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Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

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Re: Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

#13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m actually surprised to hear that the standard approaches used for weather forecasts do not use AI. Why would they use AI where weather models exist, and work? What exactly would AI bring into space?

I mean as we're seeing right here, they are just as good in their testing stage while not taking several hours to run. They're more efficient to run and calculate since they don't need to go through a lengthy process to determine the weather, just take advantage of the cyclic nature of nature to do the work for us.

The problem is that we are entering an era of rapid climate shift. Relying primarily on historical data doesn't work that well when you are trying to predict unprecedented weather events. The laws of physics, on the other hand, have not changed - so a simulation will still work just fine.

Re: Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

#14
post #4

I’m actually surprised to hear that the standard approaches used for weather forecasts do not use AI. One would think this would be one of the first areas that would adopt AI given the data available. Also that these new AI systems are performing at the same level of the old non-AI approaches I feel is a real testament to the developers of those systems. This is not something we see in many other cases.

I'm actually not surprised that people think 'AI' can fix everything including weather prediction. I've heard about AI machine learning forecasts for 10+ years now, waiting for one of them to be actually used in industry...

This aint a retail product recommendation. If the AI makes a bad choice it will cost millions/billions of dollars and we could lose many MANY lives.

Re: Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean as we're seeing right here, they are just as good in their testing stage while not taking several hours to run. They're more efficient to run and calculate since they don't need to go through a lengthy process to determine the weather, just take advantage of the cyclic nature of nature to do the work for us.

The problem is that we are entering an era of rapid climate shift. Relying primarily on historical data doesn't work that well when you are trying to predict unprecedented weather events. The laws of physics, on the other hand, have not changed - so a simulation will still work just fine.

No we aren't actually. We are still well within historical data, since we use that still to calculate future weather patterns, and there hasn't been anything unprecedented that would trip up a model like this either.

Re: Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

#17

I remember the good old days when we used to use terms like statistics, heuristics, data science, and machine learning. Now everything is just "AI".

{In Thick Yorkshire Accent} - 'Luxury! In my day, we used to call it "maths"! Two-hundred and fifty of us huddled together in a bomb shelter in Bracknell[1] poring over oceanographic maps by gaslight and trying not to sneeze into the sergeant's tea.'

  [1]:https://rafmetman.wordpress.com/meteorology/ww2-meteorology/

Re: Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

#18

> In the first effort, the team behind Pangu-Weather, trained their system on 39 years of weather data and then asked it to make predictions based on current weather patterns. They found that it was as accurate at doing so as existing systems, and did its work in just a fraction of the time. That's awesome -- years of analysis paying off in a very cool and interesting way. It says that this particular model doesn't p…

Must say that "as accurate at doing so as existing systems" is quite mysterious.

Not as accurate as systems from previous decades, not more accurate then the existing systems. What is so special about the now?

Re: Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

#19

I remember the good old days when we used to use terms like statistics, heuristics, data science, and machine learning. Now everything is just "AI".

It's all just marketing. The companies running these advanced chatbots want to tap into tech mystique to give the impression that LLMs are on the cusp of being the intelligent agents we see in movies and books, because just admitting they're just implementing statistical patterns isn't sexy. They need investors, and investors are throwing money at anything called AI

Re: Two new AI-based weather-forecasting systems challenging the status quo

#20

I remember the good old days when we used to use terms like statistics, heuristics, data science, and machine learning. Now everything is just "AI".

{In Thick Yorkshire Accent} - 'Luxury! In my day, we used to call it "maths"! Two-hundred and fifty of us huddled together in a bomb shelter in Bracknell[1] poring over oceanographic maps by gaslight and trying not to sneeze into the sergeant's tea.' [1]:https://rafmetman.wordpress.com/meteorology/ww2-meteorology/

Ohhhh 'maths' - we used to DREAM of huddlin' in a shelter doing 'maths'! We barely had a distinction between 'one', 'two' and 'lots'.

etc etc

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