Will Robots Wired With AI-ChatGPT Be Helpful in Studying Mars? Here's What Experts Say

AI-powered ChatGPT has been making waves in the past months since its launch. A new report mentioned using it to study Mars, and here's what the experts say.

AI-Powered ChatGPT For Studying Mars

According to Leonard David in an article published in Space.com, it's not hard to picture an artificial intelligence (AI) language model like ChatGPT or a comparable one factory-wired into a robot that's haggling on Mars' surface. The smart bot might be equipped with a variety of scientific tools.

It might examine what its scientific tools are discovering "on-the-spot" and even compile any traces of a previous existence that it discovers almost immediately.

The information could be absorbed, evaluated, appraised, and combined scientifically. The finished product might then be sent directly from the robot to a scientific magazine like Science or Nature for publishing in well-paginated form with footnotes.

Naturally, the work would then undergo peer review, possibly by reviewers from ChatGPT or AI. He contacted numerous eminent researchers, provided them with a scenario that takes place outside Earth and on Mars and received mixed responses from the experts.

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AI-ChatGPT's Knowledge Is Limited

Amy Williams, assistant professor in Geological Sciences at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and participating scientists on the NSA Curiosity and Perseverance responded in full disclosure mode to the AI-ChatGPT off-world setting.

According to her, when getting ready for this response, she initially used ChatGPT and asked it, "What organic molecules have the Mars rovers found?"

The query was based on her expertise, and she did a terrific job of giving statements that she considered strong and suitable for a summary. She said she could present it to the general audience in an outreach discussion about organic molecules on Mars.

However, Williams also saw its limitations by showing that it could only access data from September 2021. She said it was a "knowledge cutoff." According to her, the responses did not cover the entire range of results published about organics on Mars that she's aware of as of 2021.

The expert, who emphasized that she is not an expert in AI or machine learning, claimed that the next iterations of ChatGPT + AI would probably be able to take more recent data into account and produce an exhaustive summary of the most recent findings from any specific scientific investigation.

She considered the tools something that should be used with humans and not as a replacement for the latter. She finds it challenging to envision a mechanism to upload the knowledge base for anything as complicated as, say, the current and historical population of the world, given the constraints in data uplink and downlink with our current Deep Space Network.

Nathalie Cabrol, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, is not on board with letting AI take over any study. Still, she believes it should be used to support humans in their activities.

We are interfering with our development by allowing AI to influence the characteristics that make us human, said Cabrol, who added that she perceives hints of "transhumanism" in all of this. A loosely defined intellectual movement known as transhumanism is based on the idea that, with the help of science and technology, the human race can progress past its present physical and mental bounds.

Cabrol noted that others might say that's just a piece of paper, not a chip in our brain. Unfortunately, it is part of a much larger and quite unsettling conversation on the (mis)use of artificial intelligence. Cabrol concluded that AI is helpful as a tool and nothing more than that.