When Machines Meet the Universe: AI and the Future of Astronomy

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are not only transforming industries such as autonomous vehicles and healthcare - they are also revolutionizing science. In astronomy, early applications of ML focused on using algorithms to process datasets too large to be inspected manually by scientists. These efforts were significantly bolstered by the contributions of 'citizen scientists' - members of the public who classified astronomical images and provided valuable training data for the algorithms. In this talk, I will examine how AI is used today to enhance the speed and accuracy of simulations of the universe and uncover new physical phenomena in vast datasets. I will also present the new Center for Decoding the Universe at Stanford, whose goal is to answer the biggest questions about our Universe with AI and data science. Finally, we will discuss the exciting potential of AI systems that can interpret human language and analyze astronomical data, enabling them to act as collaborative partners in scientific discovery.

Speaker: Dayla Baron, Stanford University

Attend in person or online.  See weblink to register