buddhistan

No one claimed the AI "is so smart" - it's another tool in their kit. The article clearly conveys that the potential is a useful way to augment human-led research by providing a way of quickly processing large datasets i.e. the 20k signals are filtering down 150 terabytes of data which is much more manageable for human analysis. It's not like we have definitive parameters of what constitutes an "alien signal," so we can't exactly create an absolute model for detecting such telemetry. Instead the goal of the article is to simply demonstrate exciting new ways to leverage machine learning methods in different contexts

I don't think it's phrased to correlate the second outcome dependent on the first. That part of the article was referring to the racer regressing to their mean. With the assumption that they overperform in their first race based on the phrasing "surprisingly well", then the conclusion is still correct because the likelihood of them performing to their average performance level (whatever that may be) is still more likely than overperforming.

Are you really wondering their intent, or did you just phrase your question to point out the implication of their comment?