Meet Wukong, the Ia Chatbot China has installed on his space station

The last addition For the Chinese Tiangong space station it is a chatbot with experience in navigation and tactical planning. Called Wukong Ai, after the protagonist of the Legend “Monkey King” In Chinese mythology, Sun Wukong: the chatbot was introduced on the space station in mid -July and has already completed its first mission: support three taikonauts during a space.

The information on Wukong to the limited remained. The Chinese authorities said they had developed it from an open source artificial intelligence model; According to Xinhua, Chinese state print agency, the engineers designed it to meet the requirements of the spatial missions with crew and concentrated its basic knowledge on aerospace flight data.

“This system can provide rapid and effective information support for complex operations and management of faults by crew members, improving work efficiency, psychological support in orbit and coordination between spaces of space and land”, Zou Pengfei of the Taikonaut Training Center, said xinhua.

The technicians connected the IA to Tiangong on July 15th. It started providing support a month later, it is the first time that the Chinese space station used a large linguistic model (LLM) during the missions in orbit. Wukong Ai assisted the crew in a six -hour and a half hours mission, which involved Taikonauti who installed spatial debris protection devices during a Spacewalk and performing a routine inspection of the station.

Taikonauti say that their new assistant “offers very complete content”. The Chinese media describe the Wukong Ia as a classic system of questions and answers divided into two modules: one installed on the station and one on Earth. The earth module performs an in -depth analysis, while the module accompanying the crew resolves immediate challenges. The combination of the two creates an advanced assistant able to adapt to each mission.

Wukong is neither the first artificial intelligence system in space nor the first in a station. The International Space Station already has Astrobee, a robot that assists astronauts with routine tasks, and Cimon, a conversational psychological support system. The peculiarity of the Wukong AI is that it combines the functions of an intelligent assistant, such as those used on Earth, with total attention to spatial navigation.

The Tiangong station is the nucleus of Chinese strategy to consolidate its position of spatial power over the next 30 years. The station currently acts as a microgravity laboratory for experiments that would be impossible on Earth. In the future, China involves expanding and transforming it into a logistic and training platform intermediate between the moon and the earthly surface.

And the reason for the name of artificial intelligence? Sun Wukong is a mythical person who appears in the classic novel Journey to the west. In China it symbolizes cunning, adaptability, resistance and search for knowledge.

This story originally appeared on WITCH EN ESPAñOL And it was translated by the Spaniard.