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It seems like every month, a new story appears announcing the discovery of thousands of new asteroids. Tracking these small body objects from ground and even space-based telescopes helps follow their overall trajectory. But understanding what they’re made of is much more difficult using such “remote sensing” techniques. To do so, plenty of projects get more up close and personal with the asteroid itself, including one from Dr. Sigrid Elschot and her colleagues from Stanford, which was supported by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts back in 2018. It uses an advanced suite of plasma sensors to detect an asteroid’s surface composition by utilizing a unique phenomenon – meteoroid impacts.

The project, known as the Meteroid Impact Detection for Exploration of Asteroids (MIDEA), has an architecture that has become more prominent as of late – a swarm of smallsats coordinated around a mothership. In this case, the smallsats are plasma sensors with one specific purpose: to detect characteristics of the plume of debris from the asteroid after a meteoroid hits it. 

Those impacts happen more often than you might think. Estimates from the authors suggest that they could map the surface composition of an asteroid down to 1 m resolution in around 50 days. And that’s after accounting for some decreases in detections due to orbital constraints and other considerations.

Fraser discusses the idea of mining asteroids.

So, how would this architecture work? First, there would be a main spacecraft, originally envisioned as a Cubesat, that weighs around 50 kg. It would use a standard Cubesat propulsion system, such as an ion drive, to make its way to an asteroid. Once there, it would hover a few hundred meters above the surface and deploy a series of small sensor satellites.

According to the calculations in the paper, these sensor sats would weigh about 250 g, allowing them to use traditional materials such as rigid PCB boards rather than flexible ones that don’t have as much proven flight history. On each, there would be a sensor whose job is to face the asteroid no matter where it is in its orbital path. This feat of astronautical engineering is tricky, as it would also be required to point its solar arrays at the Sun to ensure they provide the 1-5 W needed to operate the sensors and communication arrays.

Each sensor satellite would also have an attitude control technique called “controlled reflectivity.” The satellite would adjust the sensor’s pointing direction by actuating a reflective surface either towards or away from the Sun and using that reflective pressure to point itself in the right direction. 

Fraser discusses some other ideas of what we could do with an asteroid.

A series of these sensors is necessary to capture any plume from a meteoroid impact from as many different angles as possible, allowing the sensors to collect as much data as possible. The sensors would then relay the data to the central hub spacecraft, which could collate the data streams and send a complete package back to Earth. On Earth, the data could be analyzed using a time-of-flight mass spectrometer to determine the makeup of the plume and, therefore, the part of the surface it came from.

While that sounds relatively simple in theory, in practice, there are many unknowns still to work through, including how to handle controlling all the different satellites in orbit around a single asteroid. That would include an overall architecture design that could help implement other subsystems as well. 

For now, though, that development is on hold, as MIDEA has not yet received a Phase II grant from NIAC or funding from any other source. Maybe someday, the thousands of asteroids in our vicinity will be the target of swarms of little orbiters or their own.

Learn More:
Lee & Close – METEOROID IMPACT DETECTION FOR EXPLORATION OF ASTEROIDS (MIDEA)
UT – We Could SCATTER CubeSats Around Uranus To Track How It Changes
UT – Water Found on the Surface of an Asteroid
UT – What Are Asteroids Made Of?

Lead Image:
Artist’s depiction of the MIDEA mission.
Credit – Sigrid Close (Elschot)

The post Swarms of Orbiting Sensors Could Map An Asteroid’s Surface appeared first on Universe Today.

Several people, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson, and Douglas Murray, have floated the idea that the malaise of the West is caused largely because the decline of religion has taken away our sense of meaning and purpose.  Hirsi Ali, for example, has written and talked extensively about how embracing Christianity alone can help stave off the forces that threaten to destroy Western civilization, and names three: Putin, Chinese Communism, and global Islamism. It is these forces that brought her to abandon atheism, embrace Jesus, and cure her depression.

Now I’m not sure how the rest of us can embrace Christianity and its tenets—Hirsi Ali, for instance, believes in the Resurrection—if we’ve already rejected them for one of the many reasons (for me, the lack of evidence) that people give up or reject faith. How can you force yourself to believe this stuff? Hirsi Ali apparently has, but I think she’s an outlier. As Nineteen Eighty-Four shows, it takes a lot of societal change and pressure to make people believe things that don’t make sense.

At any rate, the meme of the “god-shaped hole” in our lives—the supposed lack of purpose and meaning that accompanies atheism—appears to be making a comeback. But in earlier posts (here and here), I asked readers where they found their own “purpose and meaning”, and the near universal response is that we don’t get it from the outside, but make it ourselves. That seems about right to me. (For another critique of the “we need god to fill that lacuna” trope, see here.)

In the long Quillette article below, which is worth reading, author Matt Johnson looks at this claim in detail, and finds it severely wanting. It’ll take some time to read, but has a lot of ideas you may want to absorb. Click the screenshot to read.

Johnson’s quotes are indented, and I’ll give the topics bold headers (flush left):

The Problem: Liberalism and secularism are said to leave us groping around spiritually, looking for meaning. Johnson concentrates on The Christianity Solution, but also talks about  liberalism itself as a filler of The Hole.  I won’t deal much with the liberalism stuff, as Johnson assumes that many afflicted with Lack of Meaning are already liberals. Here’s Johnson on suggestions about what can fill The Hole.

There are different expressions of this belief. In an article for the Spectator, journalist Ed West discusses a phenomenon he describes as “New Theism”—an intellectual movement pushing back against the rising secularism in Western liberal societies. In a recent essay for Quillette, the historian and author Adam Wakeling describes this phenomenon as “political Christianity,” which he defines as the belief that “Western civilisation has Christian foundations, and returning to those Christian roots can help protect Western values today.” Wakeling challenges both of these beliefs and argues that the “success of our civilisation rests on the pillars of Enlightenment thought: constitutional government, secularism, science, the rule of law, and human rights—not on belief in the supernatural or in any specific set of ancient myths.”

. . . New Theists don’t just believe that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the cornerstone of Western civilisation, they also argue that secular liberalism leaves people bereft of community and a sense of meaning and purpose. New Theists like author and psychologist Jordan Peterson, conservative intellectual Douglas Murray, author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and historian Tom Holland all argue that the decline of Christianity will lead to nihilism, new forms of political tribalism, and a profound sense of spiritual emptiness in Western societies.

, , , New Theists believe traditional monotheistic religion is the only belief system that satisfies our need for meaning. [JAC note: Islam is also monotheistic, but you don’t see the New Theists touting Muslim belief.] In the absence of religion, Lefebvre says liberalism can serve this purpose. For [David] Brooks, just about any fervently held belief besides liberalism will do. All these beliefs share the conviction that Western liberalism has been hollowed out by the decline of religious faith. They don’t just seek to fill the hole in their own souls with religion or some other existential doctrine—they assume that all their fellow citizens share their spiritual yearning.

But if Christianity is a source of purpose, meaning, and solace, why is it declining everywhere? (In my view, it’s because if you’re getting better off materially and physically, as most of us are, the less you need a God to appeal to.)  Some data:

The New Theists, Brooks, and Lefebvre all agree that there’s a crisis of meaning in liberal societies. This view has become increasingly common as Western countries have gone through a period of rapid secularisation in recent decades. In 2000, 86 percent of Americans reported that they were Christian. Since then, the proportion has collapsed to 68 percent. Other indicators of religiosity have plummeted as well—while nearly two-thirds of Americans said religion was “very important” to them in 2003, 45 percent now say the same. Church membership was around 70 percent in 2000, but it’s now 45 percent. Since 2007, the proportion of Americans who say they’re atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular” jumped from 16 percent to 28 percent.

A similar trend is sweeping Western Europe, which has seen significant declines in Christian belief. In Belgium, 83 percent of respondents to a Pew survey say they were raised Christian, but just 55 percent remain Christian. Many other countries have followed a similar trajectory: 79 to 51 percent in Norway, 67 to 41 percent in the Netherlands, 92 to 66 percent in Spain, 74 to 52 percent in Sweden. Every Western European country Pew surveyed followed this trend.

This is a problem, for why would people give up a belief if doing so plunges you into despair, anomie, and, say some, an abandonment of moral standards?   Of course the morality/Christianity connection is dubious, as plenty of atheists are moral, and plenty of them, including John Rawls and Peter Singer, have written about how we can get morality from secular rationality alone.  And you probably know the problems with asserting that morality comes from Christianity (especially the Bible). You have to cherry-pick the Bible to get a morality that we can hold today, ignoring things like acceptance of genocide and slavery, as well as Jesus’s command to leave your family to follow him.  Further, as Johnson points out, history shows that the Enlightenment and its accompanying moral virtues came from rejecting Christianity, leading us to. . . .

The role of secularism in giving us morality:

There’s a reason Holland redefines humanism and secularism as Christian concepts. Criticism of religion played a major role in the development of Western liberal democracy, a historical fact that’s difficult to reconcile with his view that the West is fundamentally Christian. The word “Enlightenment” doesn’t appear once in Holland’s attack on humanism. While he briefly mentions Voltaire, he only does so to claim that the Western tradition of criticising religious authority can be traced to Martin Luther rather than the progenitors of Enlightenment humanism.

It’s true that Voltaire and Martin Luther were both critics of the Catholic Church, but the Protestant Reformation launched a century and a half of religious bloodshed in Europe—one of the great episodes of religious violence that Voltaire reacted against. The Thirty Years War directly or indirectly killed as much as a third of Central Europe’s population. This was also a period in which people were routinely tortured and killed for being insufficiently pious, worshiping the wrong God, or conducting scientific research. It’s no wonder that major Enlightenment figures such as David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, and Voltaire were such stern critics of religion, nor is it a surprise that the American Founders consulted their arguments and determined that a secular republic is the best form of government.

In the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—which laid the foundation for the First Amendment to the US Constitution—Thomas Jefferson condemned as “tyrannical” the idea that a citizen must “furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors.” Citizens’ “opinions in matters of religion,” he wrote, should in no way “diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

In fact, although many people attribute the rise of the Nazis to Hitler’s atheism, that doesn’t wash, as most Nazis were Christians. And there’s this:

Despite Nietzsche’s proclamation that God was dead in the late 19th century, there was no great movement away from Christianity in Germany prior to World War II. Immediately after the Nazis seized power in 1933—and less than a week after Hitler banned all non-Nazi parties—the German government signed a treaty with the Vatican. (The Catholic Church didn’t have an especially inspiring record on fascism elsewhere in Europe, either—Pope Pius XII supported General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and blessed his regime in 1948.) In a March 1933 speech, Hitler described Christianity as the foundation of German values. While it’s true that Hitler made this claim for political reasons and despite his own animosity toward Christianity, it demonstrates that he believed he had to appeal to the Christian faith of the German people.

Germany is the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation—one of the most significant events in the history of Western Christianity. It has as much of a claim to being a country forged by the Judeo-Christian tradition as any other in Europe, perhaps even more so. And yet, this rich Christian history and the presence of millions of Christians on German soil offered no bulwark against the descent into Nazism. New Theists attribute every Western achievement to Christianity and blame the West’s most cataclysmic failures on atheism. This is no surprise, as they have engineered a worldview in which everything moral is by definition Christian, and everything immoral is anti-Christian. But this obvious deck-stacking requires them to ignore the horrors of the distant past—the Crusades, the Inquisition, and 150 years of religious warfare in Europe—as well as the not-so-distant past.

There’s more, but the New Theism has also made a claim that renders the “god-shaped-hole hypothesis” worthless, making it untestable. And that claim is this: “Well, even if atheists are moral, and find meaning and purpose outside Christianity, the morality and purpose they have derives from the fact that the West was Christian for many years.”  Using this argument, you can attribute anything good in the modern world to Christianity. But good things have happened in non-Christian countries, too, including India and, of course, Israel.

Johnson touches on this untestability, but I’d like to see more written about it by others.

For Holland and other New Theists like Peterson, the secularism of early liberals like Hume, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Jefferson is a mirage—no matter how ferociously they criticise Christianity, they’re inescapably Christian. Just as Holland says Christianity is responsible for liberalism, human rights, and even secularism, Peterson credits Christianity with “Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of good and evil.” Peterson says the “fundamental tenets of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition continue to govern every aspect of the actual individual behavior and basic values of the typical Westerner.” He even argues that it isn’t possible to be a genuine atheist and live an ethical life.

Note how Peterson asserts that Christianity still “governs every aspect of the individual behavior and basic values of the typical Westerner.”  Can that be disproven under the views of the New Theists? If you think that America, for example, is built on Christian values, then why doesn’t the palpable rejection of religion by the Founders, as they drew up their plans for American government, disprove it? No, it can’t be disproved because the New Theists are, like Hirsi Ali, True Believers.  If they’ve found meaning in Christianity, then somehow it must also undergird all of our lives, and the lives of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and other Founders. (If they thought Christianity was an essential social glue, why did they explicitly leave it out of government?) Of course they can always make up untestable claims to support that: the Founders were raised in a milieu of Christianity!

Which brings us to the final topic:

Where do we get meaning and purpose?  Of course there are real people who claim (and mean it) that the meaning and purpose of their lives comes from Christianity.  And some of them will be right, but there are also a lot of “nones”, and I haven’t seen them running around killing, raping, and stealing. Further, the countries of Northern Europe, like Sweden and Denmark, are almost completely atheistic (though people go to church for ceremonial reasons), and yet they are some of the most “moral” countries in the world.  The New Theists, of course, will attribute this to these countries’ “Christian background”. But ask any regular Joe or Jill (not the Bidens!), or any Dane or Swede, what the purpose or meaning of their lives are, and see what they say. Johnson hits the nail on the head when he avers this:

There’s an assumption at the heart of liberalism: purpose is what we make it. While many of liberalism’s critics insist that there must be some top-down source of purpose in contemporary democratic societies, this contradicts essential liberal principles like freedom of conscience, self-determination, and pluralism. But the idea that there’s no fundamental source of purpose or meaning in life can be destabilising, which is why it has always generated such powerful resistance.

and his last sentence:

. . . Liberal ideas and institutions like the rule of law, property rights and contract enforcement, and freedom of expression and conscience deserve much of the credit for the health, prosperity, and autonomy we enjoy today. The one thing liberalism can’t provide, however, is a sense of meaning and purpose—that’s up to us, and the responsibility of making our own meaning is a small price to pay. For many, it isn’t a price at all.

It sure isn’t a price for me. I never worry about whether my life has “meaning and purpose.” I just do the things that I find fulfilling.

Although I’m absolutely confident that Christianity and Judaism are on the way out, for the time being New Theism is having a bit of a resurgence with the popularity of people like Peterson and Hirsi Ali. You can see this in the tremendous applause that Hirsi Ali got when she had a discussion with Richard Dawkins about her newfound Christianity.  Dawkins’s claim that for him the value of life was empirical discovery and science couldn’t stand up to Hirsi Ali’s claims that we need Christinaity as a bulwark against the Dark Forces that besiege us.  This doesn’t comport with the rise of nonbelief and the growth of “nones” (those who embrace no formal religion). How those lacking belief nevertheless can wildly applaud those who find meaning in Christianity can, I think, be attributed only to what Dan Dennett called “belief in belief.”  That is, of course, the view that “I don’t need religion, but society needs it as a form of social glue to keep us together.” This is also known as The Little People Assertion.

That claim, in centuries to come, will be proven wrong. Unfortunately, none of us will be observing it from above!

An AI driver achieved faster lap times than the best humans in the video game Gran Turismo 7, and unlike previous versions, it only used information available to players

Chemists have develop innovative ionic liquid synthesis and purification technology.

A mysterious remnant from a rare type of supernova recorded in 1181 has been explained for the first time. Two white dwarf stars collided, creating a temporary 'guest star,' now labeled supernova (SN) 1181, which was recorded in historical documents in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. However, after the star dimmed, its location and structure remained a mystery until a team pinpointed its location in 2021. Now, through computer modeling and observational analysis, researchers have recreated the structure of the remnant white dwarf, a rare occurrence, explaining its double shock formation. They also discovered that high-speed stellar winds may have started blowing from its surface within just the past 20-30 years. This finding improves our understanding of the diversity of supernova explosions, and highlights the benefits of interdisciplinary research, combining history with modern astronomy to enable new discoveries about our galaxy.

Researchers have now developed a new way to make microbes hardy enough to withstand extreme conditions such as heat and the manufacturing processes used to formulate the microbes into powders or pills for long-term storage.

A new electrolyte design for lithium metal batteries could significantly boost the range of electric vehicles. Researchers have radically reduced the amount of environmentally harmful fluorine required to stabilize these batteries.

A new electrolyte design for lithium metal batteries could significantly boost the range of electric vehicles. Researchers have radically reduced the amount of environmentally harmful fluorine required to stabilize these batteries.

Engineers have created a device that can efficiently convert heat into electrical voltage at temperatures lower than that of outer space. The innovation could help overcome a significant obstacle to the advancement of quantum computing technologies, which require extremely low temperatures to function optimally.

Engineers have created a device that can efficiently convert heat into electrical voltage at temperatures lower than that of outer space. The innovation could help overcome a significant obstacle to the advancement of quantum computing technologies, which require extremely low temperatures to function optimally.

Ecologist Susan Harrison has been to the North, and today we get her photos of some birds from Finland. Her notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Northeastern Finland

Birdwatchers flock to northeastern Finland because there are more extensive old-growth coniferous forests there than anywhere else in Europe. Also, the relatively unmanaged forests of western Russia are a vast haven for wildlife, helping to maintain the neighboring eastern Finnish bird populations.  Old-growth forests provide the large trees with decaying centers that certain birds require for nesting, as well as abundant lichens for nest materials and lush understories for food.

On our route to Arctic Finland and Norway in May 2024, a group of bird enthusiasts investigated Oulanka National Park and other areas around the northeastern Finnish town of Kuusamo, and then we crossed the Arctic Circle and looked around forests near the ski resort town of Ivalo.

These are some of the sought-after, old-growth-dependent songbirds we saw.

Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus):

Gray-headed Chickadee (Poecile cinctus):

Willow Tit (Poecile montanus):

Siberian Jay (Perisoreus infaustus):

Here are several forest grouse species.

Hazel Grouse (Tetrastes bonasia):

Black Grouse (Lyrurus tetrix):

Capercaillie female (Tetrao urogallus):

We saw a Hawk Owl female (Surnia ulula) nesting in an enormous Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris), and her mate perched on another such tree nearby:

Here are a few other birds we saw around Kuusamo and Ivalo.

Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus):

Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) adult male and first-year male:

Ruff (Calidris pugnax): a colorful male, a non-colorful male, and a non-colorful male courting two females while a Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos) stood by.  As you may have read, this bird has a fascinating breeding system with three genetically distinct types of males:

Generations of scientists have compared the universe to a giant, complex game, raising questions about who is doing the playing – and what it would mean to win

Those silly Australian chiropractors are at it again, what with all their high jinks and shenanigans and what not. This time they have reinstated a ban on treating babies that they had just gotten rid of.

The post The Saga Continues: Australian Chiropractors Banned from Manipulating Infants…Again? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A type of ice that has only ever been seen in the lab has now been found in space by the James Webb Space Telescope, and understanding it could tell us more about the chemistry that led to life on Earth

Tade Thompson, author of sci-fi novel Rosewater, the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, on subverting the expectations of invasion narratives and writing about people not tech

In this tantalising extract from Tade Thompson’s debut Rosewater, we meet Kaaro and learn about the psychic powers he has had since an alien invasion

Crushed chicken egg shells have been turned into a structure that supports bone growth in the laboratory

In October of 2023, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, announced a draft bill entitled the No Fakes Act, or the “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act.”1 This bill would enable artists to sue those who use their likeness (presumably, a deep fake of their voice) without permission.

His bill is largely a reaction that traces its roots back to “Ghostwriter,” an anonymous artist who created the song Heart on My Sleeve. It utilized AI-deep fakes of vocals by two of the most popular artists in the world— The Weeknd and Drake—without their consent. It also earned a whopping 1.4 million U.S. streams before its forced removal by Universal Music Group.2

Ghostwriter is the poster child for the prediction that AI will create another stream of licensing income3 and thus revolutionize the way artists create. I hope that’s the case. But as the industry continues to extract value from music and other media with little oversight, it’s unclear who exactly is reaping the benefits.

Move Fast and Break Things

On most days, I’m making music or writing about the mechanics of doing so. It goes without saying that I have an inherent bias against the man or anything I perceive to capitalize on arts for the sole sake of profit. When ChatGPT burst into my world of self-referential music and writing, I couldn’t help but feel trepidatious.

To be clear, I’m not against utilizing certain forms of AI in my own music production process. Whether it’s using Ableton’s Magenta Studio4 to generate drum pattern ideas or playing with AI-assisted toggles in my favorite plugins, I’m no stranger to taking advantage of machine learning to feed me inklings of a great idea.

My beatmaking workflow changes from one song to the next, but for illustration purposes, I might start by writing a song on piano or guitar, and then record that into my music-making software, Ableton Live. I can then start to build the beat (drums, synthesizers, and other instrumentation) around what I’ve recorded. I might open a plugin where I can input the key and the tempo of my composition, and the plugin might suggest some samples that I can add to my song. In the case of a plugin such as Magenta Studio, with the click of a button, the AI-assisted suite can generate drum patterns, melodies, and more musical elements based on what I’ve already created

In this way, I occasionally use AI technology to act as a writing partner, though it’s important to me that I resample the initial idea provided by the plugin. This could mean shifting the pitch of the sample, chopping and splicing it to make something new, or adding effects to place it within the artistic world of my song. I try to use AI as a tool to fuel and assist my creative processes, rather than as a substitute or replacement for them.

Without the presence of strong guardrails to protect their intellectual property rights, the working artist’s stock in trade isn’t just being depleted; it runs significant risk of being stolen.

Part of the problem with “AI,” or at least the public discourse about it, is that the term can mean so many different things. Grammarly, an app that can proofread text as you write it, could be packaged as AI—but so can the likes of Midjourney, an image generator accused of lifting data from artists without consent or compensation.5

The ambiguity behind those emotionally charged two letters all too easily turns what should be balanced discussions into trash talk. Yet it’s a discussion we must have.

AI has the potential to be much more invasive than simply co-opting the working artist’s dwindling paycheck. Tom Hanks is one of the many whose voice, reproduced by AI, was used in an advertisement without his consent or compensation.6 And note that we’re only hearing about it because Hanks has the name recognition to make headlines and the finances needed to hire any necessary legal expertise.

There’s a reason why, in the wake of AI, union contract negotiations now include stipulations that require the employment of a certain number of writers or background actors, and outline profitable licensing agreements for writers.7 Otherwise, extra cash flow would inevitably trickle back to the companies that host content, instead of the creators who built the stories that support the tech platforms in the first place.

Without the presence of strong guardrails to protect their intellectual property rights, the working artist’s stock in trade isn’t just being depleted; it runs significant risk of being stolen. Derivative works may deserve some level of monetization, but it stands to reason that some of that capital, or at the very least, good-faith credit, should find its way back to the original creative artist.

Which Art Forms Are Most Vulnerable?

It would be hypocritical for me to argue against all forms of artificial intelligence. I use Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill to cut out pesky distractions in photos as well as computer tools to repurpose long-form content into short clips for social media.

I personally know many artists who have even experimented with generative AI engines to extend their visions for music videos and other visual art they would not be able to afford to produce otherwise. Many of these “AI assisted tools” have been around for a while, but only recently have been repackaged to line up with the latest venture capital buzzwords.

However, I am staunchly opposed to creating new solutions where no problems exist. If the motivation to create an AI tool is purely profit (that is, swapping paid background actors for digital renderings), my opinion on the matter quickly turns negative. When it comes to art and monetization, the AI squeeze is sending seismic shocks through an already cracked system where artists get an increasingly shorter end of the stick in an oversaturated, undervalued market.

Not all art forms will be affected equally. In cases where art is required to be passable and not personal, AI is likely to take over the field entirely. Displacement by AI is already a reality for those who make corporate commercial music as opposed to artists with a loyal fanbase. Many of those artists counted on such commercial gigs to pay the rent, especially in their early, struggling days.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however—AI might also help artists focus on the part of their creative process they love most. Advances in technology, seen in the brightest light, may allow creators to take time and energy formerly consumed by the tedious, repetitive parts of the process and reallocate them to the more “creatively intensive” tasks, which is what art, music, and literature are all about—or should be.

These positive aspects of AI tools will undoubtedly enable some creatives to be more productive and build more while staying within the confines of their budget. Nonetheless, a broadband reevaluation of artists and compensation is long overdue. The advent of new technology provides a perfect opportunity to redraw these boundaries, but at least so far, the companies that build these models have shown little interest in helping to do so.

Battling AI—On the Picket Line and in the Courtroom

After one of the entertainment industry’s longest and most paralyzing strikes, Hollywood actors and screenwriters obtained an agreement that defines when, where, and how AI can and cannot be used. The agreement allows screenwriters to use AI tools in their original writing but prevents the industry from using it to replace them. It prohibits the studios from using AI to produce scripts—which, of course, it does only after being repeatedly trained on existing scripts— and then requiring real live human writers to complete the work at lower fees, royalties, and screen credit (i.e., likely future earnings) than for original writing.

Simon Johnson, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT, who specializes in studying the economic effects of technological transformation, called the agreement a “fantastic win for writers” that he’s “hoping will be a model for the rest of the economy.” As one of those creative artists out in the rest of the economy, I have to hope he’s right. I also hope he’s right in predicting that it will result in “better quality work and a stronger industry for longer.”8

And it isn’t only labor that’s concerned about being cheated out of just compensation by AI—so are affected management and capital. The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement over the unauthorized use of its published material to “train” artificial intelligence to first copy it and then replace it. Specifically, the Times lawsuit contends that millions of its articles of “uniquely valuable work” were used to train automated chatbots that now compete as a news source against it. And they’re talking in the billions—with a B! And while we may not be valued in the billions, every creative writer, actor, artist, musician, and performer believes that our work is “uniquely valuable” or we wouldn’t be making the sacrifices necessary to produce in the first place.9

Together, Sen. Coons’ bill, the Screen Writers agreement, and the Times lawsuit show that our society is responding to the new challenges thrown up by AI, though it will take time and effort to work them out and get it right. And again, it’s those with the money, the clout, and the name recognition who are able to force the issue for the rest of us.

The Myth of a Creative Middle Class: Why Many Artists Feel Threatened by AI

Art thrives on exclusivity. Your work is effectively assigned value based on the amount of bonafide attention you can garner. For a discipline focused on the wide distribution of culture, that process can be oddly elitist.

While the world’s broader economy reflects a staggering wealth gap with the richest one percent owning nearly twice as much as the other 99 percent,10 the art world may be even worse.11 Admittedly, data is scarce for the latter, in part because art is, by design, opaque.

You can’t attribute a concrete value to a piece of art. And that is why art is a wildly risky but a potentially highly rewarding investment. This is true for the lucky few—most artists across all disciplines make pennies in comparison to their poster-child contemporaries. The reality of the starving artist is alive and well (though clinically and chronically malnourished).

Even if we broaden the criteria to include Internet creators and influencers within the artist umbrella, we can see a growing divide between profitable, sustainable artists and those who do not make enough to thrive off their craft alone. In 2020, the top one percent of creators on Gumroad, an ecommerce platform where creators can sell digital products, courses, and more, garnered about 60 percent of payouts.12

While I’m most keen to discuss music since I can speak most accurately to my own experiences, the hard truth is that there has been a massive devaluation across all creative disciplines, which I fear will only be exacerbated by a rising sea of AI content. A case in point is Elena Velez, who won the CDFA Emerging Designer of the Year13 designing for celebrity performers the likes of Solange Knowles, Julia Fox, and Rosalia, recently had to take a loan out of her mother’s retirement account in order to keep the lights on.14

When it comes to art and monetization, the AI squeeze is sending seismic shocks through an already cracked system where artists get an increasingly shorter end of the stick in an oversaturated, undervalued market.

Craftsmen like Velez simply cannot keep up with fast-fashion giants such as SHEIN, whose “AI Technology” can create new clothes in as little as three days.15 Industrialization of a market sector almost always leads to oversaturation and devaluation of craftsmanship. Markets tend to prioritize the cheapest, fastest means of production at all costs, likely because consumers simply don’t know and/or don’t care what goes into creating a quality piece.

Still, no one likes to award artists with sympathy. After all, who is pining to comfort a group of people who get to “do what they love” day in and day out by choice, while the rest of the workforce labor at a job, just to be able to live paycheck to paycheck. The big blunder is to assume that even at the A-list level, clout automatically equates to a sustainable income.

AI Amplifies What We Already Know to Be True

With machine learning’s inherent coding bias16 and tendency to provide preferential treatment to those who represent the backgrounds of those already in power, we cannot deny that AI is a black-mirrored reflection of the current state of the world. The proliferation of technology that’s made without the consciousness of underrepresented groups is unlikely to be a benign steward of art, let alone the state of the world. Left entirely to its own, it won’t be.

Tech as a whole has continued to poach value between artist and patron over the past two decades, making it increasingly difficult for the profession or the craft to exist. Spotify recently announced its royalty restructure for 2024, which will require each track to earn 1,000 streams within 12 months to start earning royalties.17 Otherwise, artists won’t earn anything. It has become increasingly clear that small artists aren’t a priority, because the streaming platform’s sense of value is ultimately tied to their shareholders.

It’s hard to get excited about AI “revolutionizing art” or providing artists additional streams of income when the very industry that created it has a systemic pattern of devaluing craft on a massive scale. Artists are the last people to resist innovation, but when the cost of your creation comes at the expense of an already decimated model of compensation, it’s hardly easy to welcome it with open arms.

In spite of all that, we cannot stop artificial intelligence from continuing to grow, nor should we necessarily. However, we’re missing a great opportunity to rethink how we value craft and the creatures of our culture. As a musician myself, whenever I speak about increased compensation for artists, I’m met with dismissive remarks that I believe largely come from a lack of experience and sometimes willful ignorance.

Most artists neither need nor desire a mansion, flashy clothes, or an assistant who helps sort out one color of M&Ms from the rest of the pack. In my experience, most of us just want a living wage, with the possibility of some sustainable retirement down the line, like what those in any other profession desire. Yet getting to this reasonable baseline of security is insurmountably difficult for most.

For instance, how much do you think an artist makes off a million streams on Spotify? As of fall 2023, that amount is…$4000.18 And that assumes that you have 100 percent of your royalty rights, which is extremely unlikely. If we’re being generous, an artist with a million monthly listeners will earn less than $50,000 a year off that platform.

I’m aware this assessment is fairly rudimentary in that it does not factor in revenue from a wider swath of streaming platforms, as well as merch, brand deals, and performances. (Though those are less likely to make large profits,19 if any, nowadays.) However, that also does not factor out the costs of recording, royalty splits, travel, publicity, management, and the general cost that comes from being the figurehead of a fickle entertainment brand with no guarantee of longevity. You can forget about healthcare and socking away savings for a rainy day. In the life of an up-and-coming artist, El Niño years are the rule, not the exception.

Lost in a Sea of Noise

AI might very well bring us boatloads of art and works from new creators who might not have the means to do so were it not for machine learning simplifying the process. Everyone who wants to make art should do so if they get the chance, even if that process requires assistance from AI. At the same time, it’s hard to ignore the fact that, according to Music Business Worldwide, 120,000 new songs20 are released on streaming services every day. While having more access to the tools to make amazing music has never been easier, it’s also much more challenging to make a career out of your creations.

Anecdotally, I am not craving even more content as a consumer. Are you? Is anyone? With AI-assisted art ushering in a wide wave of content, I fear that I may miss out on some hidden gems. I get fatigued just waffling through the many shows of Netflix, attempting to find something worthy of the little free time I have. Yet I fear I might give up before discovering a priceless new artist engulfed in the overwhelming surge of content.

While admittedly antiquated, the eras of mass radio airplay created a collective sense of adulation, allowing some artists a chance at longevity. Today’s world is much more segmented, with your algorithm standing being as unique as your fingerprint.

Even so, artists who were lucky enough to earn a spot on the radio when it was the major medium continue to have a seat at the table. Bruno Mars, Eminem, Katy Perry, and SIA remain in Spotify’s top 100 despite not having a key hit within the past year, in part because of their prominence in a time of more collective culture.

The struggle for artists has changed. It’s no longer about finding the tools and the means of distribution for your creations. It’s now about how to stand out and get noticed amidst a sea of endless content. Art and content have never been more interchangeable, and for craftsmen, this reality couldn’t be more painful.

Art will not be replaced, but it will be cheapened.

You cannot take art away from artists. However, you can, perhaps unknowingly, extract compensation from the producers of that craft. And for many, that equates to depriving them of a necessary part of their livelihood. Artists aren’t upset because they want to serve as the gatekeepers of innovation and expression.

Rather, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to survive—let alone thrive—in an environment that does not value supporting your trade with a livable wage. Artificial intelligence’s purported sense of utility in art is based on an incorrect assumption that lies at its core: that bringing AI into one’s process will breed greater efficiency, with more art equating to more valuable expression as a whole.

Yet, the word “art” is derived from the Latin ars, that is, to craft, or the cultivation of human skill. The magic of art often exists due to human error and only as the end product of a lengthy process. And those are so often at odds with the constant lust for instant gratification, which is, in many ways, the defining characteristic of today’s world.

Art often means a rejection of the efficient. It’s churning the butter instead of flipping on the mixer just for the sake of doing so. Art is applying beauty and meaning beyond the mere asset itself, defying cost-efficient logic, and foregoing obsessive A/B testing.

I can see how one might argue that AI art is a new medium in its own right, but that does not take away from the stinging fact that oversaturation leads to devaluation in an environment that already has a huge problem with compensating creators directly.

Ultimately, the moral dilemma behind artificial intelligence and art may not matter. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, so much of the population opted for innovation at all costs, which continues to be true regardless of how the underpaid craftsmen may feel.

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 29.1
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Artificial intelligence is here, and not only to stay, but to grow. Just as we define the mental models and data training sets, we get to choose—with our money, time, and attention—how we attribute value to the artists, and potentially, the AI artists of our generation. As in preferences for minimalism or maximalism, progressive rock or bubblegum pop, the debate ultimately boils down to what we as individuals allow space for in our lives.

Ultimately, the questions raised by AI about fair compensation for artists are but part of the general question about the increasing income inequality seen in modern technological societies. As futurist and AI expert Rudy van Belkom states in his Introduction to this issue of Skeptic, while AI can help by performing any necessary complex computations, the final decisions on such socially sensitive decisions should be left to human wisdom rather than machines, however “intelligent.”

About the Author

Kate Brunotts is a writer and an avant-pop music producer based in Brooklyn. She strives to create accessible sonic dreamscapes that challenge the bounds of music. Her work has been featured on multiple Spotify and Apple editorial playlists, along with BBC Introducing and Earmilk.

References

1. https://bit.ly/3NHHwCX
2. https://bit.ly/3S5Wu8M
3. https://bit.ly/41Mb0Wb
4. https://bit.ly/3RA4blO
5. https://bit.ly/41Y4yM9
6. https://bit.ly/3vim1mb
7. https://bit.ly/3S2ZbrB
8. https://bit.ly/4aEICcy
9. https://bit.ly/3GZ3z4B
10. https://bit.ly/3H14DVu
11. https://bit.ly/47kWS7q
12. https://bit.ly/3RGEuQO
13. https://bit.ly/41Faoll
14. https://bit.ly/3RKKUya
15. https://bit.ly/47lyXoH
16. https://bit.ly/41GZcVa
17. https://bit.ly/3RJMUGT
18. https://bit.ly/3vmjxTO
19. https://bit.ly/3S1qnH7
20. https://bit.ly/3S1FNuN

Wherever the JWST looks in space, matter and energy are interacting in spectacular displays. The Webb reveals more detail in these interactions than any other telescope because it can see through dense gas and dust that cloak many objects.

In a new image, the JWST spots a young protostar only 100,000 years old.

The star is named L1527, and at this young age, it’s still ensconced in the molecular cloud that spawned it. This is one of the reasons NASA built the JWST (with help from the ESA and the CSA.) The telescope can see through dust and gas to reveal the earliest stages of star formation.

This image was captured with MIRI, the Mid-Infrared Instrument. The young protostar is at the heart of it all, and it’s still growing. It’s accumulating mass from the protoplanetary disk that surrounds it. The disk is the tiny dark horizontal line at the image’s center.

The protostar isn’t a main-sequence star, so it’s not undergoing fusion like the Sun is. There may be a small amount of deuterium fusion in its core, but it generates energy in a different way. As the star’s gravitational power draws material nearer, the material is compressed and heats up. More energy comes from shockwaves generated by incoming material that collides with existing gas. This is the energy that lights up the star and its surroundings inside the giant molecular cloud that spawned it.

As young protostars accumulate mass, they generate powerful magnetic fields. Combined with the star’s rotation, these fields drive matter away from the star. So, as a protostar acquires mass, it also ejects some of it back into space in spectacular hourglass-shaped jets that come from the star’s poles. These jets create visible bow shocks in the matter around the star, which are the filamentary structures.

There are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the star’s environment. They’re organic compounds abundant throughout the Universe that may have contributed to the appearance of life. They glow blue in the image, including in the filamentary structures.

The red region in the center is a thick layer of gas and dust surrounding the young star, lit up by the star’s energy. The white region between the red and the blue is a mixture of materials. There are more PAHs here, as well as ionized gases like neon and other hydrocarbons.

This isn’t the first time the JWST has examined L1527. In 2022, it observed the protostar with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).

The JWST captured this image of L1527 with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The upper central region displays bubble-like shapes due to stellar “burps,” or sporadic ejections. The different colours are from layers of dust. The more dust there is, the less blue light escapes. So, the orange/red regions are thicker dust than the blue regions. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, and A. Koekemoer (STScI)

This beautiful display of matter and energy interacting is transient. Over time, the protostar’s powerful outflows will clear its surroundings of much of the gas and dust, though it’ll still have its protoplanetary disk. Eventually, the star will become a main sequence star, easily seen without its veil of gas and dust. By that time, the star’s planetary system will be taking shape.

There are unanswered questions about protostar formation, and one of the JWST’s main science goals is star formation. For example, astrophysicists don’t know exactly how and when fusion is triggered, and a protostar becomes a main-sequence star.

Though astronomers know there are powerful magnetic fields around protostars, they don’t know exactly how they form and what role they play in the star’s collapse and rotation.

The JWST has made some headway on this question. It recently confirmed that jets from young stars are aligned because of the star’s rotation and magnetic fields, something supported by theory but not confirmed by observations until now.

There are also uncertainties about how binary stars form. Do they form the same way solitary stars do? Why are so many stars binaries?

The exact nature of the events that trigger star formation is also unclear. Shockwaves from supernovae can trigger star birth, but what about in other cases? Is it just a matter of density?

The answers to these questions will be incremental. With its ability to see more detail in the young stars and the clouds of swirling gas and dust that enshroud them, the JWST is making progress one image at a time.

The post Webb Sees a Star in the Midst of Formation appeared first on Universe Today.

Amy the Library Duck returned to her window this year, but fortunately she didn’t nest there. (We had a hard time with her last year, finally having to remove her ducklings after they hatched and jumped and to take them to rehab after mom didn’t know how to get to the nearest water since Botany Pond was dry. The water is a long way away, across several busy roads, and we tried to show her the way.)

But there’s better news this year: a squirrel, presumably a female, has built a nest on the same ledge where Amy nested. And in this case we don’t have to do anything, for baby squirrels don’t have to walk 1.5 miles to get to water. The ledge is isolated and well protected, and the squirrel has been adding leaves, dried and fresh, to the nest.

The squirrel has been named Snoozy, as she sleeps through the heat of the day.  If you bookmark this webcam, look in once in a while as I’m pretty sure you’re shortly going to see baby squirrels: a vantage that few people get. And baby squirrels are adorable!

Click here or on the screenshot below. When you watch, be sure to press the “forward” arrow at the bottom left to see the live action (or lack of action).  You can scroll back to see the squirrel’s activity over the past day. Stuff right now: move the dot all the way to the right.

Snoozy is there right now, and may be there all day. Have a look! (She was gone most of the morning, and you can’t see anything at night.) I took this picture about three minutes ago.

UPDATE: If the camera doesn’t work, nere are the squirrel friend’s instructions:

 I just checked it a minute ago and it was fine. Snoozy is there snoozing away. The operator has it running on the Panopto service that I think is used for class stuff. I noticed it sometimes says “the webcast has ended” and then you have to push play again. Also on my browser it blocks autoplay so you have to push the play button to start it. I’ll put it in the comments below, too.