Renowned Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) scholar Wang Jian has called for greater integration of the technology in space exploration, as he shared his vision on the state-backed Zhejiang Lab’s plan to build a computing constellation consisting of 1,000 satellites, designed to process data in orbit rather than through land infrastructure.
“It’s a good time to think about how we can put AI into space, not just in your laptop or cellphone,” said Wang, director of Zhejiang Lab and founder of Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing unit, during a keynote speech at the Beyond Expo tech conference in Macau on Wednesday.
“Space has, again, become the frontier for us to think about what we can do in the next 10, 20 or 50 years,” he said, adding that “we don’t want AI missing in space”.
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On May 14, China launched into orbit the first batch of satellites for its space computing constellation aboard a Long March 2D rocket from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The 12 satellites are part of the Three-Body Computing Constellation being developed by Zhejiang Lab, with the mission of carrying out cross-orbit laser communication and astronomical observations.
First unveiled in November at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen in east Zhejiang province, the Three-Body project aims to establish infrastructure in space to enhance computing efficiency compared to Earth-based data processing. The ultimate goal is to achieve a total computing power of 1,000 petaflops – equivalent to a quintillion calculations per second.
