Machine Learning Isn't Rocket Science

Take two astrophysicists, an Apollo engineer, a guy who designed parts of the International Space Station, a professor of robotics, and a random science fiction writer, and what do you have? It sounds like a dream sequence from the TV show, "The Big Bang Theory," or the start of a science nerd joke. In fact it was the make-up of a talk panel at a recent science fiction convention where I was one of the guests. The panel was ostensibly meant to be a retrospective look back at the days of Apollo, but like many such conversations, it soon turned to thinking about the future, which led to the subject of machine learning (ML) driven artificial intelligence (AI) and its current capabilities. I expected an enthusiastic discourse, and so I was surprised when most of these actual rocket scientists seemed more ambivalent about the technology and its potential impacts.