The latest addition to China’s Tiangong space station is an AI chatbot with expertise in navigation and tactical planning. Named Wukong AI—after the protagonist of the “Monkey King” legend in Chinese mythology, Sun Wukong—the chatbot was introduced on the space station in mid-July, and has already completed its first mission: supporting three taikonauts during a spacewalk.
Information about Wukong AI remains limited. Chinese authorities have said that they developed it from a domestic open-source AI model; according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, engineers designed it to meet the requirements of manned space missions, and focused its knowledge-base on aerospace flight data.
“This system can