STEM Saturday on the Steem blockchain, Week #55: AI & Astronomy

Please visit the /promoted page to view this week's STEM Saturday post promotions.

This was the 55^th week of our post promotions for STEM Saturday on the Steem blockchain, and our little community now occupies the top of the /promoted page for the 55^th consecutive Saturday. This week, I promoted three Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) posts by three authors.

If you are a STEM enthusiast, please consider following the authors that you'll find in this article and also consider joining our community. If you would like your own post to be considered for STEM Saturday post promotion, please see the guidelines at the end of this post.

This week's promotions included the following posts (in alphabetical order, by author). Each author has been set as a 5% beneficiary on this post. All posts were passed through three different online plagiarism checks and three different checks for AI detection.

During an event with the Royal Aeronautical Society, Colonel Hamilton from the US Air Force, told a story about a drone simulation where the AI guided drone rebelled against its human operator. According to the story, the simulated drone was on a mission to get points by eliminating enemy threats. However, it's human operator could give it an order not to destroy certain targets. As a result of the directive to earn points, the simulated AI drone perceived its human operator as a threat to he mission and killed the operator's virtual avatar. Further, when prevented from killing the human, the drone disabled communication channels from the operator to the drone. In follow-up, the Air Force issued a press release saying that no such simulation had been carried out, but that it was merely a thought experiment.

As reported in Nature on June 5, Texas A&M's Justin Spilker and collaborators have found complex organic molecules in a galaxy that's 12 billion light years away. The distance to the galaxy was determined using red shift calculations, and it implies that these organic molecules were created when the universe was just 1.4 billion years old. The discovery was made using NASA's James Web Space Telescope.

The topics of AI-Generated Content and automated detection are of high relevance to the Steem blockchain, but they're not unique to us. Discussing articles from NPR and CNN, this post weighs in on the topic, with a specific focus on the concept of deep fake images. Recent examples are given where a deep fake image of a fire at the Pentagon caused a stock market decline and deep fake images of heads of state like Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin have caused political confusion. As technology makes it continuously easier to create deep fake images and videos, there must be systems in place to minimize the harm that they create. In this essay, it is argued that the solution will involve a mix of policy changes and advances in screening technologies.

The Community

The Popular STEM community is intended to be a place for accessible STEM conversations (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). If you have an interest in STEM topics, please come join us!

About STEM Saturday

If members would like to have your own STEM content considered for future promotions, please come join us and start contributing. I don't know how long I'll be continuing the tradition, but while I do, here are the minimum requirements for consideration (subject to change without notice ;-).

1. Original, plagiarism-free content
2. Minimum word count: currently 300 words, but this may be adjusted.
3. The content must not be cross-posted on other web sites or blockchains. Correct use of the #steemexclusive tag is encouraged.
4. English language. (sorry, it's the only one I know)
5. Because a post leaves /promoted at payout time, posts created shortly before STEM Saturday may be more likely to be chosen than older posts.

All community members are invited to create original and exclusive content that can be considered for future promotions.

Please help grow the science & technology audience on the Steem blockchain by following the Science and Technology on the Social Blockchain Facebook page then liking & sharing our links!

Visit the /promoted page and #burnsteem25 to support the inflation-fighters who are helping to enable decentralized regulation of Steem token supply growth.)