your science briefing for 03.24.2025

Computer scientists open up about the dirty secrets of AI, the world's largest digital camera, our still broken universe, and more...

Here is an unpopular opinion so frequently whispered among senior ranks in startups and large companies, yet taboo to say out loud to investors and executives. Today’s AI achieved the results it did by massive scale allowing it to brute force problems. It’s not a precision tool with immense untapped potential we just need to work harder to truly realize. It’s the computing equivalent of using nuclear warheads against gnats, and its main backers don’t actually want anything more than obedient yes-men to shield their self-serving decisions from the public. It’s time we finally say it… (Futurism)

As our Plague Secretary RFK Jr. decides to force the CDC to find the long, thoroughly debunked link between autism and vaccines, we once again have to face what is one of the most uncomfortable truths about the anti-vaccination movement in the U.S. All the parents insistent that vaccines gave their kids autism seem to either suffer from a malicious form of caretaker fatigue, or regret having to parent their autistic child even though the condition is mostly genetic, and are looking for an excuse or a scapegoat instead of a real answer they will refuse to accept… (The Guardian)

If you have $3,000 burning a hole in your pocket, you can but a top of the line, super high resolution cameras able to take 400 megapixel images. These cameras can be used for professional photography and short videos that need to look brilliantly sharp and vivid. If you have $168 million and want to study the origins, evolution, and layout of the universe, you build the Legacy Synoptic Survey Telescope to take 3.2 gigapixel images from the top of a mountain the desert… (PetaPixel)

Okay, so you know how our universe seems to be a little broken according to our best models and astronomical observations? The cosmos looks to be expanding, doing so at an accelerating rate. But not uniformly like it’s actually supposed to. And the rate of expansion are not consistent between instruments and experiments. And maybe there is a slowdown in the expansion to Einstein’s general relativity is correct? But also, the evidence for energy within the fabric of space and time to keep expansing is there too and Einstein is still also correct? Anyway, another day, another confusing result for the now confused and frustrated cosmologists… (ScienceNews) and (New Scientist)