Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Monday, November 24th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 15 minutes, setting at 5:07, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:53. The Moon, halfway from new to first quarter, will set at 8:29 this evening.

Now that the Moon’s beginning to brighten in the evening sky, obliterating the faint stars and constellations, I thought I’d spend these bright nights talking about something which has intrigued me because of my former vocation. I’m an amateur astronomer, meaning that I do this for fun, although I made a few bucks lecturing in a planetarium in my early days. But my main career was being a computer systems analyst. I designed and programmed computer systems to do various accounting functions, especially for banks. So I was not anywhere near the cutting edge of computer science. I’ve always been fascinated by the possibility of computer intelligence, and all of a sudden AI is here with all its promise and peril. Let’s investigate!

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

While I will continue to use the abbreviation AI, I mean Machine Intelligence. That it’s not human, doesn’t mean it’s artificial. It’s just different, alien even.