The analogy is that data is now contaminated with AI like steel is now contaminated with nuclear fallout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
>Low-background steel, also known as pre-war steel[1] and pre-atomic steel,[2] is any steel produced prior to the detonation of the first nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Typically sourced from ships (either as part of regular scrapping or shipwrecks) and other steel artifacts of this era, it is often used for modern particle detectors because more modern steel is contaminated with traces of nuclear fallout.[3][4]
From the same wiki you linked:
"Since the end of atmospheric nuclear testing, background radiation has decreased to very near natural levels, making special low-background steel no longer necessary for most radiation-sensitive uses, as brand-new steel now has a low enough radioactive signature"
and
"For the most demanding items even low-background steel can be too radioactive and other materials like high-purity copper may be used"
For applications that need to avoid the background radiation (like physics research), pre atomic age steel is extracted, like from old shipwrecks.
> Low Background Steel (and lead) is a type of metal uncontaminated by radioactive isotopes from nuclear testing. That steel and lead is usually recovered from ships that sunk before the Trinity Test in 1945.
This is a desired quality, increasingly less present in IT work environments. People afraid of being shamed for stating knowledge gaps are not the folks you want to work with.
LLMs pollute the internet like atomic bombs polluted the environment.
