Tag: Real Science

Editing Rant: Why AI is a No-No

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Image acquired from the Internet

A recent contact I got was a “Hi, I am an illustrator who uses AI.” To which I immediately responded my publisher (and I) have a strict no-AI policy. (points to them for admitting the AI use up front.)

Well, they wrote back and asked why? They said they got a lot of responses like that and were wondering why the publishing industry is so against this tool everyone in the business world is embracing.

I needed to present an argument that wasn’t “well, AI is evil and makes Sarah Connor cry.” Because this person is trying to make a living with art, which means creating art fast in a variety of forms. AI can be a tool like the collage-type art of early photoshop. And for some people everything is shareable – I remember early pirate sites for music and books created by those that thought all data should be free. So what argument to use?

I gave the person the “the courts have declared AI-created materials are not copyrightable.” The fact is who do you attached the “creative” part: the people whose materials and skills the database is built-on (whether the material was bought legally or collected for AI training (like most medical interpretation softwares), mass-trained through people licensing the equipment and uploading suggestions (like many editing softwares), or mass-scrapped/stolen (like most artwork and writing softwares)); the assemblers creating the database; the programmer/team/company that created the search engine/AI platform; or the person using the AI to create the image per their specifications.

When publishing companies (and other companies) cannot attribute copyright ownership, they can not go the AI route. Contracts require clear lines of ownership to distribute rights. (Side-thought: Companies using AI-generated marketing materials, really should rethink their choices, because I bet if you can’t get copyright, you can’t get trademark either.)

Anyway, the person thanked me, saying no one explained it that way to them before.

AI isn’t inherently evil, but there are other considerations and maybe we writers and artists should start pointing out the “bottom line” for companies using AI isn’t protected rather than argue the ethical and moral stances. Many people only are able to listen to money. No copyright, no contract, no clink-clink.

That being said, many aspects of how humans are implementing AI are counter-productive to society as a whole and individuals in general, which ethically and morally could be interpreted as evil.

Ethically, the database builders doing the mass-scrapes, stealing materials under copyright is wrong. Especially when the follow-up programming to access that database includes suggesting prompts where copyright is worked around: create a drawing in the Style of Disney or write a horror book in the style of Stephen King. Both are clear violations of society’s agreement to protect people’s intellectual property so their efforts are paid and they have the opportunity to continue to create what people think is worthy of purchase. The owners of the creative materials did not agree to this use. Ethical sourcing of the materials for the databases needs to be required.

Morally, the electric and water required for datacenters, when the infrastructure is already stressed and normal people are constantly being asked to save irreplaceable energy resources like uranium, coal, and oil, is abhorrent.  While on some levels, the mass-use of the AI-products expands the capability and considerations of LLM (large language models) and AIs (artificial intelligences), making developing of productive uses of AI easier. For example, using AI to figure out how to water crops and target pesticides increases food for all. Also using LLMs to look over medical tests and crunch numbers beyond what humans are capable of save lives. Both of these uses are beneficial, and having everyone exploring LLM products is bringing down the price while also encouraging programmers and companies to discover more uses.

But programs like ChatGPT are being used indiscriminately because people aren’t seeing the cost. Right now the companies are underwriting it in the hopes to make even more money later, but “a single 100-word email in Open AI’s ChatGPT is the equivalent of consuming just over one bottle of water.” (Garrison) Making five quick pictures of you as various Disney Princes is equal to a day’s worth of water for one person. And that isn’t even counting the energy use. (The water is used to cool the heat generated by datacenter computers.)

People are using ChatGPT to write grocery lists. Is a grocery list really worth a bottle of water plus energy? The destruction of trees and habitat for the large area needed for these centers?

I know one email doesn’t matter, but just imagine several cities worth middle schoolers figuring out which version of Pokémon is the best version of their pet, with all the twenty-somethings using it for groceries lists, and all the tech bro saying “send out an email on a meeting about using paper straws to save the environment,” and you can see where the waste of limited resources becomes objectionable.

With the present issues with climate change, is the energy and water use of the datacenters for entertainment purposes appropriate ethically and morally? Is it appropriate to build datacenters on an already stressed electric grid with rolling blackouts just so people can have help writing simple 100-word emails? And is AI/LLM programs and apps the best way to write those emails?

TL/DR: Authors, artists, and other creatives have a love-hate relationship with AI, balanced between an exciting new creative tool and the exploitive, illegal tapping of the creative community by scraping intellectual property for training LLMs. Publishers and those whose business model is based on protecting intellectual property cannot put AI-generated material under contract because of legal considerations of rights and ownership. Additional ethical and moral consideration of the wide-spread use of LLM and the related datacenter industry required to support them makes causal business and entertainment uses of LLM and AI questionable.

Final Thought: I want machines to do the boring grinding repetitive tasks so I can make art and write books.

 

Bibliography

Garrison, Anna. “How Does AI Use Water and Energy? Unpacking the Negative Impact of Chatbots.” GreenMatters. 2025 Jan 10. https://www.greenmatters.com/big-impact/how-much-water-does-ai-use – last viewed 6/8/2025.

Z is for Zoozve

Erin Penn Leave a comment

ZOOZVE ON A SOLAR SYSTEM POSTER The children’s Solar System that features Zoozve, Venus’s quasi-moon.

Image: Alex Foster / Latif Nasser (from the interweb – space.com)

Did you know that Venus has a moon? Well, sort-of, not really, but kind-of. Venus has a “quasi-moon”, something that had been predicted, but never spotted out in the universe until 2002. How quasi-moons work: they are an asteroid that stays within a planetary body’s orbit instead of fully orbiting the local star. Instead they develop a complex orbit where the planet’s and the star’s gravity fields interact.

Below – Blue is earth, Green is mercury, the center is the sun, white is Venus and the purple is 524522 Zoozve. (Source: Data source: HORIZONS System, JPL, NASA, Heavily influenced by the work of Phoenix7777  — This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. (Wikipedia))

524522 Zoozve rotating frame planets

The quasi-moon also doubles as a near-Earth asteroid, since it crosses Earth’s path, and because of its size, “Zoozve is considered a potentially hazardous object, although it is not predicted to impact the Earth.” (Howells)

How Zoozve got its name is truly delightful. The astronomer, Brian Skiff, discovered the quasi-moon in 2002 – and the designation of “2002VE68” was applied. Later (I can’t find when, google failed me, but later than 2002 and before 2024), Alex Foster was hired to draw a Solar System poster. During research preparing for the poster trying to get the names of all the moons of the solar system, he ran across the mention of a moon for Venus and wrote 2002VE 68 in his notes. I guess his handwriting isn’t as good as his drawing – because when he went back through, he copied the name as Zoozve and put the object beside Venus marked like the other full moons had been marked.

Latif Nasser, a co-host of the science podcast Radiolab, saw the poster in his young son’s room and noticed what seemed to be an error and after confirming Venus did not have a moon with NASA because he knew a gal … and then finding out about the quasi-moon situation, he contacted Brian Skiff and proposed a name switch. The discoverer said “sure” and sent it off to the naming body for celestial objects on October 12, 2023. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) okayed the change in February 2024. (Ravisetti)

Zoozve was the first quasi-moon to be discovered. Others have been discovered and joined the category since then, including several in Earth’s plane.

Well, that ends this year’s A-to-Z blog tour. Thanks to everyone for visiting and y’all have a great year.

#AtoZChallenge 2025 letter Z

Bibliography

Howells, Kate. “What is Venus’ quasi-moon Zoozve?” The Planetary Society. 2024 February 12. (https://www.planetary.org/articles/venus-quasi-moon-zoozve – last viewed 5/21/2024)

Ravisetti, Monisha. “Zoozve – the strange ‘moon’ of Venus that earned its name by accident.” Space.com. 2024 February 6. (https://www.space.com/venus-quasi-moon-zoozve-radiolab-nasa – last viewed 5/21/2024)

Wikipedia. “524522 Zoozve.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/524522_Zoozve – last viewed 5/21/2024)

 

Geeking Science: O is for Otzi the Iceman

Erin Penn Leave a comment

An updated picture of Ötzi, alongside the previous reconstruction. Image: © Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Bridge)

O is for Ötzi and the subject of today’s Geeking Science. One of the best aspects of science is revisiting old knowledge with new skills and techniques to get a better image.

Our first view of Ötzi was in 1991 when German hikers discovered him in the Italian Alps.

(Ötzi, while still frozen in the glacier, photographed by Helmut Simon upon the discovery of the body in September 1991 – Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11187909)

Extraction from the melting glacier included clothing (made from leather and hide) and hunting tools (axe, flint knife, and longbow). (Bridge)  And was done … poorly. Initially, the approach was to remove a cadaver of some poor mountaineer who had the bad luck to die in the past decade on the glacier. Ice axes and a pneumatic drill got the body out of the ice, breaking the longbow among other archeological nightmares. (Wikipedia)

The first change of status happened when Konrad Spindler dated the body based on the copper axe to be “at least four thousand years old” a couple weeks later. (Wikipedia)

Later carbon dating from tissue samples of the corpse and carbon-based items found with him place it at 5,000 years. Further studies give a 2 out of 3 chance of death between 3239 and 3105 BC. (That is a 134 year window.) (Wikipedia) Each dive into Ötzi’s body, with better techniques and tools, gives better information. From eyeballing a body by untrained hikers to carbon dating a 150 year window about five thousand years ago.

This is true about nearly every discovery associated with Ötzi. From white hairy hunter-gatherer man who fell into a glacier, to the present view of a balding man of agricultural descent (though presently a hunter), with tattooed dark skin (about the shade of the Mediterranean), who got ambushed, but escaped to run home until he died on his journey back.

In 2001, an “X-ray examination revealed an arrowhead lodged in his left shoulder, suggesting that he likely bled to death”. (StudyFinds 2023)

Fig 1. Overview on the Iceman’s Health Problems – unknown source for picture as the connecting website is gone

While it looks like Ötzi had a bad life, he died in his mid to late forties. By mid-forties most modern people, even without an active lifestyle such as hunting, have back pain, bad knees and hips, some stomach problems, a couple of cavities, and likely a head injury of some sort – from dodgeball as a kid. The healed rib fractures is interesting; he lived long enough to recover from broken ribs. I wondered who helped him.

In 2003, Nerlich et.al. took a scraping where previous examinations showed a possible deep stab wound. They weren’t sure if it was an injury from life or an insult to the body from being tossed around by a glacier and then being extracted from the glacier with ice axes and a drill. They rehydrated the tissue sample and the results show blood clotting (like a scab) progressed between three to eight days after the injury.

I wonder if a similar study has been done on the arrow head injury. We know there is a hole there, but how long was it there. These two injuries together paint quite a picture and very different from some hunter randomly falling to his death in a glacier five thousand years ago.

The writer in me want to know. Did he and a hunting partner get in a disagreement and Ötzi got stabbed in the hand and shot with an arrow while he escaped? Maybe a group of invaders had captured him and the arrow shot happened when he grabbed a moment to run away, after playing up his trick knee and bad back with the wily actions of an man who had aged long enough to need to live by his brains instead of just his brawn. Maybe he was the invader into other people’s territories who hunted him down for his trespass, an old man scent to test their security.

The more his body reveals to us, the more questions open up.

In 2009, a CAT scan combined with DNA analysis gave us his last meals included ibex game meat, goat domesticated meat, wheat (likely bread), roots, and fruits. He was found with provisions such as barley, einkorn wheat bran, and flax and poppy seeds. (Wikipedia)

In 2012, the first DNA genome pass was done. The DNA samples used were highly contaminated. From them, and a cultural bias toward white people in cold climates,  drawings and presentations show Ötzi to be white skinned and hairy. The dark skin of the mummy corpse was attributed to the mummification process (never mind that most mummies studies are of Egyptians and … wait for it … people of non-“white” skin). (Hesman Saey)

Genes giving lighter skin tones didn’t drift in to humanity until nearly a thousand or two thousand years later. Humans started in Africa; and European-descent people tend to attribute light-skin happening MUCH MUCH later into the “distant” past than it did.

It happened “recently” on the genetic scale. Like the Egyptian Empire setting up along the Nile recent. Like after China had silk for over a thousand years already, recent. Like bricks and city states had existed for a millennium, recent.

Civilization, cities, textiles, writing, and history all pre-date “white” skin. Europe didn’t create the building blocks of humanity.

In 2015, using special photographic techniques, suspected tattoos, which had been hard to see against the mummified skin, revealed 61 tattoos. (Wikipedia)

In 2023, a new DNA study on Ötzi genome revealed much of what we know now. Part of it is better techniques for clearing up contamination. Part of it is a broader base of genetic knowlege indicating human migration. The Human Genome Project started in 1990 and, thanks to massive increases in computer calculating powers, completed in 2003 (with some outliers finally solved in 2022). (Wikipedia HGP) Techniques, knowledge, and calculation powers had improved by several multiples.

New information indicated his ancestors were likely Anatolian farmers (StudyFinds 2023) rather than hunter-gatherers. The dark skin of the mummy likely matched the skin color Ötzi had in life. Instead of flying grey hair in his forties, he was much more likely going bald. He had the DNA for type 2 diabetes, but his diet protected him from the genetic predisposition.

You got to Geek Science when it revisits and retests and reassesses what is known. The past lifting knowledge up, the present reviewing and improving, and the future built on a more accurate view of how the world works and where humanity came from.

 

Bibliography

Bridge, Mark. “Bald and dark like his mummy – DNA redraws picture of Iceman Ötzi.” History First. 2023 August 16. https://historyfirst.com/bald-and-dark-like-his-mummy-dna-redraws-picture-of-iceman-otzi/ last viewed 6/25/2025.

EurekaAlert! “Reanalysis of Iceman Otzi’s genome reveals dark skin, male pattern baldness and more.” 2023 August 16. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/998276 last viewed 6/25/2025.

Hesman Saey, Tina. “A new look at Ötzi the Iceman’s DNA reveals new ancestry and other surprises.” ScienceNews. 2023 August 16. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-otzi-iceman-dna-ancestry-genome last viewed 6/25/2025.

Metcalfe, Tom. “Ötzi the Iceman may have been bald and getting fat before his murder 5,300 years ago.” LiveScience. 2023 August 16. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/otzi-the-iceman-may-have-been-bald-and-getting-fat-before-his-murder-5300-years-ago last viewed 6/25/2025.

Nerlich, Andreas G.; Bachmeier, Beatrice; Zink, Albert; Thalhammer, Stefan; Egarter-Vigl, Eduard. “Ötzi had a wound on his right hand.” The Lancet. Volume 262, Issue 9380. 2003 July 26. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(03)13992-X/fulltext last viewed 6/25/2025.

StudyFinds (2022). “Farming made our ancestors shorter, scientists discover.” 2022 April 9. https://studyfinds.org/farming-made-ancestors-shorter/ last viewed 6/25/2025.

StudyFinds (2023). “Ötzi the Iceman had dark skin and was bald – New study rewrites ancient history.” 2023 August 16. https://studyfinds.org/otzi-the-iceman-dark-skin-bald/ last viewed 6/25/2025.

Wikipedia (HGP). “Human Genome Project. undated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project last viewed 6/25/2025.

Wikipedia. “Ötzi.” undated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi last viewed 6/25/2025.

Geeking Science: EELS

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Version 1.0 of the EELS robot during field testing in Alberta, Canada, in September 2023. | Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

No, that isn’t an AI image. They really have made a snake-like robot. And it is SUPER COOL!!! (and not just because it is made to explore icy planets)

Here is another picture just to prove this thing has been built and is presently in testing. See, real people (if you are willing to call scientists that) are standing around watching it. You may be asking WHY? Why are they creating the stuff of nightmares? Well, to make our space exploration dreams come true.

Not everything can be explored with rovers and flying drones. EELS  offers a third option. The drill design allows the thirteen foot long robot to cross loose soil and even go into crevasses. Things the hard-working Mars and Moon rovers get bogged down in. With the AI-decision protocols (yes, this nightmare fueled design has state-of-the-art AI built in, and not just for making art on social media), the robot can figure out how to get from here-to-there using its corkscrew apparatus.  The AI will allow the explorer to operate on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and other distant surfaces without constant checking back in with ground control. Mars is bad enough with distances between four and twenty light minutes in one direction; Saturn (and her moons) start at seventy-one minutes one direction and could be as much as eighty-eight minutes depending on the Earth-Saturn relative positions in orbit around Sol.

On Earth, EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor) is being tested on glaciers and may be used in the future for glacier mapping and rescue. The tether sends information back to the main platform rover, in this way EELS is like the flying drones – dependent on additional equipment. For search and rescue, the tether and AI mechanisms will allow quick deployment and transfer of information. Nothing is just for space.

While still a ways off for deployment, you can see it in action in the following YouTube video:


Bibliography

Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Shape-Shifting Serpent of Space: NASA’s EELS Robot Revolutionizes Extraterrestrial Exploration.” SciTechDaily. 2023 May 9. https://scitechdaily.com/shape-shifting-serpent-of-space-nasas-eels-robot-revolutionizes-extraterrestrial-exploration/ – last viewed 4/26/25.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Testing Out JPL’s New Snake Robot.” YouTube. 2024.  (See embedded video)

Vaquero, Daddi, Thakker, Patton, Jasour, etal. “EELS” Autonomous Snake-like robot with task and motion planning capabilities for ice world exploration.” ScienceRobotics. (Volume 9 Issue 88) 2024 March 13. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adh8332 – last viewed 4/26/25.

Wessling, Brianna. “CMU, NASA JPL collaborate to make EELS snake robot to explore distant oceans.” The RobotReport. 2024 April 13. https://www.therobotreport.com/cmu-nasa-jpl-collaborate-make-eels-snake-robot-explore-distant-oceans/ – last viewed 4/26/25.

Geeking Science: Clean Water

Erin Penn

Image From the Internet Hive Mind

The order of human survival need is air, water, food … with shelter being mixed in depending on temperature, weather, and danger. I’ve created a little mnemonic for need to help me: three minutes air, three days water, three weeks food.

Just three days without water on a water planet, but the water available is mostly salt water. Fresh water is very limited. Only 2-3% of planetary water is freshwater, with half of that locked up in ice and snow and another chunk running underground accessible only through technology like wells. (Better Meets Reality) Then we need to limit that clean water total more by what humanity has contaminated. We need to clean our water cycle before that three-day window becomes too cloudy to see us through to healthy lives.

One of the places in need of cleanup is the ocean. For years humanity dumped trash into the rivers and ocean, and now we are paying the consequences. A lot of our trash floats – especially the plastics. And sun and time breaks it down on the surface of the ocean into microplastics. Why is the microplastics important? Needs One and Three mentioned above – air: ocean photosynthesis provides for 50% of the oxygen our planet needs for the planetary animal life to breathe (Conversation, The) and – food – 17% of our meat (Costello) and 2% of the calorie intake from all food sources (FAO). If the air (oxygen) goes away in the ocean, humans can continue to breathe on land just fine thanks to land plants, but all food sources in the oceans will go away.

And with microplastics being consumed by plants and animals in the ocean, those plastics are hitting our dinner plates now. Last year’s water bottle is this year’s tuna fish salad sandwich – yum!

We need to fix the mess we made in the oceans, in the rivers which run to the oceans (and provide ground water for humanity’s cities to drink), and in our streets – which wash into our storm water systems which dump into our rivers which run into our oceans. You remember my litter saga, something that I continue to participate in daily? Yeah, part of the reason I collect all the trash is to keep the bottles and plastic out of the storm water systems. My little part in keeping our water cycle clean.

(If you are not familiar with the difference between storm water systems and sewer systems, a good source is here: https://h2oc.org/blog/storm-drain-vs-sewer-whats-the-difference/ but the TL/DR version is sewer water is in a closed system from house to sewer plant, where the hazardous materials are reduced to “acceptable” levels, and a storm water system takes the rain water (and any containments it picks up in the lawns, streets, and parking lots) and dumps it into the nearest stream/water source to be carried to the ocean untreated. – sorry about this Rabbit Hole, but after working on the Soil and Water Board storm water is very dear to my heart.)

Humanity managed to clean up most of the air problems. Smog no longer is dissolving buildings with acid rain; people can travel through city streets without struggling for breath.

Next up on the Earth-cleaning list, water. That honey-do list includes the superfund sites, ground contamination, river cleanup, and ocean cleanup, especially the five ocean garbage patches. The Ocean Cleanup is working on both rivers and oceans. The initial thought was cleaning the oceans, but they quickly realized that if trash continued to run into the oceans, they were fighting a Sisyphus battle. Trash flowing from the rivers needed to stop too. Now the attack is two-prong: keep new trash from entering the ocean and removing the trash already in the ocean.

Water cleanup requires global assistance. The Ocean Cleanup thinks, with support, they can remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.

I spent a couple hours exploring The Ocean Cleanup website, and I think, if they get the help they need, they might succeed. Won’t that be something?

Explore this project of humanity at its best (by way of the Dutch) here: https://theoceancleanup.com/

Remember the Earth is our home and we don’t have another. Sure we might-can “Geoform” other planets some day, but, guess what, we could practice for that by geo-forming where we are right now. If we can’t fix it, when we know most of the basics of this environmental system, then why do we think we will do better with a blank slate.

Ah, that is it – we are comparing planetary environmental systems to a painted picture where a blank slate is easier to deal with than an penciled and inked piece by someone else. But that is a very poor comparison, better would be we are dealing with a running engine. Starting from a “blank slate” for an engine means we have to create all the parts, then assemble them, while each part is moving. Using our own Earth to practice on, troubleshooting an engine that we know the sound of … that is much easier. At this time, there is no Planet B.

We are better off Geeking the Science to keep this one humming along a little longer. Let’s get this “water hose” fixed in our planetary engine.

Biography

Better Meets Reality. “How Much Water is There on Earth? (Ocean, Fresh & Drinkable Water.” 18 August 2018, last updated 27 July 2022. – last viewed 11/10/2023)

Costello, Chrisopher, etal. “The future of food from the sea.” Nature. 19 August 2020. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2616-y – last viewed 11/10/2023)

The Conversation. “Humans will always have oxygen to breathe, but we can’t say the same for ocean life.” 12 August 2021. (https://theconversation.com/humans-will-always-have-oxygen-to-breathe-but-we-cant-say-the-same-for-ocean-life-165148 – last viewed 11/10/2023)

FAO.org. “Food from the Oceans.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2017. (https://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/1099024/ – last viewed 11/10/2023)

The Ocean Cleanup. “The Largest Cleanup in History.” (https://theoceancleanup.com/ – last viewed 11/10/2023)

H2OC Stormwater Program. “Storm Drain vs. Sewer: What’s the Difference?” 30 September 2020. (https://h2oc.org/blog/storm-drain-vs-sewer-whats-the-difference/ – last viewed 11/10/2023)