The Garbage In Garbage Out Nature of Machine Learning and AI

ChatGPT AI may be groundbreaking, but for the meantime, AI itself will rarely if ever make any groundbreaking scientific discoveries. That's because AI like ChatGPT's "machine learning" curates existing information based on statistics. Show it enough pictures of bicycles and it will "machine learn" to recognize a bicycle in a picture based on what it determined was statistically relevant. It doesn't tell you how a bicycle works based on the images it sees. It has to get that information elsewhere. What it will do is scrape descriptions of how bicycles work and through the magic of statistics, curate a reasonable response.

I can't believe it's not butter

Let's apply that method to something like medical knowledge to identify the limitation. AI won't "machine learn" a medical fact. It will "machine learn" the current popular perspective on scientific data and repeat it back to you.?

Consider the question, "Is butter bad for you?" Today, ChatGPT answered:

"Saturated Fat: Butter is high in saturated fat, which has been associated with an increased risk of heart disease. High saturated fat intake can raise LDL (bad) cholesterol levels in some individuals. However, recent research has challenged the link between saturated fat and heart disease, and it is now recognized that the relationship is more complex than previously thought."

Here's a portion of the answer to "Is margarine bad for you?":

"Traditionally, margarine was made using partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats. Trans fats are known to increase the risk of heart disease, raise bad cholesterol (LDL), and lower good cholesterol (HDL). Therefore, consuming margarine with trans fats can be detrimental to your health. However, in recent years, many margarine manufacturers have reformulated their products to reduce or eliminate trans fats."

If ChatGPT was around a couple decades ago, it would have warned you about the high cholesterol in butter and recommended margarine as an alternative. In other words, it would have given you bad advice, the same bad advice doctors and food companies gave at the time. Just 20 or so years ago the popular trend was that margarine was the heart healthy alternative to butter. Garbage in, garbage out.?

Nowadays, ChatGPT has been updated to reflect that margarine wasn't good for you at all back then, but it has gotten better since. Incidentally, margarine in the USA can no longer include trans fats, a detail missing from the ChatGPT response. Regardless, this is progress, but the progress was made outside of AI. The AI simply absorbed it and repeated it back. There's no guarantee that the information you get from ChatGPT is accurate or beneficial. It will simply follow the popular opinion. And if that popular opinion is wrong, garbage in, garbage out.

Sunny Side Up

Let's tackle a more controversial subject.?

Question: Is the sun a solid body made up of condensed matter?

"No, the Sun is not a solid body made up of condensed matter. It is primarily composed of hot, ionized gas, in a state known as plasma. The Sun is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. It consists mainly of hydrogen (about 74% by mass) and helium (about 24% by mass), with small amounts of other elements such as oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron."

Question: Are black holes real?

"Black holes form from the remnants of massive stars that have undergone gravitational collapse. When a massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel, it can no longer withstand the inward pull of gravity. The core of the star collapses under its own gravity, and if the mass is sufficiently concentrated, it can form a black hole."

Watch a dozen or so videos from Sky Scholar, a youtube channel run mainly by Pierre-Marie Robitaille. Mr. Robitaille makes (IMO) very compelling arguments that dispute the standard solar model. He instead provides ample evidence that the sun is indeed made up of condensed matter, not plasma. He presents spectral analysis as evidence. He points out the errors in the mathematics, such as where a Newtonian concept of gravity is applied where only one body exists which violates the basis for Newtonian physics. And he deals with thermodynamics at length, demonstrating the error of mixing intensive and extensive properties in current formulas. I'll let you watch his videos and decide for yourself how much of what he says is right or wrong.?

But for the purpose of argument, let's assume he's right. The consequences of him being right are massive. If he's right that stars are made up of condensed matter, then there is no basis for believing black holes exist. If there's no such thing as a black hole, then a huge amount of astrophysics must be thrown out and new ideas brought in.?

Maybe someday we can teach AI to explore these topics and propose alternate hypotheses. But right now, all ChatGPT does is scrape the popular opinions and regurgitate them. So if?Pierre-Marie Robitaille and his colleagues are correct, ChatGPT by definition is a prime example of garbage in, garbage out.?

(Coincidentally, Alexander Unzicker released a book, "The Liquid Sun: A Coming Revolution in Astrophysics", which supports?Pierre-Marie Robitaille's views. It is a must read for anyone interested in Astrophysics.)