[Q&A+] Alternatives to The Big Bang, Theia Impact Place, Telescope Images | Q&A 376

Validation : Some creators validate their content with both their image and images of peer reviewed academic papers with coded references for those who would wish to check out the details of those academic papers. Some creators show images of themselves which are obviously AI and other images that look natural. Why would they want to do that ? But their content looks plausible as well, and I have been following them for a few to several years. Some creators have images of themselves or near-images, where many discontinuities of their video image occurs, which is at the least is AI image editing, probably (?} It pays to have had a parallel degree level formal education in some fields of science, to help sort this out and to be able to discriminate.

I just want to mention that I will no longer be watching this version of the question show. I have never been a fan of the bite sized format it is now and no longer enjoy it. I much preferred when it was an hour long. Since it isn't anymore I'll try to catch the live sessions when I can as that format is the version I enjoy.

As for your last topic... I would love something similar as of a spam filter but for AI generated content.

You are a truly amazing and wonderful presenter

On the topic of AI, my method is to personally curate who I follow. If the presenter’s face isn’t in the video, I will likely not follow. At this point I know all of the channels I follow are human. I will likely only subscribe to new channels if referred to by my existing channels. It’s the way it is now. I will do my best to not consume AI slop. Thank you Frasier for having a wonderful and authentic channel!

Love your videos but couldn’t disagree more about running out of good targets doing visual astronomy. I’ve been at this for almost 50 years and I’m still finding new and exciting things to observe. Yes, photography will show you more but even just looking at open clusters or double stars can keep you busy for a lifetime. I have tried EAA and AP and I choose to remain 99% visual as it is my Zen. To each their own but don’t short sell visual as an enjoyable and useful pursuit. Cheers!

Isn’t there another podcast/youtube/patreon called The New Universe Today which basically rebroadcasts everything you produce?

Perhaps it is important to distinguish using AI as a tool in the process of uncovering information versus relying on it to generate content that is not produced by a person, using all the judgment, fact checking, and analysis that comes with successful experience. Perhaps a short statement explaining what is “Guaranteed Human” with a logo shared by other creators who agree would be a useful brand integrity statement.

Not a fan of the ambient music

A good book describing the kind of evidence that would be required to replace the big bang theory is "the cosmic revolutionary's handbook". It goes through the evidence supporting it, saying "your theory will need to explain all this and more."

What a curious coincidence, as I was making my yearly wikipedia donation today, I got a survey, I think organised by the University of Zurich, around Wikipedia contributions and AI. Of course it is only a remotely related matter compared to accusations of using AI. I use AI daily, I'm not a native English speaker, and while my English level is not too bad, I can always get some help to elevate my written English (not in this comment though). On one hand, there will always be people who can't recognise AI, and as AI improves that group can only grow, on the other well it is the same hand but in the future when no-one will be able to recognise AI or not AI.. I think that at the end of the day, whether you use AI or not, might not fundamentally matter, it depends on what you use it for. When I read articles published by CNN, I think they could use some AI to edit their text and correct the incredible number of orthographic and grammatical errors (just mentioning that, and this comes from an non-native English speaker...) and they are not alone. So, why not letting AI help you, no matter what you do, as long as you remain in control. Which brings me to content, you have only one thing that will speak for you: Your ethic and your reputation. I'm sure that I and all of your patrons are supporting you because of your reputation, and if you tell me I'm using some tool to make better video illustrations for a topic than what you can find online, I'm ok with that. If you are polishing your narrative with AI, I'm ok with that too. But if you start relying on AI to bring up stories, to modify them to follow a narrative you have arbitrarily chosen, and any other similar nefarious things, intentional or not: count me out, your responsibility is to curate and present topics in an unbiased way (as you often explain when answering questions). This is not just for you by the way, in my mind this is valid for everyone publishing content.

Even when AI becomes good enough I think you will still find enough Patreon that want the stories told by the Universe Today people.

There was something to be said for seeing Saturn and Jupiter through an actual telescope

My reflex has always been to consider the source. Who do recognized authorities regularly reference? In college an article’s bibliography was crucial to establishing its credibility. I avoid click bait even when a subject interests me so as not to support the practice. I also ignore come ons that appear in my physical mail box. It’s gonna be tough but I find myself focusing only on the creators I already enjoy and subscribe to and I appreciate when creators like yourself recommend sources you like or trust. When I succumb to The Algorithm it’s with trepidation, like walking on thin ice, and occasionally I’m rewarded. But I try to keep my guard up. It sucks that I’m voluntarily limiting my potential experience to avoid bad actors but there it is. There are days I dream of unplugging everything and just read my physical books until the balloon goes up. ✌️🖖

The question of whether the Universe is Finite or Infinite is still hotly debated by Cosmologists? Your comment that the Universe is Infinite is perhaps premature? Not known as of 2025. It could still be a closed geometry as the fundamental understanding of Dark Energy and Dark Matter is still an unknown? Love your reporting.. but suggest more careful in statements unsupported by current evidence? Thanks Fraser 👍 Bill Patreon Supporter

"Scars left by theia" it has been proposed that the earths core does show some structural anomalies that could be considered as evidence of a collision and merger with theia. Edit to add, AI now is like the start of the internet and the threat this posed to magazines. The good publications that had a subscriber base held on without any problems. They are still here today. The same is happening now with AI, decent channels will manage to remain, AI will clear out the garbage no one watches but, like the magazines of old that are still here, people will support content creation that they like. Evo magazine, good example, they started a magazine at the time the internet appeared, Evo is still here.

re: the AI accusation question I do think sometimes the 'this science fiction writer predicted this 20 years ago' idea is overblown, but genuinely Neal Stephenson did kind of predict this 23 years ago, in Anathem, which may be worth a reread even if you have already read it. I ought to do one sometime soon myself, but as I recall, the way it went down is >internet gradually gets filled with slop >companies create ways of filtering the slop out of the internet >slop filtering companies realize that there is now a profit motive: if you fill the internet with slop, you make demand for your slop filtering product higher >slop filtering companies follow the incentive and begin paying people to fill the internet with slop >but wait, you can cut costs by making automated systems that put slop onto the internet (we are here, though we arrived here by different means, though to be fair, it's hard to blame even someone as prophetic as Stephenson for not seeing LLMs coming in 2008) >now the internet has gone full library of babel, and contains basically every possible statement, and thus effectively no information The solution offered was essentially ways to crowdsource reputation in an automated and reciprocal way, so that you don't even see the slop, which is not a terrible idea, but the book also raises the problem of that solution, which is that it can lead to a fracturing of the internet into different self-consistent chunks that nevertheless contradict each other (imagine one shard of the internet where there's no crisis in cosmology because they trust the CMB measurements and think the distance ladder measurements are slop, and another shard of the internet where they think the reverse, and potentially no shard that accepts that both measurements are accurate and there's new physics at hand). And in a world mediated by the internet, that means that you essentially have people in the same world living in a different reality, possibly through no fault of their own. Sadly, none of that is actually a solution, just an exploration of how the problem could develop. I do think there might be a refinement of the reputation crowdsourcing idea that could work better, but it is not what I'd necessarily call an optimistic solution, more like just making explicit the understanding that the internet as we used to know it is broken and there's no path to fixing it.

Regarding AI disclaimers: IHeartRadio has already begun by adding the line “guaranteed human” to the intros of their podcast episodes.

That's a relief. I was worried he had been abducted by aliens.

What happened to Vlad Shiplin? He disappeared from your list. Is he OK?

Regarding your question about AI accusations leads me to one response. I follow you because I believe you have integrity. I contribute to your Patron because you follow and interview leaders in science. Why do you need to respond to the accusations? I say don’t respond. Save your heart and time. Rap