Well the Google SWE didn't make a mistake, the media made a mistake in misreporting it, and we at HN are making a mistake by giving it undue attention.

We are reading this article because it continues and amplifies the AI hype machine, and no other reason. If a motivated amateur had made the discovery through any other means, and motivated amateurs do things like this all the time, then it would never have gotten an article, never shown up on the HN feed.

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pdpi a day ago | parent | next [-]

> never shown up on the HN feed.

While I appreciate and broadly agree with your bigger point, I'd argue this particular bit is a bit uncharitable. Articles about nerds doing interesting, unusual things do make the front page pretty often.

	▲	hirako2000 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They do but the point point is that this post made it because of the AI hype. Not the discovery itself which should grant more attention than that of a machine doing archeological "work" that happens to misinform.

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jryle70 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Huh? AI hype? Nothing in the article was hyped. The site was found independently from the other source, using Lidar data. Without AI it may take much longer to find this site. Now enthusiasts can use the same technique to find other sites, which may not yet be found. That's what makes it interesting.

At some point such discoveries won't cause as much stir, similar to how reusable rocket drew such fervent attention 10 years ago.

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anonymous_user9 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Now enthusiasts can use the same technique to find other sites, which may not yet be found. That's what makes it interesting.

This is the hype. The interesting thing is always in the future.

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jryle70 18 hours ago | parent [-]

You lost me.

> They turned the lidar strips (about 1,200 km² of jungle) into images, and 48 agents went through them one by one like very patient archaeologists, looking for pyramids, platforms, and plazas while filtering out natural hills, sinkholes, and roads. There was no special model or classifier involved: the agents literally looked at the pictures, following a precise guide.

That isn't in the future. Anyone can do that today, and with clever judgement and luck, can find some other sites today. Not in the future, although future will likely be easier.

He didn't say wait until next year for Gemini Dysprosium. That'd be hype.

	▲	defrost 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's also the past - we as humans have been flying multi instrument platforms and crawling through traces for decades now. Australia's been criss crossed with mag, gravity, lidar, gamma spectrometer, et al. since the 1970s and human operators have scrubbed glitches, filtered data, and composed maps leading to mineral discoveries, impact crater finds, unexpected structures found, etc. Elsewhere, Angkor was scanned back in 2012 leading to revelations and new structures w/out the use of AI- https://www.siemreapbest.com/temples/blog/angkor-lidar-lost-...

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18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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bloppe a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, if this were a true novelty, it would have been newsworthy regardless of AI involvement, but ya it does ride the hype train a bit