Google is aiming for the stars — literally — with Project Suncatcher, its latest attempt to take artificial intelligence where no chatbot has gone before: outer space.
Preparing for AI harms focuses on protecting your data and habits rather than prepping for a sci fi annihilation.
Project Suncatcher, announced last year, is Google’s attempt at a true moonshot: what if space itself could host the next generation of machine learning? This is all to try and increase AI computing capabilities in orbit. A prototype satellite is due to launch soon to see whether its custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) can withstand the harsh conditions outside Earth's atmosphere. If you're thinking, 'It's impossible that there could be no problems with putting advanced AI hardware into space,' then you're not alone.
In low Earth orbit, satellites are exposed to near-continuous sunlight—potentially allowing them to generate up to eight times more solar power than their counterparts on the ground. Image huge numbers of satellites, linked as a network, carrying out AI processing above the clouds. At first,, this sounds like the opening of a sci-fi horror story, but is still an interesting concept.
Before we worry about rogue satellites getting interested in world domination, there's one more important question: can AI chips actually function in space? The Suncatcher team will find out, since their hardware is being transported on SpaceX's upcoming Transporter-18 mission . The company will collect data in orbit to see whether Google's TPUs can withstand the pounding vibrations, cosmic radiation, and thermal stress of a journey beyond the stratosphere.
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