00:00AI Decoder, the show where we take a deep dive into the world of artificial intelligence and
00:10today we're going to be gazing into the skies and taking a look at how artificial intelligence is
00:15helping to revolutionize astronomy. The latest AI machine learning software can now identify
00:21objects from telescope images such as stars and galaxies as well as aiding the discovery of new
00:27celestial objects. As the technology advances AI algorithms are becoming essential in helping
00:34astronomers tame massive data sets and make new discoveries about the universe such as this
00:41long-lost cosmic blast buried within two decades of NASA's Chandra x-ray telescope data. Astronomers
00:48used AI to make a rare needle in the haystack discovery of an extremely powerful explosion
00:54from an unknown object outside our galaxy. So could AI help astronomers identify the mysterious
01:01three-eye atlas object currently hurtling through our solar system? Well tonight we will show you
01:07an AI generated film of how one filmmaker is imagining the interstellar journey of this intergalactic
01:16visitor. However, some people are warning not to rely too heavily on AI in astronomy. An international
01:23team of researchers had used AI to clean up an image of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius
01:30A star at the centre of our galaxy. Artificial intelligence was believed to help create a much clearer image
01:39of the black hole. However, scientists say what we could be seeing is just a distortion created by
01:46artificial intelligence. So lots of questions there to answer and with me now to answer them
01:53hopefully is Dr Jennifer Millard who's an astronomer at Fifth Star Labs and host of the awesome
01:59astronomy podcast. Welcome to you and we're also welcoming back our regular AI contributor Samir
02:06Millard, CEO of the AI Creative Company One Day. Welcome to you too. Thank you. Good to have you
02:13both with us. Well just before we talk to our guests and begin our discussion let's just delve a bit
02:19deeper and take a look at one of the stories that we just mentioned there. The mystery interstellar
02:24object currently hurtling through our solar system and here is an AI generated film imagining the object's
02:31journey through space.
02:48I was born far from here in silence and cold in a home I would never see again
02:57a quiet ache the sense that you no longer belong where you began. I did ask to leave I was torn from home
03:19into the dark between stars. I wandered no maps no orders only time cold and quiet I watched stars get
03:29burned to fire I saw them die in silence and I left it all mark only little glimmers
03:36I was here
03:40You gave me a day
03:47To migrate is not to lose yourself it's to carry you home with you in fragments of fire
03:59And to hope that someone somewhere sees you
04:29toot the other forms this time in the sun that comes for it. It says it was. It says if you leave your mind
04:33to down an island, make sure you leave the road wherever you wish because your son lives. Take care
04:38And if you'reרת sin you. You've got any visto happen to your body?
04:42Your skin, whereas if it looks like the waters, it looks like the waters of the stars the Tyree
04:50nature of the sky...
04:52You've got a spike
04:54well that is pretty impressive let's uh discuss it then with dr jennifer millard as i said an
05:06astronomer at fifth fifth star labs um and also samir malal of the ai creative company one day
05:13and you put that together i think it took you a couple of weeks yes i mean some people might
05:18say that would take months and months to make how do you do it it it would it would so you know
05:24it's a combination of the the tools that are now available uh but also our talent as creatives
05:31our experience our uh our knowledge uh you know and our ability to to use these tools to make stuff
05:39that would have been impossible before i mean it looks like a hollywood movie it does you know
05:43exactly and look if you if you made this with a traditional vfx company or a studio i mean it
05:49would cost at minimum you know two million dollars and probably take six months or a year
05:54jennifer as an astronomer what are your feelings about that kind of visualization i mean i know
06:00you've just had a quick look at it there but i mean how accurate is it do you think it sort of
06:05corresponds to reality i think there are certain elements in there which were definitely accurate
06:09i think some was taking a little bit of artistic license but i think that's what we have to do
06:14when you're generating this kind of footage is realize it's a crossover between science and art
06:19so you want to get it correct but you also then want to let the imagination and the beauty shine
06:24through and the truth is we don't know a lot about this object yet so certainly a little bit of
06:29artistic license i think is yeah and maybe actually artistic license isn't a terrible idea because i mean
06:35quite a lot of astronomy is quite theoretical it's quite mind-boggling it's quite hard to get your head
06:40around and if you can visualize it maybe it makes it easier for people to understand it's true and
06:45you know what we're really interested in is using um generative technology to create new kinds of
06:51storytelling forms right and um you know young people don't engage with the news the way their
06:58parents did i mean that's a fact but yet they are hungry for uh knowing about the world and seeing
07:04different perspectives and so what i find really exciting about ai and generative storytelling is
07:09you can tell a an amazing story like this that that has meaning that that has a soul that has
07:16that has a you know a creative uh fidelity um but we can get it out there within the same news cycle
07:24that's so exciting this is cinematic news this is something that never existed before jennifer what
07:30else do you think i mean maybe it's hard to say but can you imagine what else ai could do
07:35to sort of unlock the secrets of the universe not only portray the secrets of the universe but to
07:40sort of actually unlock them yeah i mean we're using ai and astronomy in almost every field it was used
07:46to help find this object in the first place the data was captured and it was sent off to computers
07:52they analyzed it within minutes looking for a little moving dot across the sky that was not
07:58registered before something a little bit different and then they flag it to the astronomers and say
08:02hey you should probably have a look at this and we're doing it finding exoplanets trying to
08:07understand black holes gravitational waves computers are necessary in the big era of uh data and so
08:15that's just going to increase isn't it exponentially that use of ai yeah discovering more and more about
08:21the universe yeah so the vera c rubin observatory is a beautiful example of this it's just coming
08:26online now they're commissioning it and we had the first pictures from it just a couple of weeks ago
08:30and that is generating enough data to fill my iphone so i've got a 256 gigabytes iphone it fills that 80
08:37times over every single night with data we can't handle that there's not enough hands so the data goes
08:43off from chile to california it's broken down it's analyzed them by the computers and they get it into
08:49something that we can actually handle and work with and samir just give us an idea do you think
08:54your ability to portray this kind of thing is going to get more and more sophisticated with ai are we
09:01just in the foothills at the moment yeah we're we're you know we're in the iphone 2 stage of ai
09:07so i can't even fathom what it's going to be like in even a year from now you know i started working in
09:13ai two years ago it's it's already progressed a lot more than i thought it would and so in addition
09:21to the technology there's also the process and i think one of the things that a lot of artists are
09:26afraid of is that ai threatens their livelihood but also their process and what i would sort of
09:31counter that with and say well look these tools are here and and in fact they're they're beyond
09:37tools they're like a platform they're like electricity that's what sam altman calls ai and
09:42i think that's a really good way to look at it because what you can do is then build all kinds of
09:46things on top of that and what we can do now is have new systems you know i want to usher in an
09:50era of punk rock creativity i want to be my own studio i want to go out there and make stuff which
09:55is what we've done and you know if if i had to get this made in the traditional way it would take
10:01years and and so it's it's amazing that we can do this now and and i said what you've made looks a
10:07bit like a hollywood movie but that is why some people in the movie making business and another
10:11creative industries are worried aren't they because they think oh it's so easy for people like you to make
10:16this kind of stuff well yeah but it's a big difference with people like us who are who have
10:20been artists and creators and and you know learning how to write for 20 years and direct and you know
10:26it's it's there's a huge difference between someone like us or me doing it versus you know a kid who's
10:32just starting out you know if you if you give uh a 25 year old film student a camera and you give
10:38scorsese the same camera i don't think you're going to get the same film yeah good point um jennifer just
10:44how do you think going forward ai is going to affect the world of astronomy um because i mean
10:50we're just saying we're in the foothills this is yeah this is like an iphone 2 not other other other
10:56smart devices are available i should say yeah um but i mean do you just see this increasing
11:01exponentially in your world of astronomy yeah absolutely it has to because the amount of data
11:07that we're getting is extraordinary we just can't handle it with people anymore and so we need to use
11:12the computing systems the ai the machine learning algorithms in order to make the data handleable so
11:18then we can make the discoveries and that's the key is you know the computers will spit out the data
11:23and they'll say this looks interesting but then it's the astronomers who are actually doing the
11:27scientific investigation still great to have you both with us really fascinating we could talk for
11:32hours but dr jennifer millard and samir malal thank you very much thanks thank you uh that's it we're
11:38out of time join us again next time on ai decoded
11:41you
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