Some thoughts on the role of astrophysics, AI and ML.

I was reccomended a couple of white papers by a collegue (Thanks Ben Pope!) and I wanted to share them here. Being opinion white-papers they are both quite readable. Is machine learning good or bad for the natural sciences? Hogg and Villar make some very compelling arguments here about position of ML in the sciences. Their argument on the confirmation bias problemm in emulation is something I hadn't thought about before. Similarly theuir argument that using ML for confounding models represents the most conservative point is genuinely good point. Why do we do astrophysics? For a bit of insight into the world of astronomy. Astronomers are kind oif freaking out right now. Economic instability means that governments are looking to shed unnecessaru spending, and astronomers are caught in their crosshairs. Combined with the rapid devlopment of AI systems, it represents a concerning future. Hogg makes a coherent argument as to why astronomy / astrophysics is practised, and what exactly it is…