Today my rant on LLMs and the practices of our field hit the arXiv. I was scared to post it, because it is such a weird contribution, and it is so revealing about myself and my own political positions and hangups. But I have to say: I got great and supportive feedback all day.
I got two comments on saying ACAB
in the literature. The Astronomer Royal of Scotland quoted (on BlueSky) the last sentence, which I put there because Andy Casey (Monash, Flatiron) insisted. Many people sent me appreciation and thank-yous, and many people sent me comments and objections. Always constructive. The whole experience made me feel very happy about the state of our field and the way we all interact. I think maybe there will be critical mass to write some kind of collection of essays on the subject. That's a plan for 2026.
Hi, we briefly met a few years ago at Max Planck. I finally managed to read your white paper on AI in astronomy. So many thoughts! I wrote a pretty critical piece (I disagree pretty hard with your assumptions) on my blog: https://mariopasquato.substack.com/p/what-will-become-of-us Just a heads up in case you want to engage. Cheers,
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