Thanks, being a software engineer and working in interferometry I was familiar with some of the details - enough to want to jump in when you were getting downvoted - but I will admit I only found and read the actual paper for the first time because of this thread, as I wanted to be sure on the facts!

You're welcome. I think calling it the output of an 'AI model' triggers thoughts of the current generative image models, i.e. entirely fictional which is not accurate, but it is important to recognise the difference between an image and a photo.

I also by no means want to downplay the achievement that the image represents, it's an amazing result and deserves the praise. Defending criticism and confirming conclusions will always be vital parts of the scientific method.

Most of what you said is correct but there is a final step you are missing, the image is not entirely constructed from raw data. The interferometry data is sparse and the 'gaps' are filled with mathematical solutions from theoretical models, and using statistical models trained on simulation data.

Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.10322

We recently developed PRIMO (Principal-component Interferometric Modeling; Medeiros et al. 2023a) for in- terferometric image reconstruction and used it to obtain a high-fidelity image of the M87 black hole from the 2017 EHT data (Medeiros et al. 2023b). In this approach, we decompose the image into a set of eigenimages, which the algorithm “learned” using a very large suite of black- hole images obtained from general relativistic magneto- hydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations

Its not hard to find that there are legitimate academic criticism of this 'photo'. For example here. The comparison you made is not correct, more like I gave a blurry photo to an AI trained on paintings of Donald Trump and asked it to make an image of him. Even if the original image was not of Trump, the chances are the output will be because that's all the model was trained on.

This is the trouble with using this as 'proof' that the. Theory and the simulations are correct, because while that is still likely, there is a feedback loop causing confirmation bias here, especially when people refer to this image as a 'photo'.

Reminds me of

Torpenhow Hill is a hill in Cumbria, England. Its name consists of the Old English ‘Tor’, the Welsh ‘Pen’, and the Danish ‘How’ - all of which translate to modern English as ‘Hill’. Therefore, Torpenhow Hill would translate as hill-hill-hill hill

CNN called it 'Temu Versailles' the other day, seems very apt.

If they are only preventing opportunity, the crime will just take place at a different place or time when an officer is not present. The program's mentioned are aimed at reducing the motive for crime, which applies at all places and times.

The first line of that article is

Without citing a source, Channel 12 reports...

Please try harder. There are people dying because of misinformation.

We were told he was fortified in a tunnel network surrounded by bodyguards and hostages as human shields, like some terrorist mastermind.

He is killed running alone from one bombed out house to another, by a soldier that didn't even recognize him.

Not saying he shouldn't have been killed, but it really shows the false pretenses under which this 'war' is being carried out.

Binary Large OBject

Basically any binary file, often objected to in open source repos because of the lack of source and 'openness'. See also the recent xz backdoor.

'I recently took a french class, and yet I don't even know half of these german words'

Not even Millennials see action against your employer as 'betrayal'. Company loyalty is dead, and this professor is out of touch.