I'll stay up front that I had a hard time structuring this episode.

I went back and forth of just how to put this together.

The topic of today is the use of artificial intelligence in astronomy, of which there is,

let me see, a lot, but artificial intelligence, or AI, is this really broad concept that has

not appeared in previous Ask a Spaceman episode, so I can't just say, well, listen to episode,

blah, blah, blah, and then dive right in.

So we're going to have a bit of a split personality today.

Half the episode is about AI, and specifically the kind of AI routinely used in astronomical research.

And the other half is about all the research itself.

And of course, I have my own personal thoughts and feelings on the matter, which will be sprinkled here and there as usual. But to get us started,

I want you to imagine having a friend. Insert joke about this sounding ridiculous. I mean,

who has time for friends when there's so much universe to study, but imagine having a friend, and not any friend, a certain kind of friend.

Maybe you already know somebody like this. Someone very, very smart.

Someone who is able to pick up new information quickly, who can learn new languages like that,

who absorbs complex topics on a variety of subjects with e is just like a mental sponge.

And this friend loves to talk.

Typical professor attitude, you ask this friend a question and you're guaranteed to get a

thorough, detailed, lengthy answer. But this friend has one fatal flaw. This friend doesn't always

get it right. And what's worse, this friend doesn't know when they're getting it wrong.

I'm reminded of a phrase to describe some people and almost certainly never used to describe me.

And the phrase is often wrong, never in doubt. For example, your friend, who is very intelligent and can pick up languages and learn things quickly, will learn French like that in a weekend.

Yeah, I learn French. There you go. Boom, done. And if you ask them to spout off a French phrase, they will.

...