Taxacom: AI etc. -- was: replacing un-sequenceable types, and Minimalist revision of Mesochorus

[Peter Uetz]

Frank — yes, we need people, but many of us will do different things in the future :)

KD — I am not overselling anything, but I may be overoptimistic as far as the timeline goes.
As I am working in both biodiversity AND proteins, I was quite surprised as many other people, how quickly protein structure prediction became a reality. I would not be surprised if Alphafold got a Nobel Prize next month.

KD (and Frank) — you said that we are doing this for humans. That may be misleading. As a staunch opponent to overpopulation and nature destruction, I hope we do this eventually to protect biodiversity. And yes, people (including scientists) need to appreciate nature more. In any case, scientists will always have plenty to do, no matter how they approach it.



> On Sep 1, 2023, at 12:13 PM, Frank T. Krell via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
> One of the fundamental problems is that funders love to fund science without people, because people are expensive (see the decreasing number of museum scientists in most museums). Amateur entomologists and citizen scientists were seen as solutions for a while (and probably still), now AI could help us to avoid paying these pesky scientists and achieve better results. They are certainly better because when nobody is there to check AI results any more, how should we know otherwise.
> I hope it will never get to this extreme
> In an ideal world, we need more people engaged in taxonomy, more people educated, more people paid a decent salary, more people seeing it as a viable career choice, more people in administrations learning to appreciate the taxonomic endeavor. It is a people issue, and AI cannot and should not be more than a support tool.
> 
> Frank
> 
> 
> Dr. Frank-Thorsten Krell
> 

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Peter Uetz
Center for Biological Data Science
(formerly Center for the Study of Biological Complexity)
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA 23284
USA

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