Thats vaguely insulting to all the people who do work on astrophysics, I work in AI and i'm pretty certain the average astronomer is a lot smarter than the average AI researcher. Its mostly a matter of pop culture perspective, astronomy just doesn't get the kind of media coverage it used to
> i'm pretty certain the average astronomer is a lot smarter than the average AI researcher
Perhaps! But is the smartest AI researcher / quant / etc. smarter than the average astronomer? The fact that so many of the smartest people in our generation go into these fields is surely bringing the average down in the hard sciences.
I'm just not sure "smartness" is the limiting factor for progress. Astronomy is an old science and we're very much at the limits of our ability and understanding. "AI" is a very new field (maybe a science idk) and theres a lot of fertile ground of exploration and growth.
