Welcome to Big AI

Abstract

My college office in Oxford overlooks a narrow, ancient street called New College Lane; directly opposite my office window is a handsome 17th-century house that was the home of Edmond Halley—he of the comet fame—who became Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford in 1703. On top of the house is an odd shed-like structure: it was Halley's observatory. It serves as a daily reminder to me that, 300 years ago, world-changing science could be done in your own home, with facilities no fancier than a garden shed. Fast forward to April 2019, and the first-ever pictures of a black hole, which made front-page headlines across the globe. The Event Horizon Telescope that generated the astonishing images is as far from Halley's modest observatory as one could imagine: a global network of radio telescopes, in a collaboration involving 13 core partners and dozens of affiliates—supported by a lot of very advanced computer technology, and a big budget. You can still discover a comet from your garden shed, but for the most part, astronomy today is Big Science.