Project Description
The arrival of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is greatly going to impact teaching at universities and colleges worldwide. In a parallel development, it is also an opportunity to accelerate the pace of research and, possibly, will point out new directions. In this work we plan to use chat bots to derive connections between various scientific papers and to create python code from simple prompts. The particular application will be the mathematical modeling of the spatial distribution of space debris in Low Earth Orbit (LEO; 200-2000 km altitude). Early preliminary results have shown, for example, that ChatGPT can produce excellent code for solving ordinary differential equations numerically. It is of course necessary to watch out for "AI hallucinations". We do not intend to use Large Language Models for creating text. Recently we published a mathematical model for the spread of space debris in LEO (Jurkiewicz and Hinow, 2023). This model contains terms for addition of new objects by satellite launches and binary collisions.
Tasks and Responsibilites
The student's first task is to "feed" this paper to chat bots and to see if they can make connections to the wide existing literature in astrophysics and aerospace engineering. For example, we would like to account for the effects of large "rogue" objects or additional debris due to anti-satellite weapons tests. He/she will document his experience and search whether the applications (ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Google Bard) are able to make connections to other papers that deal with related topics. Can they suggest research directions that a human would perhaps not have expected?
The student will also look for differences in their responses and their overall reliability. Another task will be to generate computer code to make working with complex mathematical models easier.
Desired Qualifications
None Listed.