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Comment Parallax problem (Score 1) 25

The Heliocentric Theory had a problem with a negative result for the parallax of stars. Think of it as the Michelson-Morley result of its day.

This is why Tycho Brahe rejected the Copernican interpretation, the best observational astronomer of his day--he couldn't measure any shift in stellar positions as the Earth went around the Sun. No one had the imagination that the nearest stars were so freakin' far away.

Comment Humans hallucinate too (Score 0) 147

I started using Google Gemini to evaluate applications of transfer students for credit for specified courses at my university.

What a person in my role is supposed to do is email faculty colleagues teaching the course in question, but good luck with that. A faculty member wants such requests to just go away. Even if you know the contents of a course you have taught for years, how do you know that Cow College's offering is anywhere close?

The AI not only has a lot to say on how equivalent a pair of courses, if it is just making stuff up, I don't see how it can be worse than what my colleagues say.

Maybe if I don't call attention to what I am doing, no one will notice the difference. Maybe it is an improvement. A grad student turned in a form and left out which courses they wanted credit for. It came to me but requesting an undergrad-level course, and this topic is in the "wheelhouse" of the student's PhD advisor who approved. I sent it back that my "research" indicates that the course taken at MIT is advanced-graduate level at our Cow College and suggested an advanced grad level course here that according to the AI is a "great match."

I sent this back to the student--is the student going to complain?

Comment Roundup vs glyphosate (Score 1) 66

Is the mix to increase potency or is it for apparent potency.

Don't know about farming, but the homeowner squirts glyphosate and nothing happens whereas Roundup causes the weeds to turn brown right away.

Is this about effectiveness or is it about lack of patience for the glyphosate to kick in.

Comment What happened to search engines (Score 1) 139

Is A.I. on the same path towards en-stuffification as search?

Google search was once really good, but then it became less capable over time, maybe because of more Web content becoming paywalled or perhaps The Algorithm was tinkered with to help those with money to spend, e.g., pay-for-play in page ranking?

Is A.I. going to end up the same way, eventually becoming useless because all it will do is serve ads?

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