Meet Wukong, the AI Chatbot China Has Installed on Its Space Station

The latest addition to China’s Tiangong abstraction presumption is an AI chatbot with expertise successful navigation and tactical planning. Named Wukong AI—after the protagonist of the “Monkey King” legend successful Chinese mythology, Sun Wukong—the chatbot was introduced connected the abstraction presumption successful mid-July, and has already completed its archetypal mission: supporting 3 taikonauts during a spacewalk.

Information astir Wukong AI remains limited. Chinese authorities person said that they developed it from a home open-source AI model; according to Xinhua, China’s state-run quality agency, engineers designed it to conscionable the requirements of manned abstraction missions, and focused its knowledge-base connected aerospace formation data.

“This strategy tin supply accelerated and effectual accusation enactment for analyzable operations and responsibility handling by unit members, improving enactment efficiency, in-orbit intelligence support, and coordination betwixt abstraction and crushed teams,” Zou Pengfei of the taikonaut grooming center, told Xinhua.

Technicians connected the AI to Tiangong connected July 15. It began providing enactment a period later, this being the archetypal clip that China’s abstraction presumption has utilized a ample connection exemplary (LLM) during in-orbit missions. Wukong AI assisted the unit connected a six-and-a-half-hour mission, which progressive taikonauts installing abstraction debris extortion devices during a spacewalk and performing a regular inspection of the station.

The taikonauts assertion that their caller adjunct “offers precise broad content.” Chinese media picture Wukong AI arsenic a classical question-and-answer strategy divided into 2 modules: 1 installed connected the station, and 1 connected Earth. The crushed module performs in-depth analysis, portion the module accompanying the unit solves contiguous challenges. The operation of the 2 creates an precocious adjunct susceptible of adapting to each mission.

Wukong is neither the archetypal AI strategy successful abstraction nor the archetypal connected a station. The International Space Station already has Astrobee, a robot that assists astronauts with regular tasks, and CIMON, a conversational intelligence enactment system. The particularity of Wukong AI is that it combines the functions of an intelligent assistant—like those utilized connected Earth—with a full absorption connected abstraction navigation.

The Tiangong presumption is the halfway of China’s strategy to consolidate its presumption arsenic a abstraction powerfulness implicit the adjacent 30 years. The presumption presently serves arsenic a microgravity laboratory for experiments that would beryllium intolerable connected Earth. In the future, China plans to grow it and crook it into an intermediate logistics and grooming level betwixt the satellite and the Earth’s surface.

And the crushed for the AI’s name? Sun Wukong is simply a mythical idiosyncratic who appears successful the classical caller Journey to the West. In China, helium symbolizes cunning, adaptability, endurance, and the pursuit of knowledge.

This communicative primitively appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.