Astronomy, Noesis and The AI Co-Scientist
A philosophical investigation into the epistemological impact of AI on astronomical discovery
A collaborative paper with K. Gibson (Queen’s University Belfast) examining the epistemological impact of AI Co-Scientists on astronomical discovery, through the lens of Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technics.
We argue that while AI tools are a natural continuation of astronomy’s co-evolution with technology — from the telescope to the algorithm — their adoption risks undermining opportunities for noetic thought: the reflective, creative intelligence that generates genuinely new knowledge. Drawing on concepts of exosomatization, proletarianization and negentropy, we assess both the entropic risks of AI over-reliance and the negentropic potential of practices such as citizen science, human validation and model monitoring.
Case studies are drawn from transient astronomy, including the LSST alert broker ecosystem, the ATLAS survey pipeline, and the Rubin Difference Detectives citizen science project.
Status: Work in progress — paper in preparation. Co-author: K. Gibson, Queen’s University Belfast (LINAS)