanse tool (AI)- we struggle to describe and define this tools best use and boundaries. It might be helpful to consider a historical perspective, and invent the term AM for artificial muscle. AM moved us from the agrarian age into the industrial age. (Yet, we still to this day retain many of the older descriptions – horsepower, backhoe, etc.) We might romanticize cobble stone roads and pre industrial farms but few of us would embrace the intense physical labor of a muscle powered world. Are we physically weaker as a species having left that life behind? Probably, but how broken was the typical body by 40 years of age during that time? Never-the-less, artificial muscle has magnified our physical strength tremendously and for the most part we drive cars on asphalt road. AM has superseded the organic version to a point where horses are viewed as pets.

Currently, we appear to be experiencing a confluence of the space age, the information age, the nuclear age, the bio tech age, the additive tech age, and many other “ages” of which AI is also part. Will artificial intelligence magnify our intellect allowing us to process vast amounts of information almost instantly or will it leave us intellectually weaker in some form? That remains to be seen, as few of us have the foresight to see deeply into an age which is still in it’s early stages of formation. How will our minds adapt to an all information, everywhere, all the time type of world?

People are already, frequently, glued to a screen – what happens when there is a more direct neural connection and the line between AI and brain is really blurred? I don’t think it’s that far off, as we already see the precursor for the connection – now.

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