Description:

The SkAI Institute will host a colloquium featuring David Hogg, Professor of Physics and Data Science in the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University, and Senior Research Scientist at Astronomical Data Group Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute.

Coffee and pastries will be provided prior to the event. Lunch will be provided afterwards.

Talk title: In an Era of Generative AI, Why Do We Do Astrophysics?

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implications does this have for our profession? I will try to elucidate a set of facts or points of agreement about what astrophysics is, or should be. I will also deliver a set of putative benefits that astrophysics perhaps brings to us, and to science, and to universities, and to the world. My goal is to deliver some kind of take on why astronomy and astrophysics are worth doing, and how LLMs might fit into a practice with that justification.

Register by Monday, January 12 at 12:00 p.m. at the link below.