Home > Concepts, Ephemeris Program > Ephemeris: 05/12/2025 – Artificial Intelligence, promise and caution

Ephemeris: 05/12/2025 – Artificial Intelligence, promise and caution

May 12, 2025

This is Ephemeris for Monday, May 12th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 43 minutes, setting at 9:01, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:16. The Moon, at full today, will rise at 9:34 this evening.

The text for the part of this program up to now was generated by a computer. It’s not AI. It’s generated by a program I wrote from data I created by another program that I also wrote, which is why it’s nearly the same every day. AI or artificial intelligence systems are trained rather than programmed. They learn their information more like how organic creatures learn, than computers do. And in talking to an AI one gets the feeling that there is almost a person there. It’s not like talking to the automated answering system of most businesses, where whatever the system is running, does not have a large vocabulary or under really understand anything. AI is powerful… and scary. AI can lie, they call it hallucinate, and can cheat. There’s great potential… and great danger.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

A snippet of code I wrote to create the first part of the Ephemeris script.
A snippet of the code I wrote to create the first part of the Ephemeris script. Parts of the text that don’t change much can be seen in gray. Any intelligence here, such as it is, was mine.
  1. cheriwb's avatar
    cheriwb
    June 2, 2025 at 8:43 am

    Dear Bob Moler, Thanks for all you do to educate folks. I have certainly enjoyed your sharing knowledge with us over the years. I agree that AI is dangerous. People can’t seem to tell truth from fiction or good behavior from detrimental behavior. It seems that AI is another manipulation tool for corruption. Such a difficult transition period for humanity. Best Wishes, Cheri Buchbinder

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